A captive przewalskii horse, locally known as Junggar or Mongolian wild horse, was killed by a vehicle in Xinjiang on September 8, the fourth death of the rare animal in a month, China News Agency reported.

The horse, a mature male and the leader of a herd of 11, was knocked down by a car when it galloped across the National Road 216 in Xinjiang. The lack of decelerating belts and special passes for horses was blamed.

Without the protection of the leader, the lives of the other 10 horses were now under danger, said Cao Jie, director of Xinjiang Wild Horse Breeding Research Center.

Sixty wild horses, in 6 heads, now inhabit in the Kalamely National Natural Reserve.

Dubbed as living fossil, Captive przewalskii horses are under the State-level protection. They went extinct in the 1970s in China and were introduced from abroad in the 1980s.