The Yonaguni or is a criticallyendangered Japanese breed of small

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...

. It is native to

Yonaguni Island , one of the Yaeyama Islands, is the westernmost inhabited island of Japan, lying from the east coast of Taiwan, between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean proper. The island is administered as the town of Yonaguni, Yaeyama Gun, Okinawa ...

, in the

Yaeyama Islands The Yaeyama Islands (八重山列島 ''Yaeyama-rettō'', also 八重山諸島 ''Yaeyama-shotō'', Yaeyama: ''Yaima'', Yonaguni: ''Daama'', Okinawan: ''Yeema'', Northern Ryukyuan: ''Yapema'') are an archipelago in the southwest of Okinawa P ...

in south-western Japan, close to Taiwan. It is one of eight horse breeds native to Japan.

History

In 1968 there were 210 Yonaguni horses. By the early 1980s, the number had fallen to little more than fifty. Numbers subsequently recovered slightly; 85 head were recorded in 2008. The

conservation status The conservation status of a group of organisms (for instance, a species) indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. Many factors are taken into account when assessing conservatio ...

of the breed was listed as "critical" by the

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...

in 2007. In 2003,

genetic analysis Genetic analysis is the overall process of studying and researching in fields of science that involve genetics and molecular biology. There are a number of applications that are developed from this research, and these are also considered parts of ...

using microsatellite data found the Yonaguni to be most closely related to the Miyako and

Tokara The is an archipelago in the Nansei Islands, and are part of the Satsunan Islands, which is in turn part of the Ryukyu Archipelago. The chain consists of twelve small islands located between Yakushima and Amami-Oshima. The islands have a tota ...

smallisland breeds, and less closely related to various Mongolian horse breeds than were the

Dosanko The , also known as the and , is one of the eight extant indigenous horse breeds of Japan, and the only one of the eight not critically endangered. It originated on the island of Hokkaido, in the far north of the country, and is found partic ...

and Kiso breeds of the main islands of Japan.

Characteristics

Like the other Japanese island breeds, the Yonaguni is small. Average height at the

withers The withers is the ridge between the shoulder blades of an animal, typically a quadruped. In many species, it is the tallest point of the body. In horses and dogs, it is the standard place to measure the animal's height. In contrast, cattle a ...

is .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yonaguni (Horse) Horse breeds Horse breeds originating in Japan