This wild horse fight has extremely high stakes.
Many people forget there are still populations of wild horses running around many parts of the western United States. If you ever get the chance to see them in the wild, they are a majestic sight to behold. It is easy to forget how wild and untamed these animals are since we are so used to the domestic variety.
In the wild, these animals form herds usually ruled over by one stallion. When another male wants to challenge the dominant male, another side of horses emerges. The side that is vicious and willing to fight.
In this amazing footage, a BBC Earth documentary film crew caught up with a herd of horses in the Nevada desert during the dry season. One male horse leads his group of females to one of the few water sources left in the area. He has no choice but to challenge the dominant male of another group to battle for the water and breeding rights to the other horse's females.
This is a side of horses that we rarely get to see these days. It is easy to forget mustangs are animals that humans domesticated many thousands of years ago. The ones seen here in this video are still wild animals and they live a life-or-death existence every single day in the wild. In this case, the dry weather forced the black stallion to fight.
One thing is for sure, those kicks and bites looked ferocious. These horses can do a ton of damage to one another if any of those kicks manage to land. Fortunately for the black stallion, he was just a little bit quicker and faster than his rival.
In a way, that horse had absolutely nothing to lose in this high-stakes fight. Perhaps that is why he more easily came out on top as the victor.
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