Word: hellabrunn
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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...Hellabrunn Zoo, in Munich, Germany, a small herd of short-maned, pony-sized horses grazed contentedly last week. Fine-boned and broad-skulled, with mouse-grey coats and zebra-striped legs, they look for all the world like tarpans, the fierce wild horses that Roman legionnaires found in Spain. But tarpans are extinct: the last herds vanished in the 19th century, after ranging eastward to the steppes of the Ukraine...
...Hellabrunn horses are a modern throwback to that ancient breed-the end products of careful experiment. Unlike the average horseman, who works at improving the breed, Geneticist Heinz Heck, the Hellabrunn Zoo's director, has spent most of his professional life looking backward. He created the ersatz tarpans by reversing the process of evolution...
...found in the 1880s by the Russian explorer Przewalski. But the shaggy animals which Przewalski brought back from Dzungaria were heavy-boned, with long and awkward heads. They may well have been the ancestors of today's cart horses. There are some Przewalski horses still living in the Hellabrunn Zoo, and Dr. Heck began his experiments in backward breeding with them...
Since 1928, when he organized the Hellabrunn Zoo and began his experiments in Riickzüchtung (backward breeding), Geneticist Heck has developed his tarpans and a herd of aurochs, the beefy, bison-like ancestors of modern cattle. Neither strain has any domestic value, but both have shown unusual resistance to disease. "The day may come," said Dr. Heck last week, "when our highly bred, high-strung modern breeds will need a shot of their wild ancestors' blood to revitalize them...
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