Who was the man Przewalski's horse breed is named after?
On April 12, 1839, in Smolensk Province, the Russian Empire, Nikolai Przhevalsky, the future great naturalist, was born. We recall his main merits.
Przewalski’s horse breed is just one of the many species of animals that today bear the name of Nikolai Przhevalsky. There’s also a gazelle antelope, a steppe lemming, a nuthatch bird, a gecko, butterflies and some of the most incredible plants. There are also capes, glaciers, mountain peaks and entire cities named after him. How did this happen?
Przhevalsky was a geographer and such a passionate traveler that after returning from a long expedition, full of hardships, immediately began to plan the next one. He could not sit still for a day, consciously did not marry and had no children.
V. Klasen. Nikolai Przhevalsky, 1888
He spent a total of more than nine years in expeditions across Central Asia and Russia’s Far East. He thoroughly studied its nature, making many scientific discoveries. In addition to dozens of animals and plants named in his honor, among the discoveries of the scientist was a wild camel and many unknown species of birds and mammals.
During his final expedition in 1888, Przhevalsky drank river water, came down with typhoid fever and soon died of the disease. He was buried on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, near the town of Karakol (now in Kyrgyzstan), which the emperor himself soon allowed to be renamed to Przhevalsk.
