Horses have always been. There are domestic horses, without which a person can’t do anything at all, you need to plow and harvest, on holidays to ride with the breeze in the top three, but you never know what else. And there are wild horses, a free tribe, they live on their own, only steppe laws abide, they never eat their fill, that's why they are smart and light. Most wild horses are former domestic horses that fate has dealt cruelly. Either the horse lost its owner and became wild in the wild, or it itself was lost, got lost and then nailed to the herd of wild horses. There are still wild horses from birth, born outside of any selection, in nature. In any case, true mustangs are not much different from feral ones, and they both live, migrate, give offspring and are part of a horse fraternity on both sides of the Atlantic, on all continents and in all lands, except for the northern latitudes and frozen Antarctica.
A herd of wild horses can grow up to 80-100 animals if conditions are favorable. A river or a lake with fresh water is essential for increasing the population, and a food base in the form of natural pastures with thick grass is the key to a quiet life of the Mustangs. Sometimes wild horses join a herd that has formed long ago. After some difficulties, they are accepted. Each herd is divided into several schools of 20-30 horses each. The owner of the school is the leader, an adult horse, healthy and strong. Each horse has a herd of flair, she knows all her brothers in the school, the leader and a young tribe that needs an eye and an eye. Foals do not think about the need to stay close to their own, run away and roam in the distance, making the mare-mother worry.
Indeed, wild horses also have enemies: wolves and bears, a lynx and a leopard, who are just waiting for the suckling foal to beat off the herd and remain unprotected. Over the centuries of free life in the steppes and prairies, the Mustangs have learned to defend themselves. When attacking a pack of wolves, like
animals, horses feel danger and stray into a tight ring in such a way that their hind legs are outside the circle and predators cannot approach without the risk of being hit by a heavy hoof. Young growth along with mares is located inside the circle, and adult stallions hold a circular defense.
People usually don’t hunt mustangs, as they don’t have any value, prey is considered third-rate meat and is not in demand. Sometimes pastoralists catch mustangs to tame and domesticate. But wild horses cannot be nurtured by nature, they are very difficult to ride and almost impossible to travel around. If, among the mustangs, a horse runs wild, but previously lived in a master herd, then it is easier with him, since some reflexes of domestic life are preserved in the horse’s mind and he only needs to be reminded of the past. But wild horses, whose photos you see, sometimes run wild so much that they cannot be returned to their former lives and have to be released.
Horse breeding is so developed at present that it is easier to buy a circled domestic horse than to mess with a stubborn and wayward savage, trying to instill good manners in him. Therefore, few people want to tame the mustangs, except for
sports competitions in extreme equestrian sports, when daredevils argue for a long time trying to hold out on the back of an unbroken and barely saddled mustang. Such competitions, called rodeos, are popular in North America, they even have their own champions.