SAN DIEGO - A rare wild horse that was cloned is learning his "wild horse language" after being paired with another female of the same species and recently made his debut to visitors at the San Diego Zoo.The rare, endangered Przewalski’s horse, named Kurt, was created from cells taken from a stallion that had sat frozen at the San Diego Zoo for 40 years before the cells were fused with an egg from a domestic horse.
As part of the cloning process, scientists then removed the nucleus from the egg cell — ensuring Kurt would be basically all Przewalski’s horse.
The cells were implanted in a surrogate mother, a domestic quarter horse, who birthed Kurt in August 2020. The result was the world’s first cloned Przewalski’s horse, zoo officials said.Kurt, the world’s first cloned Prezwalski horse in a field habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Photo was taken on Sept. 15, 2022. (Credit: Ken Bohn, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance) The Przewalski’s horse was formerly extinct in the wild and has survived for the past 40 years almost entirely in zoos around the world.