Texas Company Clones Endangered Wild Horse With 40-Year-Old DNA

A foal named Kurt may help save a species of critically endangered wild horses.

Kurt was born in August at a veterinarian hospital near Amarillo, but was cloned by a company in Cedar Park. That's because the newborn is a Przewalski’s horse, a breed that nearly went extinct in the 1990s.

The foal was cloned from DNA that's been frozen and stored at the San Diego Zoo Global Frozen Zoo since 1980. The Frozen Zoo preserves the DNA and other cells of various animal species from around the world.

Once Kurt gets old enough, he'll be moved the the San Diego Zoo, where a herd of Przewalski’s horses live. The goal is for Kurt to naturally breed with that herd.

"We hope that his son’s daughters, grandsons, etc. end up being distributed throughout other zoos, spreading his genetics and eventually get returned to the wild in Mongolia and China to join those herds and help bring those genetics to those herds as well,” Revive & Restore Lead Scientist Ben Novak told KAMR.

Przewalski’s horses are short and stocky with thick coats to help them survive the harsh winters and winds in Mongolia, Kazakstan, and China. Kurt is already showing qualities associated with the wild horse breed.

“He’s a bit of a bonehead. He’s head butting. He’s nipping. He’s really rambunctious, and that is exactly what we want out of Przewalski’s horse. We want him to be wild," said Novak.

Photo: Getty Images