The South Pole Ponies

Since sled dogs had ‘proved to be a disaster’ in the race to the South Pole, two of the early expeditions tried to pack across Antarctica with Mongolian ponies.

Mongolian ponies had apparently been used with some success in the Arctic. First Ernest Shackleton and then Robert Scott attempted expeditions using the ponies as pack animals. Unfortunately, both allowed the Mongolian herders to choose which ponies to sell to their expeditions – and several ponies in both groups were quite old and none had any training. (Perhaps the wily Mongolians were also anxious to get rid of some of the more troublesome beasts.)

The expeditions might have had better success if they had a Mongolian horseman or two with them; or indeed any horsemen since show more none of the men in either expedition were familiar with horses.

There was never a plan to return the ponies to the base camps. Both expeditions planned to take them as far as they could and shoot them. Very few ponies made it very far. Several had gruesome deaths along the way.

The men in charge of the ponies came to care about them, and did everything they could to keep the ponies as comfortable in their care as possible. However, there were such basic misunderstandings as what ponies could eat, and how hard it is for horses to travel through deep snow.

It’s an interesting footnote in history, but also a sad, cautionary tale of man’s disregard for animal life. The humans in the journeys signed up knowing they might well not make it back. The ponies (and later a group of mules) had no choice. show less