Image: Mariette DiChristina
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Overview
Racehorses came from European stock
At Al Shaqab in Doha, Qatar, science is bringing a new life to the ancient bloodlines of Arabian horses—the breed that carried historical figures such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and George Washington. Purebred Arabian stallions are the finely built and fleet founders of today's racing thoroughbreds. In 1992, the Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar established the Al Shaqab equestrian farm to foster the breed. It's located at the Al Shaqab battle site, where in 1893 Qataris riding Arabian horses fought against the Ottomans and eventually gained independence. The 980,000-square-foot facility is part of the Qatar Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to help the country reach its goal of becoming a leader in innovation and research. I visited the complex during the 2011 World Conference of Science Journalists, held in June.
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9 Comments
Add CommentThank you for the slide show, but there was no science -- or even any new information -- for those of us who have been involved with breeding or training horses in dressage, show jumping, or endurance, for any length of time. Artificial insemination and host mares? Engineered surfaces? Artificial insemination? Semen collection? Host dams? Treadmills? Equine hydrofitness pools? Dustfree stabling? All well-known for at least the last 20 years in the US, and (based on my experience) have little to do with science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to know what the writer meant by "This mare, like most horses at Al Shaqab, will never bear a human rider—many are shown only in dressage". Dressage requires a rider.
What I expected to read was
1. how Al Shaqab was using performance data to match mares with sires based on performance characteristics, and the outcome.
2. I would have also expected something on the influence of the foster mother (host dam) on fetal and subsequent development. This is an ethical experiment, in the equine world. In other words, taking eggs from a mare, and either implanting one (or more) blastocysts in different host dams, while allowing another blastocyst to come to term in the donor.
I don't think Ms. DiChristina did enough research to understand what dressage is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi guess what i'm getting out of this is that it's a beautiful, well-thought-out facility... and yet i was also hoping for a little more substance in the article! arabians have always fascinated me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese horses are not bread or born in a natural way. The mares are artificialy inseminated, have fertilized embryo's harvested and those embryo's are then implanted into host mares. These procedures are not without considerable pain. The mares who are fertilized have one pregnancy after the other which are then basicly aborted so she can become pregnant again asap. The mares who carry the foal is given hormones to make her body receptive at the same time as the inseminated mare's embryo is ready to be harvested. Because they have no genetic worth they have one foal after the other. Basicly, this is a puppy mill for high end horses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile it's possible an Arabian served as Genghis Khan's steed, it doesn't seem very likely. Weren't Horses first domesticated on the Eurasian Steppes? Don't Mongolian horses show some of their species greatest genetic diversity even today? I think the author should be careful when making statements like this even if it is just in the introduction of an article as it casts doubt on the rest of his statements. We as scientists try to avoid such statements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The mares who are fertilized have one pregnancy after the other which are then basicly aborted so she can become pregnant again asap."..."Basicly[sic], this is a puppy mill for high end horses."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fetus is transplanted, not discarded. The dam invests very few resources into a blastocyst, and so loses little when utilized in such a manner. If she carried one pregnancy to term after another, THEN it might be compared with a puppy mill, where the dogs do exactly that without reprieve.
To my knowledge, when the originating mare is allowed to carry a foal to term, she is given a break wherein she might simply be used for eggs or embryos until her body is suitably recovered.
In agreement with the first poster, I'm not at all involved with the industry and was already well aware of the facilities and features of high-end stables. Downright envious, one might even say :)
It'd be a good thing if the reporter had done a little research into current methods of horse breeding. Like maybe talked to a few horse breeders in the USA or elsewhere. We have had AI and embryo transfer etc for quite a while now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd it would also be a good thing if she had talked to someone who knew about the various horse sports and how they are done. Dressage has been a ridden sport for about 600 years. Arabians are rarely used in dressage anyhow, they are mostly found in endurance riding.
It's great to see info about horses in a magazine such as Scientific American, but it's be so much nicer if it had been done by someone knowledgeable about horses.
MW
Please, please leave the equine journalism to someone with a clue about the animals, industry and sport(s) involved. Start there and then maybe advance to the real science. This article would have been rejected by the neighborhood saddle club newsletter, and it doesn't belong in Scientific American. You can do better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs someone who knows very little about the breeding of horses, I thought it was very interesting to find out a little about how <a href="http://www.sterlingbloodstock.com">Arabians</a> are bred in such facilities. Now, however, I am interested in finding out more detailed information.
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