What free living horses can teach us about their domestic cousins

"There's a lot of fiction written about wild horses" says ethologist Lucy Rees. By that, she means that many books and even scientific studies describe horse behaviour in terms of "dominance hierarchies" - something which has never been observed in horses living under truly natural conditions, but which nevertheless form the basis of many schools of horsemanship... even ones purporting to be "natural".

In this series, we meet the Pottoka ponies of the Gredos mountains in Northern Extremadura in Spain. The ponies lead a natural life in over 1000 hectares. The purpose of the project is to study natural horse behaviour and also to keep the mountains clear of shrubs which can start forest fires.