I think convenience trumps a lot of things. Look how quickly we switched from horses to cars. Horses are living animals which people probably had emotional bon

I think convenience trumps a lot of things. Look how quickly we switched from horses to cars. Horses are living animals which people probably had emotional bonds with in an owner-pet like way. Plus a lot of people, even to this day, love to ride horses. There was a huge infrastructure and layers of jobs to support that lifestyle, between horse-breeders, knackers, horse feed, etc. But once cars became practicable and affordable, they replaced horses in the time of a generation.