In this chapter of his story, Cloud is one of two fathers who bring up each other’s sons. Bolder is Cloud’s son by birth – beautiful and golden, but raised by Shaman, a rival band stallion. Flint, dark and determined, was sired by Shaman, but became Cloud’s adopted son. The two sons mature and progress from playful youths into valid contenders for mares and bands of their own. Will one of them rise to take Cloud’s place?

This poignant and engrossing chronicle explores the challenges presented not only by ambitious sons, but also by the harsh mountain weather, deadly mountain lion attacks, and the changing relationships within and between bands of wild horses in the mountains.

The film also touches upon the effect of the on-going efforts of the Bureau of Land Management (the BLM) to administer a program of population control, including infertility drugs and bait trapping, to remove animals from the mountains. It is yet another hurdle that Cloud and his family and the rest of the horses in the Arrowheads must overcome in the day-to-day efforts to survive in the wilderness.

Cloud: Challenge of the Stallions premieres Sunday, October 25 (check local listings).

You can follow the developments of Cloud’s family, along with updates about the BLM measures to control horse population at the Cloud Blog.

If you missed the first two installments, watch Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies and Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns online.

NATURE explores the fascinating partnership between animal and human in Horse and Rider.

“Bet Yer Blue Boons” is one of the most agile and intelligent cutting horses in the world, a true champion.

“Rio,” a spectacular polo pony, is a gifted athlete able to sprint at 30 miles per hour, then stop suddenly and turn on a dime.

“Chamont” has the natural talent and physique of a great dressage horse, but also at times a timorous personality that puts a question mark on his future success.

Each of these remarkable animals shares an astonishing trait: the ability to implicitly trust, and perform complex tasks in tandem with, a human partner working toward a common goal. This teaming of horse and rider is arguably the most sophisticated and intriguing example of human-animal cooperation. NATURE explores and illuminates this absorbing phenomenon in Horse and Rider.

To order a copy of Horse and Rider, visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Horse and Rider was originally posted October 2002.

NATURE presents the compelling story of a remarkable denizen of the West in Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies.

America’s wild horses lead an exhilarating but perilous existence. The climate can be brutal, mountain lions and other predators stalk the young, and their dependence on public grazing lands for sustenance often puts them in competition with livestock interests. In some places where these magnificent animals roam, it is not unusual for a wild horse to fall victim to an illegal horse shooter.

Against this backdrop, NATURE presents Cloud’s story. Filmed in the mountains of Montana, this poignant, engrossing chronicle focuses on an extraordinary stallion, whose life has been recorded since his birth in the wild in 1995 by Emmy-winning filmmaker Ginger Kathrens.

Get the latest news on Cloud and his band in Ginger Kathrens’s Cloud Blog.

To order a copy of Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies, visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies was originally posted November 2001.

In 1995, while filming wild horses in the mountains of Montana, Ginger Kathrens discovered a striking, almost pure white colt just hours after his birth. Kathrens named him Cloud. She feared that his distinctive coat would make him an obvious target for mountain lions; but he survived and Kathrens continued to follow him in his adventures. In Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies this wild horse developed from a bumbling, unsteady colt into an adventurous, defiant youth.

In Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns, Cloud is now a band stallion with a mare and her children, a yearling and a foal. Meanwhile, Cloud’s own child, which has a telltale golden coat, lives with another herd and will never know him as his father.

As the seasons pass, foals are born, brothers fight against one another for control of mates, and Cloud’s legacy grows. Threats come not only from rivals, but from government agencies struggling to manage both human and equine interests. Yet the biggest trial Cloud’s herd faces is yet to come: surviving an out-of-control wildfire that that threatens their lives and home.

Join these legendary wild horses on their adventures on NATURE’s Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns.

To order a copy of Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns, visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns was originally posted November 2003.

Julia Roberts lives among the nomads of Mongolia and discovers their special relationship with the wild horse.

Mongolia is home to the only true wild horses known to still exist. Julia Roberts, who shares a passion for horses with the Mongolian people, went there to sample life as a nomad on the steppes of central Asia and learn first hand why the wild horse has been an integral part of existence there for millennia.

Roberts spent several weeks with a nomadic family, living exactly as the family does — in a one-room transportable “ger,” with no bathroom, no running water, and no heat. Roberts is quickly absorbed into the daily routine of nomadic life. When she isn’t playing with the children, the family chats with her continually. Though they don’t understand each other’s language, messages get through with smiles and universal gestures.

Ms. Roberts’s rapport with her Mongolian hosts is fostered in part by two potent factors: her love of children, which is amply demonstrated in her interaction with the family, and her passion and skill with respect to horses. The horse plays many vital roles for the nomads of Mongolia — from the fermented mare’s milk that is a primary food staple, to transportation and to the races that are central to the nation’s culture and religious festivals.

Join Roberts in her discovery of the amazing trust that human and animal seem to share: “For these horses to just be allowed to roam around and they don’t take off and leave …is kind of amazing. Everywhere in America, you see animals and you also see fences. Here it’s really about the love and respect that man gives to the animal that they all stay together.”

Online content for Wild Horses of Mongolia with Julia Roberts was originally posted October 2000.

Who can resist the magnetic allure of a baby? The presence of little ones of any species invariably generates instant attention and concern from onlookers. In fact, it seems that both humans and animals are hard-wired to find youngsters adorable. The practical and essential reasons why the very young have an ability to play on our heart strings are explored in Baby Tales.

Baby Tales demonstrates how young animals learn and develop, and examines the role of “cuteness” in helping to forge and solidify bonds between mother and offspring. Many newborns in the animal kingdom are entirely dependent upon their mothers — and sometimes their fathers, as well — for survival. And, especially in the wild, nurturing and protecting the young can require enormous effort, courage, and self-sacrifice. The cuteness of offspring creates a strong visual bond that helps evoke a caring response in parents, which must spend months, if not years, feeding, protecting, and teaching their young to survive on their own.

To order a copy of Baby Tales, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Baby Tales was originally posted March 2001.

They gallop and trot, whinny and neigh, capturing our imagination — and our hearts. Indeed, horses are said to have done more to change human history than any other domestic animal, once upon a time carrying explorers to new frontiers and mighty armies to great conquests.

Though their glory days may be in the past, these hoofed creatures continue to enthrall us, as the NATURE program HORSES demonstrates in sparkling detail. From the steppes of Mongolia, where children race at breakneck speeds perched on stallions ten times their size, to the fields of Georgia, where people confined to wheelchairs find new freedom in the saddle, HORSES highlights the many roles played by this multi-talented beast of burden. There are also rare glimpses of the world’s most endangered horse, and an inside look at the art of the horse whisperers, the trainers who through their gentle touch can transform a wild bucking bronco into a stately show horse.

But the star of the show is the animal that scientists call Equus caballus, the modern horse species that includes everything from miniature Shetland ponies to massive draft horses able to pull astounding loads. The horse we know today, however, evolved from an ancestor that was quite different.

More than 50 million years ago, a small fox-sized animal crept through the forests of North America, browsing on fruit and leaves. Its arched-back body was only about a foot high at the shoulder, and a long tail and short-snouted head probably gave it a distinctly dog-like look. In fact, its feet sported pads like a dog’s, except each toe ended in a tiny hoof instead of a claw. Interestingly, in modern horses, one toe has become the hoof, and the others remain as vestigial bumps higher up the leg.

When fossil hunters first discovered the bones of this creature a century ago, they named it Eohippus — “the dawn horse” — and believed it was the first link in an evolutionary chain that led directly to today’s horse. Indeed, many museums and textbooks still have displays and pictures showing this neat, predictable progression, with horses gradually getting larger, shifting from many toes to modern hooves, and gaining longer teeth able to grind down tough prairie grasses.

These days, however, researchers have a far more complex picture of horse evolution — and they have given the dawn horse a much less colorful name. While they agree that today’s horse probably arose from that smaller ancestor, the path was by no means direct. Instead, paleontologists have uncovered fossils that show that horse ancestors varied in size: some large early horses gave way later to smaller ones. They also discovered that some lines of horse-like animals alternated between many and few toes over time. In addition, some proto-horses once thought to be direct forefathers of the modern animals were revealed to be distantly related cousins — just one dead-end branch on a bushy family tree.

One branch, however, kept growing. About a million years ago, it produced an array of small pony-sized animals that galloped across ancient plains around the world in large herds. They probably behaved much as today’s wild horses do, using their flowing tails as remarkably accurate fly swatters and signal flags, and snorting the air for the smell of enemies and the scent of food.

Less than 10,000 years ago, however, many of these horse-like species became extinct, along with other browsing animals such as mammoths. Climate changes and over-hunting by humans may have been to blame, but no one knows for sure. The only survivors were horses in Asia and several zebras. In North America, however, horses were wiped out.

So where did the modern horses come from, the ones that spawned America’s cowboy myth? Historians believe that Spanish explorers brought the animals with them on their voyages to the New World in the 1500s. Let loose upon the land, they soon reclaimed the prairies that had once been theirs alone, producing vast herds of wild horses.

Even today, as HORSES shows, tens of thousands of wild horses roam the American West. To prevent the herds from destroying their habitat, the U.S. government captures hundreds each year and puts them up for adoption. For some of the proud new owners, the chance to ride a wild-born horse is a dream come true — and the continuation of an age-old relationship that has made the horse one of our most revered and fascinating animal partners.

Online content for Horses was originally posted November 1999.