Mysterious Extinct Japanese Cow-Horse
"Wushi-uma" taken from Wikimedia, from 1934.
I'm currently reading Year of the Wild Boar, a memoir by Helen Mears about her time spent in Japan in the mid-1930s. Without context or explanation, she quotes several accounts of an isolated, unique horse breed called the "Ushi-uma". It lived only on Tanegashima Island and was said to closely resemble a cow (ushi-uma means "cow horse"), primarily for having no mane or hair on its tail. According to Wikipedia, the breed was extinct by 1950.
Ushi-uma netsuke taken from zacke.at.
Has anyone ever heard of this beast? Is this a hoax? It doesn't look inordinately cowlike to me -- it has the heavy forehand and less developed hindquarters you see in Przewalski's horses. But the hair thing is weird. Does anyone on horseblr have ideas about the mane and tail?
Apparently it had government protection but was still extinct within a matter of decades. I wonder if WW2 played a part.