Dwarka

Dwarka Goes To The Zoo

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In an earlier thread on Dwarka, Astrid Moegling shared the following photo print of a horse that was captioned as being of Dwarka, located on the Meisterdrucke Fine Art Prints website:

Arab stallion Dwarka with Pony Moore, a horse van driver, London Zoo, 1921 (bw photo) by Frederick William Bond

Arab stallion Dwarka with Pony Moore, a horse van driver, London Zoo, 1921 (bw photo)

Astrid asked the additional question of: “And is it really Dwarka? I thought only one of his hind feet was white? On the other hand, the head seems to be the same (including the makeshift halter etc) as in the headshot above. Probably taken at the same shooting.“

I think it is him! The rope halter is definitely similar, and the star matches other headshots of Dwarka where his marking is visible. There are precious few photos of Dwarka in full, and some of them are very poor in quality, but we can compare with a few of them to determine that, yes, Dwarka does, in fact, have two white hind socks, both visible from the near side, but with the partial sock on the off-side hind only extending slightly around the front to to be visible from the off side.

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A postmortem look at Dwarka

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** Note: this post contains a picture of a dead horse’s partially dissected skull. **

Ginnie Pope sent me this scan of an article related to Dwarka, published May 16th, 1923 — two years after Dwarka had passed away — within The Illustrated London News. The article, “A Problem For Horsemen: The “Blind” Nostril” was by W. P. Pycraft, Author of “The Infancy of Animals,” “The Courtship of Aimals,” etc. etc. This was in fact William Plane Pycraft, an Englishman and a zoologist that wrote extensively on natural history while involved with the British Natural History Museum. The article includes a photo of Dwarka from his very last days, as well as a postmortem shot of his skull which is used to compare against reconstructions of earlier protohorses. It also discusses the evolution of the horse and its functional anatomy. Gruesome as it might be, it’s cool to find out that another of our desert horses played a role in the advancement of scientific education.

Photo under cut, but if it’s too small for you to read the font, you can access it via dropbox by clicking this link.

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Photo: Dwarka from V. Pope’s book

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This is a photo of Dwarka, published on page 55 in the book Hooves in the Heather by Virginia Pope, granddaughter of Arthur Hurn, who managed the Tor Royal Stud during the time that Dwarka stood at stud. This image was apparently taken after he landed in from Arabia in 1897, meaning it very well could … Read more

Dwarka’s bridle

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The following photos have been shared with me (and with permission to share) by Virginia Pope, the granddaughter of Arthur Hurn. Among other things, Arthur Hurn was the stud manager for HRH the Prince of Wales (Prince Edward)’s Tor Royal Stud in Dartmoor from the years 1918-1931, meaning he was present when the stallion *Aldebar … Read more

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