Przewalski's Horse has started training.

Tama Zoo began training Przewalski's Horse 's horses to take blood samples without anesthesia in November 2025. Until now, blood samples have been taken under anesthesia, but there were concerns that accurate test results could not be obtained due to the strain on the animals and the effects of the anesthetic. If the animals can be trained to behave in a way that makes it easier for blood to be taken voluntarily, blood samples will be taken without anesthesia.

For safety reasons, people are generally not allowed to enter the same space as Przewalski's Horse 's horses. Therefore, blood sampling must be carried out behind a fence, but in order for the blood to be collected, Domestic Horse must remain in the same place and be willing to be inserted with the needle. To achieve this, we first began by using "target training" to guide Domestic Horse to the blood sampling location.

Target training is training an animal to touch an object (target) presented by a human. In this case, we are practicing touching the yellow part of the target stick with the tip of its nose. By repeatedly giving Przewalski's Horse 's horse a food reward when it touches the tip of its nose to the target stick, the horse will learn to approach the target.

The individual currently being trained is a male named Kvazi. Due to breeding restrictions, Kvazi usually lives alone, away from the females in the group, making him easier to train. Also, during the day he is in a place where people can easily see him working, so I thought he might be able to get used to unfamiliar things like training equipment.

Personally, my biggest concern was that the training equipment would make them wary. Przewalski's Horse 's horses are very cautious by nature, so once they become wary, it takes a long time for them to get used to it. So, I decided to place a target stick by the window to get them used to seeing it. Kvaji, the male, didn't seem to mind from the first day and continued to live his life as usual.

After letting him get used to the equipment for a few days, we began training him. We extended a stick a little from the window bars, and when his nose touched it, we offered him food. He was a little hesitant, but he ate it. After repeating this several times, the series of movements became smoother. Each training session lasted about five minutes. By stopping the training after a short time, we maintained his desire to eat more and do more.

It has been about a month since we started training. At first, he was a little wary when targets were presented from anywhere other than the window, but now he comes over smoothly even when presented from the enclosure.

Given the wariness of Przewalski's Horse 's horses, we thought training would be difficult, but Kvaji reacted calmer than expected and things are progressing smoothly. Our next goal is to get him to stay at the blood collection site. We will continue to experiment with training methods so that we will eventually be able to collect blood from all horses without anesthesia.

[Shioya, Tama Zoo]