Was the Spotted Horse an Imaginary Creature?

Was the Spotted Horse an Imaginary Creature? - ScienceNOW
By Michael Balter. About 25,000 years ago, humans began painting a curious creature on the walls of European caves. Among the rhinos, wild cattle, and other animals, they sketched a white horse with black spots. Although such horses are popular breeds today, scientists didn't think they existed before humans domesticated the species about 5000 years ago. Now, a new study of prehistoric horse DNA concludes that spotted horses did indeed roam ancient Europe, suggesting that early artists may have been reproducing what they saw rather than creating imaginary creatures.

Archeologists have found more than 100 painted caves depicting at least 4000 animals in Europe, nearly all of them concentrated in southern France and northern Spain. They include France's Chauvet Cave, dated to at least 32,000 years ago and featuring the earliest known cave art, as well as the roughly 15,000-year-old caves of Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. Nearly a third of the animals in painted caves are horses; and nearly all of the horses are rendered in brown or black, similar to the bay or black colors of today's horses...

Link 2: Cave painters painted spotted horses as they saw them.
I am innately skeptical of "symbolism" when it comes to most ancient art (see e.g., the destruction of the "mother goddess" theory). So, an article that shows that ancient artists painted horses as they saw them, and did not put dots on them for some strange symbolic reason, is very welcome...