The Sorraia horse
| Sorraia is the name of a river which is an affluent to the river Tagus and is the result of Sor and Raia rivers merge (Sor-Raia). In the valley of this river the Sorraia breed was discovered by Dr Ruy D'Andrade (1945) which has been found to be the primitive ancestor of the Iberian Saddle Horse (Andrade, 1954; Loch,1986; Cordeiro, 2002). The Sorraia horse resembles, with exception of his profile, the Tarpan horse which is the ancestor of the Indo-European domesticated horse (Loch,1986). In addition, rock engravings demonstrate that even before the last Ice age there was a horse extremely similar to the Sorraia horse in the Iberian peninsula. There is nowadays a very small number of Sorraia horses and studs dedicated to this breed. Therefore, there are, non beneficial, high levels of inbreeding in its population. |
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| The Sorraia horse (adapted from D'Andrade, 2004) |
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