Rejected by his mother, a rare wild Asian horse foal finds a new mom in a grieving domestic mare
APPLE VALLEY, Minn. — An endangered wild Asian horse foal is thriving thanks to an unlikely hero.
Marat, a Przewalski's horse, fell critically ill soon after his birth at the Minnesota Zoo nearly two months ago. He survived thanks to intensive care. But his mother rejected him when he returned.
His future looked grim until Alice, a domestic Pony of the Americas who'd recently lost her newborn, accepted him as her own. Veterinarians say this is one of the first times this kind of surrogacy has been tried with Asian wild horses, and his caregivers couldn't be happier.
Zoo staffers picked the name Marat because it means 'one who is brave,' and he's had to be brave from such a young age
Przewalski's are considered the only remaining truly wild horse species. They were declared extinct in the wild in the 1960s, with just a few surviving in zoos. But they've since been reestablished on the steppes of Mongolia and China, with some in Russia and Ukraine. Since fewer than 2,000 exist today, each foal is critical to the species' survival.
'Being one of the true wild horses left in the world, behaviorally, they are a little bit different,' said Kurt Heinzmann, the zoo's director of animal care. They've never been truly domesticated, and they're shorter and stockier than familiar breeds, he said.
Marat was born with some limb problems that made it hard for him to stand up straight, said Dr. Annie Rivas, the zoo's director of animal health.
'And because he was struggling to keep up with Mom in the herd, he was spending a lot of time lying down on the ground and unfortunately developed bacterial sepsis. So he was very, very sick,' Rivas said.
The University of Minnesota's equine intensive care unit nursed him back from his pneumonia and wounds. But it wasn't unusual that his first-time mom, Nady, would refuse to take him back.
'That left us with, 'What are we going to do with this foal?'' Rivas said. 'We could hand-rear him, but we're not going to be the ones who are the best at teaching them how to be a horse — especially a wild horse.'
Fortunately, they found Alice, a gentle mare who was still grieving her own foal but immediately started nurturing Marat and allowing him to nurse.
'It was really kind of a perfect fairy-tale ending. ... They just bonded like that,' Rivas said.
Integrating Marat into the complex social hierarchies of a wild herd will be the next challenge, she said, but Alice is helping Marat learn how to behave with other horses. They'll probably stay together for a few more months. They want him to join the zoo's adult Przewalski's herd before he's too old.
'He is definitely a wild horse,' Rivas said. 'One, he is a stallion, so he's already got a big personality from that. But he is also a little more wild than you would expect a domestic horse foal to be at this point in his life. And he is trying to show me that he's the boss, he's in charge, he's dominant. So he's trying to step up, kick, assert his dominance over me.'
Mark Vancleave And Steve Karnowski, The Associated Press
Karnowski reported from Minneapolis.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
The U.S. is having its worst year for measles in more than three decades
The U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades, with a total of 1,288 cases nationally and another six months to go in 2025. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Wednesday that the national case count surpassed 2019, when there were 1,274 cases for the year and the country almost lost its status of having eliminated the vaccine-preventable illness. That could happen this year if the virus has nonstop spread for 12 months. This year's outbreaks, some of them interconnected, started five months ago in undervaccinated communities in West Texas. Three people have died — two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico — and dozens of people have been hospitalized. Public health experts maintain the true case count may be higher than state health departments have confirmed. North America has three other major measles outbreaks, with 2,966 cases in Chihuahua state, Mexico, 2,223 cases in Ontario and 1,230 in Alberta. Thirteen other states have current confirmed outbreaks of three or more people — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah — and four other states saw their outbreaks end. The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is 97% effective at preventing measles after two doses. The World Health Organization said in 2000 that measles had been eliminated from the U.S. The CDC identified 22 outbreaks in 2019, the largest being two separate clusters in New York — 412 in New York state and 702 in New York City. These were linked because as measles was spreading through close-knit Orthodox Jewish communities, the CDC said. It's a similar situation in North America this year, where the Canada, Mexico and Texas outbreaks stem from large Mennonite communities in the regions. Mennonite churches do not formally discourage vaccination, though more conservative Mennonite communities historically have low vaccination rates and a distrust of government. A recent study found childhood vaccination rates against measles fell after the COVID-19 pandemic in nearly 80% of the more than 2,000 U.S. counties with available data, including in states that are battling outbreaks this year. Only 92.7% of kindergarteners in the U.S. had the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the 2023-2024 school year, below the 95% needed to prevent outbreaks. In Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the Texas outbreak, only 82% of kindergarteners were up-to-date with MMR vaccines. State and federal leaders have for years kept funding stagnant for local public health departments' vaccination programs that are tasked with reversing the trend. 'What we're seeing with measles is a little bit of a 'canary in a coal mine,'' said Lauren Gardner, leader of Johns Hopkins University's independent measles and COVID tracking databases. 'It's indicative of a problem that we know exists with vaccination attitudes in this county and just, I think, likely to get worse.' ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Devi Shastri, The Associated Press
CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
AI-powered robot perfectly performs surgery after being trained by videos
Sorry, we're having trouble with this video. Please try again later. [5006/404] For the first time ever, a robot has performed a realistic surgery without human help. According to a new study, the AI-powered robot precisely executed a complex part of a gallbladder removal after being trained by videos of human surgeons. Led by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the study found that the robot's performance was 'comparable to an expert surgeon' during trials on pig gallbladders. 'This advancement moves us from robots that can execute specific surgical tasks to robots that truly understand surgical procedures,' corresponding author and medical roboticist Axel Krieger said in a news release. 'This is a critical distinction that brings us significantly closer to clinically viable autonomous surgical systems that can work in the messy, unpredictable reality of actual patient care.' While Krieger and colleagues have trained robots to perform specific surgical tasks in the past, this was the first time that one was able to operate autonomously without a predetermined plan. Rather than teaching a robot to follow a mapped route, Krieger likened their latest breakthrough to 'teaching a robot to navigate any road, in any condition, responding intelligently to whatever it encounters.' The robot was also able to learn from and respond to voice commands from the team, much like a novice surgeon working under supervision of a mentor. After being trained, the robot operated autonomously on eight pig gallbladders, performing perfectly without any human intervention. 'To me it really shows that it's possible to perform complex surgical procedures autonomously,' Krieger, an associate professor in mechanical engineering, said. 'This is a proof of concept that it's possible and this imitation learning framework can automate such complex procedure with such a high degree of robustness.' 'Comparable to an expert surgeon' Although the robot took longer than a human surgeon, researchers say it had a 100 per cent success rate in all eight surgeries and was able to adapt to different pig gallbladders and unexpected scenarios, like when its starting position was moved. On average it took the robot five minutes and 17 seconds to complete the required tasks, compared to about four minutes for a human surgeon. 'In these experiments, we observe the consistent ability of our framework to generalize to unseen anatomies and self-correct its own behaviour,' an advance copy of the study explained. 'Preliminary comparison shows that, while our framework requires more operation time, the performance is comparable to an expert surgeon.' Using the typically human-operated robotic da Vinci Surgical System, the robot was built and trained with the same machine learning architecture that drives ChatGPT. 'Our work shows that AI models can be made reliable enough for surgical autonomy – something that once felt far-off but is now demonstrably viable,' lead author and former Johns Hopkins postdoctoral researcher Ji Woong 'Brian' Kim said in the news release. Warning: some readers may find the following image disturbing. Surgical Robot The surgical robot performing a gallbladder surgery. (Juo-Tung Chen/Johns Hopkins University) The study was published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics. The gallbladder removal procedure required a string of 17 tasks that included identifying certain ducts and arteries in order to place clips and sever parts with scissors. The researchers would now like to train and test the surgical robot for other types of procedures and to eventually perform a completely autonomous surgery. 'Autonomous surgery holds immense potential for improving surgical outcomes, reducing costs, and expanding access to high-quality healthcare,' the study said. '[Our] approach also supports real-time language interventions from expert surgeons, making it practical for potential integration into hospitals as a tool for surgeons to reduce fatigue on simple procedures or for areas with no access to trained surgeons.'
CTV News
5 hours ago
- CTV News
96-year-old shares what she does to keep life vibrant. You can start doing it now
Making and maintaining friendships are important always, especially in your older years, experts say. (andreswd/E+/Getty Images via CNN Newsource) At 96 years old, Betty Parker is tired of hearing about other people's aches and pains. Instead, she fills her journal with all the great things she is still doing: picking roses from her garden, reading, playing cards with her regular group and baking pies when she entertains. OK, she admits that maybe she doesn't quite have the energy to bake pies anymore and should probably buy something from the grocery store next time. Even so, Parker said her 90s have been filled with purpose and connection –– something many people struggle with no matter their age. Healthy behaviours like nutritious eating and strength training are important to living longer, but loneliness and social isolation are also key factors to address to have more years and enjoy them, said California-based gerontologist Dr. Kerry Burnight, who is also Parker's daughter. 'Life expectancy generally has improved in the last generation. But we want to make sure that individuals are living good years, as opposed to just living longer,' said Dr. John Batsis, a geriatrician and an associate professor at UNC's School of Medicine and Gillings School of Global Public Health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A geriatrician is a medical doctor focusing on the care of older adults, while a gerontologist studies aging from the biological perspective as well as the social and psychological, Burnight said. There are four factors that Burnight sees as being the most important to getting the most joy out of your longer, healthier years: growing, connecting, adapting and giving. And fortunately, just like you can exercise daily to keep your body healthy, she says you can work out your internal strength to improve your connections and sense of purpose. Start whenever you can It's not too early or too late to start creating a life you enjoy. If you haven't retired yet, it may be a good idea to start thinking about what your days will look like when you stop working, Batsis said. 'The retirement cliff, so to speak, is very difficult for individuals who have been working a lifetime,' he added. It can feel like suddenly you lose everything –– a sense of purpose, how you fill your days and who you connect with –– when you are no longer going into work every day, especially if you have not made a plan, he said. Instead of making such a drastic change, Batsis advises people to start taking up hobbies and activities you'd like to do in retirement while you are still working. If you have already retired, you can find opportunities to build new things you love, Burnight said. If you have always wanted to publish a book, 80 isn't too old to start writing. In fact, you may still have a lot of time ahead of you to invest in your passions, she said. 'It's not too late at all. In fact, it's the perfect time to really lean into and redefine it,' said Burnight, author of the upcoming book 'Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half.' Don't stop growing Daily crossword puzzles or sudoku are a good way to engage your brain, but to stay cognitively sharp and increase the enjoyment of your older years it is important to do difficult things, Burnight said. 'New experiences activate neuro plasticity … that is our brain's ability to keep growing,' she said. 'If you do the same things you've always done, you're really not setting yourself up for continued growth.' One of Batsis' patients took up golf after he retired, but he also started playing a musical instrument guitar. It wasn't something he had ever done before, and he didn't consider himself musically inclined, but the activity opened up a whole new world for him, Batsis said. Now, the patient plays the guitar and also attends local concerts that he might not have otherwise, he added. Batsis recommends trying to find a hobby that will keep you physically active. The less you move, the weaker you get, and so he said that finding something that disrupts a sedentary pattern can be helpful in keeping more activities available to you as you get older. The key, however, is to find something you enjoy –– not to push yourself to activities you think you are supposed to do in your older age, Batsis said. If you never liked books, you probably won't be motivated to become a reader in retirement, he added. 'Individuals need to find something that is of interest to them, because the more interesting it is to them, the more they're going to be willing to kind of engage in that type of activity.' Batsis said. For caregivers, Burnight cautions against doing for your loved ones anything that they can do for themselves, which varies depending on their skill set or physical limitations. Doing challenging things is important and helpful, she said. Diversify your social portfolio About once a month, Parker meets with a group she calls 'the youngs' to play canasta, which she taught them. 'The youngs' are a group of women in their 60s whom she met through her daughter-in-law. Although they are much younger than her, Parker said she values having a diverse group of friends. That is especially true as she has outlived her husband and other close connections, she said. 'Like how we diversify our financial portfolio, socially we want to have friends of different ages, friends from your neighbourhood, as well as friends from the past,' she said. If you need connection with more people from your past, Burnight recommends using social media to reach out to people whom you might have lost touch with over the years. People are usually happy to hear from an old friend, she said. Even small interactions with a neighbour or at your coffee shop can often lead to more meaningful relationships, she said. Her most important piece of advice is to be the friend, Burnight said. Loneliness is dangerous to longevity, so investing in connection is important. 'You need to be the one to call to make a plan or to remember a birthday, or to sit by somebody's hospital bed or to drive them to their chemo,' she said. Finding joy and purpose While Parker has a lot of joy in her 90s, it hasn't come without a need to adapt, she said. She had to give up tennis years ago, which she misses, and now she has to use a walker to get around sometimes, she said. But those changes haven't prevented her from laughing with her family, spending time in her yard or even being in a local parade for the Fourth of July holiday, Parker said. 'We are always going to have changing circumstances, and growing older brings a lot of challenge,' Burnight said. 'Instead of just denying that or saying, 'Oh, my life can't be great now that I've had these things,' the ones who age well are the ones that adapt, meaning they're able to accept and even embrace change.' 'The way that you adapt largely is recognizing that it isn't wrong that you're going to have tough stuff. It's how you're going to respond to that tough stuff,' she said. Research has suggested that how you think about aging profoundly impacts how you actually age, she said. 'People who believe that aging is a time of continued growth live 7.5 years longer than those who think, 'Oh, I'm old. I'm going to retire and just go knit with the ladies,'' Burnight said. Unless, of course, you enjoy knitting or want to pick it up as a new hobby. Instead, she recommends turning your attention to all you have to give. Evidence also suggests that people who give report higher levels of joy, purpose and longevity, Burnight said. Sounds like a lot to do all at once? Don't worry. You can start small. Maybe it is delivering a lemon from your tree to a friend or offering to watch your neighbours' young children while they run errands, she said. Even creating art, planting a garden or giving someone who is sick a call is an act of giving that can give you purpose, Burnight said. 'Purpose is small and daily and a decision,' she said. 'It's saying, 'Okay, today, how am I going to use the fact that I'm alive and that I have things to give?'' By Madeline Holcombe, CNN
