On a wind-scoured island off Nova Scotia, closely related feral horses turned out to share more similar gut bacteria than chance allows — and this heritable microbiome is tied to survival and shaped more by company than by bloodline, the first time that combination has been shown in a wild animal.
On Sable Island, a thin crescent of windswept sand about 300 kilometers off the coast of Nova Scotia, several hundred wild horses live without predators, without veterinary care and without any human control over who breeds with whom. Researchers at the University of Calgary, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Exeter have spent … Read more
