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I know nothing about horses, but I have always wondered how domesticated they are. It seems they are quite happy to live in the wild and require a fair bit of b

I know nothing about horses, but I have always wondered how domesticated they are. It seems they are quite happy to live in the wild and require a fair bit of breaking in. Compared to sheep, cattle and dogs, they seem more on the wild side of spectrum than other domestic animals.

cjbgkagh 2y ago
Breaking-in is the traditional approach. Horse whisperer style is more effective and takes better advantage of the horses domestic nature. It’s a spectrum, some cattle breeds are pretty wild. Dogs are special. One good measure of domestication would be to compare with zebras which are considered relatively untamable - as in unlike horses they’ll always maintain a violent streak. Ponies tend to be more violent than horses.
- suzzer99 2y ago
  Zebras have a tendency to bite the face and not let go. Definitely not ideal for domestication.
  - usrnm 2y ago
    And wolves are ideal?
    - fooker 2y ago
      Yes, wolves are pretty intelligent and social compared to zebras. They understood the core concept of ‘do not bite the hand that feeds you’ instinctively.
      - vintermann 2y ago
        Zebras understood the concept that "this guy can out-think you. If you behave predictably, you'll regret it. If you behave unpredictably, he may regret it too." There's this theory that's why there are so few domesticable animals in Africa: that they co-evolved with humans, and the ones who behaved predictably and weren't willing to randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at their own expense, were eaten by our ancestors.
        short_sells_poo 2y ago
        > the ones who behaved predictably and weren't willing to randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at their own expense, were eaten by our ancestors. This doesn't make sense to me. Sure, an an animal that is generally a belligerent asshole will discourage humans from trying to tame it, but why would it discourage hunting? If anything, it would encourage hunting the bad animal to extinction, no? Humans successfully hunted Mammoths and other large game even in the stone age, so I don't see how having a bad temper would help.
        vintermann 2y ago
        My guess is that while humans are great hunters, apes aren't, and that our distant ancestors would be a lot more dependent on prey behaving as expected and not, say, suddenly charge at you suicidally.
        fooker 2y ago
        Chimpanzees are decent hunters.
        ivanhoe 2y ago
        There's generally a lot more large wild animals in Africa than anywhere else in the world.
        oblio 2y ago
        That actually brings up an interesting topic: are they (still) there because human populations are comparatively lower? Africa has some very fertile regions but except for some like the Nile Valley most of them couldn't really compete well with the Yellow River Valley, the Ganges Valley, etc. Just for comparison, the population of Africa around 1900 was around 100 million, out of which Egypt had 10 million, Ethiopia 10 million, Nigeria 30 million, and 1-2 other population centers around 10 million each. So 70 out 100 million people were bunched up in maybe 5% of the territory. In the meantime, just India had about 300 million people in 1900 :-) India within from 1500 to 1900 probably had more humans living in it than Africa from the beginning of mankind to 1900.
    - wheels 2y ago
      This isn't dead reckoning: there have been multiple attempts to domesticate zebras and dogs, and it's worked twice with dogs and zero times with zebras, thus, yes, one can say that wolves are approximately ideal. It just turns out that what we think of as necessary qualities are potentially wrong. There have been lots of attempts to domesticate zebras because they're so similar to horses and donkeys.
      - suzzer99 2y ago
        I wonder if it could be something like horses being willing to trade their freedom for hay in the harsh winter, whereas zebras can just hang out on the grasslands year round.
    - dtech 2y ago
      Wolves are much more social than zebras, which is advantageous in domestication. Zebras live in herds but it's much more free for all than a wolf pack.
    - ivanhoe 2y ago
      Wolves are more aggressive than dogs, but can be successfully domesticated and kept as pets... can actually be quite friendly with humans, especially female wolfs as they're a lot less competitive/aggressive than males.
    - jklinger410 2y ago
      There is more than one breed of dog/wolf (just like there are horses). And I think the evidence is pretty clear that, yes, they are ideal. Weird comment.
- fl7305 2y ago
  On that note, 17th century Sweden can report that moose make for very poor cavalry steeds.
shswkna 2y ago
As a counter argument, every mammal born outside of a domesticated setting/structure is quite wild. Horses may seem wild because they are fast movers. Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated; they are just not fast by nature. Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day.
- throwup238 2y ago
  > Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated; they are just not fast by nature. What does that mean? Do you mean feral animals? Non-domesticated cows went extinct hundreds of years ago [1] > Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day. What evidence? What is a non-domesticated human? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#Extinction
  - Cyphase 2y ago
    > What evidence? What is a non-domesticated human? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
    - throwup238 2y ago
      > The term is used to refer to children who have suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away.
      - Cyphase 2y ago
        For completeness, this is the beginning of the article: > A feral child (also called wild child) is a young individual who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, with little or no experience of human care, social behavior, or language. Such children lack the basics of primary and secondary socialization. The term is used to refer to children who have suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away. My impression was that it could be written as, "The term is _also_ used to refer to ...", but I'm not sure.
somenameforme 2y ago
Domestication is pretty poorly defined, but IMO it's more about a capacity rather than necessity. A domesticated dog isn't just instantly domesticated and raised outside of humans would still be wild and quite dangerous, but with training and the right environment can be just another family member. By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be, no matter how you treat them. This is why you'll still have things like a cat just randomly attack you in weird circumstances and ways, but because they're tiny and relatively harmless it just makes them hilarious and weird. But it's also why people who miss out on this final nuance, and pick up lynx and similar animals as pets, often end up in the hospital.
- epilys 2y ago
  You are mixing up two concepts here, that of the domesticated species and the domesticated individual animal. The article talks about the former. The latter means taming an individual of a species. Dogs are by definition domesticated wolves and depend on humans for survival in general.
  - aorloff 2y ago
    Plenty of dogs live wild mostly off the waste stream of humans, but they are not domesticated. Lets call them coyotes.
    - colechristensen 2y ago
      Let’s not. A feral dog is behaviorally very different than a coyote or a wolf. A wolf pup raised by humans won’t be anything like a tame dog. People whose animal experiences are limited to pets and zoos have many wrong ideas about how real wild animals are.
      - jajko 2y ago
        What about dingoes? The best guess is they were domesticated and then went feral some 5-8k years ago. These days, in places like Fraser island in Australia, you have big fences for campers to not get eaten by packs of those and you need to drive everywhere, they would not hesitate for a second if given a chance.
082349872349872 2y ago
If you ever wrangle camels (or, for that matter, even shetties!) you may start to appreciate how domesticated horses are.
dr_dshiv 2y ago
You can tell by their pointed ears. Further domestication might make their ears floppy. Here’s a nice article about the biological basis of domestication: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/
markb139 2y ago
I know very little about horses, but find myself surrounded by them thanks to my wife’s interests. We have a horse who is quiet natured and well behaved. But, the fight or flight instinct wakes up very quickly and he’s 600kg.
ETH_start 2y ago
I'm not very educated on the topic, but my understanding is that many domesticated animals possessed traits in their natural state that lent to living in a domesticated setting, like having a natural herding instinct. The animals that didn't have said traits were simply never integrated into human agriculture, and thus never came to be considered "domesticated". But that doesn't address your point about horses seeming to be happy to live in the wild, which would indicate that horses have seen less change from their pre-domestication state than other domestic animals have. Maybe their role in human societies, as transportation and draft animals, didn't require them to lose as many of the traits of their wild ancestors, as other domestic animals did?
ivanhoe 2y ago
Well no one ever organized a horse fights, but bull fights were quite popular through-out the Europe. And even goats are far from friendly, unless they're accustomed to having a lot of people around. Pretty much any farm animal that's used to being handled by one or two people max, will be very shy and sometimes aggressive (especially when they have babies) about any new face. Smaller animals reaction will be to run away form you, but large ones will stand and fight. And when a cow lowers its head to show you the horns, it can get pretty tense, believe me :)
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  Your comment made me wonder if anyone did actually organize a horse fight, and it turns out that the answer is yes - in Iceland during the Viking Age[1]. Thankfully, people seem to have found more wholesome activities to do with their horses now, including teaching them to type[2]. [1]: https://www.medievalists.net/2016/08/horse-fights-the-brutal-entertainment-of-the-icelanders-in-the-middle-ages/ https://www.medievalists.net/2016/08/horse-fights-the-brutal... [2]: https://www.visiticeland.com/outhorse-your-email/ https://www.visiticeland.com/outhorse-your-email/
  - ivanhoe 2y ago
    Thank you for this, had no idea :)

cjbgkagh 2y ago

Breaking-in is the traditional approach. Horse whisperer style is more effective and takes better advantage of the horses domestic nature. It’s a spectrum, some cattle breeds are pretty wild. Dogs are special. One good measure of domestication would be to compare with zebras which are considered relatively untamable - as in unlike horses they’ll always maintain a violent streak. Ponies tend to be more violent than horses.

suzzer99 2y ago
Zebras have a tendency to bite the face and not let go. Definitely not ideal for domestication.
- usrnm 2y ago
  And wolves are ideal?
  - fooker 2y ago
    Yes, wolves are pretty intelligent and social compared to zebras. They understood the core concept of ‘do not bite the hand that feeds you’ instinctively.
    - vintermann 2y ago
      Zebras understood the concept that "this guy can out-think you. If you behave predictably, you'll regret it. If you behave unpredictably, he may regret it too." There's this theory that's why there are so few domesticable animals in Africa: that they co-evolved with humans, and the ones who behaved predictably and weren't willing to randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at their own expense, were eaten by our ancestors.
      - short_sells_poo 2y ago
        > the ones who behaved predictably and weren't willing to randomly hurt you for no apparent reason at their own expense, were eaten by our ancestors. This doesn't make sense to me. Sure, an an animal that is generally a belligerent asshole will discourage humans from trying to tame it, but why would it discourage hunting? If anything, it would encourage hunting the bad animal to extinction, no? Humans successfully hunted Mammoths and other large game even in the stone age, so I don't see how having a bad temper would help.
        vintermann 2y ago
        My guess is that while humans are great hunters, apes aren't, and that our distant ancestors would be a lot more dependent on prey behaving as expected and not, say, suddenly charge at you suicidally.
        fooker 2y ago
        Chimpanzees are decent hunters.
      - ivanhoe 2y ago
        There's generally a lot more large wild animals in Africa than anywhere else in the world.
        oblio 2y ago
        That actually brings up an interesting topic: are they (still) there because human populations are comparatively lower? Africa has some very fertile regions but except for some like the Nile Valley most of them couldn't really compete well with the Yellow River Valley, the Ganges Valley, etc. Just for comparison, the population of Africa around 1900 was around 100 million, out of which Egypt had 10 million, Ethiopia 10 million, Nigeria 30 million, and 1-2 other population centers around 10 million each. So 70 out 100 million people were bunched up in maybe 5% of the territory. In the meantime, just India had about 300 million people in 1900 :-) India within from 1500 to 1900 probably had more humans living in it than Africa from the beginning of mankind to 1900.
  - wheels 2y ago
    This isn't dead reckoning: there have been multiple attempts to domesticate zebras and dogs, and it's worked twice with dogs and zero times with zebras, thus, yes, one can say that wolves are approximately ideal. It just turns out that what we think of as necessary qualities are potentially wrong. There have been lots of attempts to domesticate zebras because they're so similar to horses and donkeys.
    - suzzer99 2y ago
      I wonder if it could be something like horses being willing to trade their freedom for hay in the harsh winter, whereas zebras can just hang out on the grasslands year round.
  - dtech 2y ago
    Wolves are much more social than zebras, which is advantageous in domestication. Zebras live in herds but it's much more free for all than a wolf pack.
  - ivanhoe 2y ago
    Wolves are more aggressive than dogs, but can be successfully domesticated and kept as pets... can actually be quite friendly with humans, especially female wolfs as they're a lot less competitive/aggressive than males.
  - jklinger410 2y ago
    There is more than one breed of dog/wolf (just like there are horses). And I think the evidence is pretty clear that, yes, they are ideal. Weird comment.
fl7305 2y ago
On that note, 17th century Sweden can report that moose make for very poor cavalry steeds.

shswkna 2y ago

As a counter argument, every mammal born outside of a domesticated setting/structure is quite wild. Horses may seem wild because they are fast movers. Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated; they are just not fast by nature. Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day.

throwup238 2y ago
> Sheep and Cows will also act wild if not domesticated; they are just not fast by nature. What does that mean? Do you mean feral animals? Non-domesticated cows went extinct hundreds of years ago [1] > Even humans can be on the extreme wild spectrum if not domesticated. There is plenty of evidence even to this day. What evidence? What is a non-domesticated human? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#Extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#Extinction
- Cyphase 2y ago
  > What evidence? What is a non-domesticated human? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
  - throwup238 2y ago
    > The term is used to refer to children who have suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away.
    - Cyphase 2y ago
      For completeness, this is the beginning of the article: > A feral child (also called wild child) is a young individual who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, with little or no experience of human care, social behavior, or language. Such children lack the basics of primary and secondary socialization. The term is used to refer to children who have suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away. My impression was that it could be written as, "The term is _also_ used to refer to ...", but I'm not sure.

somenameforme 2y ago

Domestication is pretty poorly defined, but IMO it's more about a capacity rather than necessity. A domesticated dog isn't just instantly domesticated and raised outside of humans would still be wild and quite dangerous, but with training and the right environment can be just another family member. By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be, no matter how you treat them. This is why you'll still have things like a cat just randomly attack you in weird circumstances and ways, but because they're tiny and relatively harmless it just makes them hilarious and weird. But it's also why people who miss out on this final nuance, and pick up lynx and similar animals as pets, often end up in the hospital.

epilys 2y ago
You are mixing up two concepts here, that of the domesticated species and the domesticated individual animal. The article talks about the former. The latter means taming an individual of a species. Dogs are by definition domesticated wolves and depend on humans for survival in general.
- aorloff 2y ago
  Plenty of dogs live wild mostly off the waste stream of humans, but they are not domesticated. Lets call them coyotes.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    Let’s not. A feral dog is behaviorally very different than a coyote or a wolf. A wolf pup raised by humans won’t be anything like a tame dog. People whose animal experiences are limited to pets and zoos have many wrong ideas about how real wild animals are.
    - jajko 2y ago
      What about dingoes? The best guess is they were domesticated and then went feral some 5-8k years ago. These days, in places like Fraser island in Australia, you have big fences for campers to not get eaten by packs of those and you need to drive everywhere, they would not hesitate for a second if given a chance.

082349872349872 2y ago

If you ever wrangle camels (or, for that matter, even shetties!) you may start to appreciate how domesticated horses are.

dr_dshiv 2y ago

You can tell by their pointed ears. Further domestication might make their ears floppy. Here’s a nice article about the biological basis of domestication: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/

markb139 2y ago

I know very little about horses, but find myself surrounded by them thanks to my wife’s interests. We have a horse who is quiet natured and well behaved. But, the fight or flight instinct wakes up very quickly and he’s 600kg.

ETH_start 2y ago

I'm not very educated on the topic, but my understanding is that many domesticated animals possessed traits in their natural state that lent to living in a domesticated setting, like having a natural herding instinct. The animals that didn't have said traits were simply never integrated into human agriculture, and thus never came to be considered "domesticated". But that doesn't address your point about horses seeming to be happy to live in the wild, which would indicate that horses have seen less change from their pre-domestication state than other domestic animals have. Maybe their role in human societies, as transportation and draft animals, didn't require them to lose as many of the traits of their wild ancestors, as other domestic animals did?

ivanhoe 2y ago

Well no one ever organized a horse fights, but bull fights were quite popular through-out the Europe. And even goats are far from friendly, unless they're accustomed to having a lot of people around. Pretty much any farm animal that's used to being handled by one or two people max, will be very shy and sometimes aggressive (especially when they have babies) about any new face. Smaller animals reaction will be to run away form you, but large ones will stand and fight. And when a cow lowers its head to show you the horns, it can get pretty tense, believe me :)

seabass-labrax 2y ago
Your comment made me wonder if anyone did actually organize a horse fight, and it turns out that the answer is yes - in Iceland during the Viking Age[1]. Thankfully, people seem to have found more wholesome activities to do with their horses now, including teaching them to type[2]. [1]: https://www.medievalists.net/2016/08/horse-fights-the-brutal-entertainment-of-the-icelanders-in-the-middle-ages/ https://www.medievalists.net/2016/08/horse-fights-the-brutal... [2]: https://www.visiticeland.com/outhorse-your-email/ https://www.visiticeland.com/outhorse-your-email/
- ivanhoe 2y ago
  Thank you for this, had no idea :)