Wait what’s the deal with the horses? I want to feel good about myself today.
Edit: Wow, those bastards have it rough.
The term healthy as a horse is mostly survivorship bias
The term healthy as a horse is mostly survivorship bias
From what i read here there’s no unhealthy horse, it’s either healthy or dead.
“So, Timmy, do you want to be healthy as a horse?”
Their genetics have sacrificed nearly every aspect of basic resiliency for maximum speed on the plains. Most of the work caring for horses is keeping them from accidentally killing themselves. Full disclosure: I worked as a stable hand as a child in exchange for riding lessons. Will never ever own a horse.
I did this too and will also never own a horse lmao. This is why horse people are weird.
Same here haha
*one reason
Some people love caring for fragile things. Boosts their self-esteem. It can also break them when they fail.
What preditor was so fast horses had to evolve to that extent??
Us. They basically tried to beat pursuit predation by outrunning the distance humans will be willing to track over.
It did not work, they went extinct in North America because of how much it did not work.
Large predatory flightless birds probably didn’t help either.
Ah, sweet home Caelid
“What are those? I know predatory and flightless birds, but both?”
I have looked it up before posting, I learned something new today.
They are known as terror birds. Think of a ten foot tall ostrich with a flesh tearing beak like an eagle.
Human. Not for food, but because they always choose to breed on the Porcshe over the Toyota Hilux for racing.
The wording here makes it sound like we hunted horses for the specific purpose of having sex on them, and honestly, I’d probably be running as fast as a car if that kept happening to me too!
Big cat. You’re aware of the cheetah? Just picture that but not in Africa
You know what really caught me up: where are horses native to?
PBS Eons has a couple good videos on both horse evolution and domestication.
It’s just a damn good series in general as well
There are wild horses on the Mongolian steppes.
All other horses are domesticated. Even the free horses in USA and Australia are descendants of domesticated horses.
You’re right! But also, horses were native to North America but they went extinct 10,000 years ago and weren’t introduced until much more recently.
Don’t tell that to a Mormon
Equus simplicidens lived around 4 million years ago in North America, relying on speed, stamina, and herd behavior for protection from predators like early wolves and big cats. Their survival, much like modern equids, depended on strong social structures and collective awareness. Over time, this lineage spread to other continents via land bridges before becoming extinct in North America. evolved into the distinct species of horses, zebras, and donkeys and where reintroduced into the American continent by humans
-chatgpt + edits
ChatGPT? Then everyone should assume this is horse shit until verified.
Equus simplicidens, also known as the Hagerman horse, lived around 4 million years ago in North America and is considered an ancestor of modern horses, zebras, and donkeys[3][5]. These animals relied on speed, stamina, and herd behavior for protection against predators such as early wolves and big cats[3]. Their survival was supported by strong social structures and collective awareness[3]. Over time, Equus species migrated to other continents via land bridges[4]. They eventually went extinct in North America around 10,000 years ago during the Pleistocene extinction event[1][2][4]. Horses were later reintroduced to the continent by humans in the late 15th century[4].
Citations: [1] POST-PLEISTOCENE HORSES (EQUUS) FROM MÉXICO https://meridian.allenpress.com/tjs/article/74/1/Article 5/487323/POST-PLEISTOCENE-HORSES-EQUUS-FROM-MEXICO [2] Horses in North America: A Comeback Story | Blog | Nature - PBS https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/american-horses-horses-in-north-america-a-comeback-story/ [3] The Hagerman Horse (Equus simplicidens) - National Park Service https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/equus_simplicidens.htm [4] Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife https://awionline.org/content/wild-horses-native-north-american-wildlife [5] Park Archives: Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument https://npshistory.com/publications/hafo/index.htm [6] American Zebra (Equus simplicidens) - iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/317782-Equus-simplicidens [7] Hagerman Horse - Start Packing Idaho https://www.startpackingidaho.com/blog/hagerman-horse/
My teachers used to say the same about Wikipedia.
I did edit heavily, this is 3 outputs combined including a fact check this using Wikipedia
It does not fail on such basic questions, “fact check this:” in a new instance works more reliably then asking a human.
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Saber toothed tigers and shit
Saber toothed shit is a serious reason
the mongols
Same for rabbits. The are basically as much lean muscle that can fit on the lighest possible skeleton.
If you pick up a rabbit wrong, they can snap their own back with the momentum from kicking their back legs.
Basically a 900LB Cocker Spaniel that’s afraid of it’s own farts and will eventually kill every single tree within reach. I also will never own horses.
i mean if i haven’t kept the best diet for a couple days i’m afraid of my own farts too
Sometimes they will die because they can’t puke. Also broken legs are usually fatal even with vet care.
To add on why broken legs are fatal: its because horses are so big, that even with a sling, they cannot support themselves well on 3 legs. And lying down is also not an option as their own weight will crush their internal organs if they stay down for too long.
Also, don’t they need to run to move food through their digestive tract? Or to force themselves to cough if they have something stuck in their lungs? I think there is some sort of dependency of basic functions that relies on the movement of their lungs/stomach going back and forth while running that they can’t easily do if they just stand in one place all day
Oh, wow, I had always thought that shooting a horse with a broken leg was an act of brutal expedience, not mercy.
It’s sad, but it’s common medical practice in modern horse hospitals:
Also their blood gets pumped through their hooves, and to much weight on one hoof can impede blood flow through their body.
I thought horses not being able to lie down for long was just competition horses! It’s all of them?
It’s not just horses, all large mammals have this problem from lying down too long. Horses can and do lie down every day, but for short periods of time. It’s the extended lying down from illness or injury that kills them.
do humans count as large mammals? pretty sure we have at least very similar problems if we lie down for ages, hence why people who are bed bound have to be moved around regularly.
You mean bedsores, yeah its a pretty similar cause. The difference is that bedsores only cause damage to the skin from lack of blood flow caused by the extended pressure from lying down. While in horses, the extended pressure from lying down leads to poor blood flow in not just the skin, but the muscles and organs nearby too.
And yes, you can turn horses over too, but it takes multiple people and is really dangerous to everyone involved, so its not an action to be taken lightly.
They only have 4 toes total.
Humans have multiple toes because our ape ancestors used their toes like fingers. Having multiple, separate toes is probably bad for survival unless you’re using toes to manipulate tools.
Animals that have distinct toes include apes, geckos, mice, raccoons and similar animals which need them to grip onto surfaces or to manipulate things. There are predators which have separate toes because they’re a place to mount claws: eagles, cats, etc. There are animals that have separate toes with webbing between for swimming. But, for a lot of animals, separate toes aren’t really useful, so they’ve evolved away: elephants, rhinos, giraffes, horses, cows, etc.
Yeah, but at least most of those still have multiple toes to spread the weight around. Horses decided to get rid of that completely.
Spreading the weight around using toes doesn’t seem to be a useful strategy. It’s also not something that humans do. Human toes are not at the weight-bearing part of the foot. And, while I’m sure toes are somewhat involved in agility, having individual toes doesn’t seem to be. In fact, if you look at apes like gorillas and chimps, it’s pretty clear that our toes have been getting shorter and less important as we’ve been evolving as upright-walking creatures who don’t live in trees. Instead, the sole of the foot, which used to be much more like the palm of a hand, has been getting longer and sturdier.
If you have separate toes, you have multiple fragile things that can break or be torn off. If you have one mega-toe it’s going to be sturdy. That’s probably why the heaviest animals have the fewest / smallest toes.
As someone who goes barefoot whenever possible, i can tell you that the idea of toes not being particularly useful for agility is very incorrect. If i have to restrict my toes i feel like dogs do when you put booties on their paws, so incredibly clumsy.
The toes play a large part in keeping your balance, making minor corrections to your weight distribution, and especially the big toe is pretty significant when pushing off the ground.
Try walking (or even running) around with your toes lifted off the ground, it’s very awkward.The problem is that a lot of people these days are constantly wearing shoes that make their toes useless, and even when not wearing such shoes their toes have been squeezed into a pointy shape (bunions are almost entirely caused by this) and become weak from atrophy. A healthy foot has toes splayed quite wide and the toes will be pretty strong and probably a lot thicker than you’re used to, look at baby feet for a rough example.
I mostly go barefoot too, and the shoes I have are “barefoot shoes” that have extremely thin soles. But, I still don’t think the individual toes are that important to grip. Sure, the toe pads are important. If you’re moving on the balls of your feet, I’d guess maybe 30% of your weight is in your toes. But, I don’t think I’m getting much contribution to agility from my baby toe being splayed out. If I glued my toes together, I think it wouldn’t hurt my agility much, and it would mean I’m much less likely to catch that individual, fragile baby toe on a corner.
Tbh if I could I think I would turn on the gene for prehensile feet.
Just to try. Looks fun.
you can train your feet to be pretty prehensile, there are people who paint and write with their feet.
Oh yeah I pick up stuff with them sometimes but I wanna try the monkey experience lol
And they run around at 60mph on the tips of their toenails.
I mean, humans run around on something that birds would consider knees, and stupidly try to support their entire body weight using only half their legs.
A horse is just an intense desire to die on four legs.
Horses not breathing while running opened a whole new world of anxiety for me.
What?!
They don’t aspirate when they run, their organs slosh around and just sort of push their lungs enough to keep them alive.
So a medieval charge would have been even more insane for them.
We’re God’s creation but God is a lazy kid that rushed the science project for the whole semester in six days and barely half assed it hoping no one digs too deep into it
as long as you ditch the whole “omniscient and omnipotent” part, god is pretty relatable.
i’d like to see you do better when you’re literally creating the fucking universe on your own.
Well let me pull out of the drawer my really dusty degree in Biology and let’s see.
First of all, do I still have to follow the principles of Embriology or do I get to make it from scratch? Because that’s where I reckon most of the problems that came up come from
you can do precisely whatever you want, but you have to personally compute every single interaction, you are THE game master of EVERYTHING, ALL the time, FOREVER.
frankly the fact that we have sensible physics all the way down to quarks is pretty impressive, i struggle to make a sensible day dream in my head. Put me in charge of a universe and you have something somehow worse than the fey wilds.
Its only a valve. Topologically speaking, the passage from the mouth to the anus only constitutes one hole.
The passage of air into the lungs is not a hole however, that is a cavity. Same difference with the vagina, that’s not a hole, that’s a cavity.
Depends on the state of your esophagus, doesn’t it? If it’s closed (which it mostly is) then your mouth and nose holes go to your lung cavity. Your anus is also part of a cavity that goes through your intestines all the way up your throat and stops at your esophagus.
People are donuts!
No, since you have a nose. Topologically, people have 3 holes.
You don’t need that
why is the nose only one hole?
Nose is two. Your butt isn’t one. Or rather, your mouth and nostrils would be the entrance and your butt is the combined exit of those three holes. If you don’t count the nostrils, you only have one hole. A hole always goes through something, otherwise it’s just a cavity. And also, holes only count from one side. Your butt and mouth are the same hole, just from different ends.
Nose is only one hole homie, runs from one nostril to the other. It takes the mouth to add a secondary orifilce. And it takes the anus to add a third orifice.
Topology for ya.
Doesn’t matter which way you turn it, the result is the same. As you count it, your first hole is nostril to nostril. I count mouth to anus as hole one and then add the left and right nostrils as secondary and tertiary orifices. Having a nose ads two holes to the total count. If you had no nose, you‘d have one hole, if you only had a nose, you’d also only have one hole.
That reminds me, I need to turn my pizza soon…
Nose is only one hole, topologically speaking. You can run a string from one nostril to the other.
One topological hole.
No, all 7 holes (nostrils, mouth, tear ducts) have a common cavity, so they’re 7 holes not one.
This is a Wendy’s. We only offer nostrils, mouths and anuses here.
Kissing with open mouths creates a hole from one butthole to another.
oh! but then why is it three holes and not nostril-to-mouth as a hole and other-nostril-to-butt as another hole, or some other combination
Quick illustration:
Nostrils: ___________ _________ | _________| | _________ | Mouth: | | \________| | ________ | / | | | | | | | | | | | | Butthole:That is 3 holes in total because you can “connect” any opening with 3 different one’s.
thank you!!
7, if the cut-off is 60 microns (tear ducts). Smaller than that, we’re essentially Swiss cheese.
Tbh, I was kinda hoping for someone with better biology knowledge than me to correct me. Thanks.
What are the the 7?
Important note, if you take a straw that separates into two split straws (kinda in a “Y” shape) that from a topological point of view is two holes, because one is for one of these paths, and the other is an extruded hole on the side of the first path. In topology you can’t break or mend material, but you can pull, stretch, squeeze and move it all you want. So you can move one of the split straw “legs” to the bottom of the whole straw, getting a shape similar to a “V”, it would look pretty much like a pair of pants. And topologically speaking it would be exactly the same. So… One straight hole for your mouth all the way down to your anus. Another two are there for your nostrils, that’s 3 already. The rest are for your tear ducts, which have two holes on the edge of your eye, (so four in total) which merge and then connect to your nose.
So a human, from a topological perspective, is just a seven holed doughnut. Also Vsauce made a great video about that, with pretty great animations.
I am well aware that people have three topological holes. Matter of fact, I proved that years ago.
In this case, I only referred to one topological hole, from mouth to anus.
I never mentioned the nose, nor was that part of the topic in question.
Yum.
Matter of fact, I proved that years ago.
Ominous
This fella explains it way better than I ever could…
Mmm
No, the vagina is topologically a hole, as the uterus with the Fallopian tubes has two direct openings into the abdominal cavity (another objectionable “design” choice).
Dolphins probably lament not being able to make milk come out of their buddy’s nose by making them laugh while drinking.
Look up the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
I did, for the lazy
Your point ? I didn’t go deep, but nothing jumps out at me.
"Evidence of evolution
The extreme detour of the recurrent laryngeal nerves, about 4.6 metres (15 ft) in the case of giraffes,[32]: 74–75 is cited as evidence of evolution, as opposed to intelligent design. The nerve’s route would have been direct in the fish-like ancestors of modern tetrapods, traveling from the brain, past the heart, to the gills (as it does in modern fish). Over the course of evolution, as the neck extended and the heart became lower in the body, the laryngeal nerve remained in its original course."
I think this is what he was getting at
Yeah, saw that, guess it could be, not compelled. Cheers though.
It’s like taking a detour to Chicago to get to DC from New York
I’m glad you think your god is incompetent.
You had doubts ? ;}
Seeing how they invented bone cancer for babies and malaria-resistant mosquitos, not in the slightest.
So it loops around the aorta. That’s weird, but is it a problem?
high ping to your larynx, basically
It’s a perfect example of non-intelligent design and evidence of evolution.
I feel like feet and ankles have a lot of responsibility. I had a really bad case of plantar fasciitis for like 2 years and it sucked. Every step you take was a stabbing pain
That’s really just a modern problem. If you were part of a tribe walking out of Africa, you’d never have that problem. Our feet are pretty impressive actually
I always thought the fact that turning our heads too fast can give us strokes was rather inconvenient.
Yikes. That’s why I get a little worried about the high velocity neck stuff that some chiropractors do.
Or that sneesing / trying to hold back a sneeze can give you an aneurism. But I guess although it’s rare in animals it’s not exclusive to humans.
Rupture an existing one, right?
Waiting both sneezing or trying to hold back is dangerous? What are we supposed to do half-ass it?
The breathing and eating tubes gotta cross so you can blow with your mouth and choke on cock. Non-negotiable.
You could still probably blow with your mouth if you didn’t have your lungs connected, I imagine it would involve a kind of burping type of action. I think the bigger problem would be that if your nostrils closed up, you wouldn’t be able to breathe, and probably also talking would be a lot harder if your vocal chords and mouth were separate from your main air sacs.
I think the solution is probably just an easily opened and closed internal valve that separates the stomach and the lungs, rather than this bullshit we currently have with two separate valves that lead into both and open for one and then close for the other whenever it’s required. It’s still good to be able to close both when you want to, but you can already close your mouth on command, and another valve with the nose is a notable upgrade in that it keeps everyone from smelling bad smells they don’t wanna smell, and it also doesn’t take any more valves than we already have.
There’s probably some way you could fix this all with enough surgical intervention, I bet…
imagine having a stuffy nose and you can’t breathe with your mouth.
wait yeah no we wouldnt be able to play like, any wind instruments, traditionally at least.
that one would in fact work.
As much as I’d advocate for a professional rectal woodwind orchestra, I can’t help but feel we wouldn’t have invented the instruments in the first place.
if we did it would be nasal based, probably, and they would suck a lot more to play as well.
Horses were at least marginally less ridiculous before people got involved. Not quite to the same extent as dogs, but compare a steppe horse with a thoroughbred and you’ll see that they’re smaller and hardier. Much better equipped to live, slightly less able to carry fully armored people on their back.
tbf horses have big dicks, it could have been worse for them
how much bigger is domesticated horse dick than wild
It is, they have hooves.
You stand on your toenails
Both valid points. I will still need some time to take this all into consideration.
Consider this: horses can’t puke and just die if they eat something bad
They also die if they break a leg, or if you put them away wet, or if they sleep the wrong way. Horses just die a lot.
Right, but literal horsecock
Could be worse:
We don’t have cloacas.
We’re not that efficient yet.
Idk, shitting an egg/baby sounds a lot better than present human childbirth…
I don’t disagree, but being egg bound sounds about as bad as dying in childbirth.
I feel like if that happened with a human it would be a pretty minor thing to go up in there and smash the egg so you just shit out the shell and stuff. I don’t really see a reason it would have to be fatal, or even really all that big of a deal, if that’s just what human reproduction looks like.
Now if we were using the cloaca in the same way we presently use the vagina, as a birth canal for developed offspring, that would be a different story, but ultimately not all that different from now.
Tbf, our teeth aren’t bad. They just didn’t evolve to consume so much sugar.
From an evolutionary standpoint we just have to survive long enough to reproduce, if we can’t eat past age of reproduction there’s no evolutionary pressure to change that.
Thank goodness for modern dentistry.
That’s completely untrue.
Evolution applies to the entire lifespan — if we could “reproduce” but died in childbirth every time, our species would have gone extinct long ago.
Parents and grandparents also contribute greatly to the success of a child long long after they’re born, helping to ensure it also survives to reproductive age.
“grandparents”
Life expectancy in 18th century France was in the 20s, grandparents are optional
If you make past childhood for most of history outside of places experiencing plagues, major famines, or wars, you had a good shot of making it to your 70s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_vs._other_measures_of_longevity
I don’t disagree with your overall point, but statistics like that are almost always heavily skewed because of high infant mortality rates
The mortality rate during childbirth was pretty high for women on top of the infant rate. Childbirth as a whole dragged the numbers down.
The mortality of mothers only became a big issue between doctors being in charge of birth and hand washing becoming a rule
The domestication of storks has also led to fewer deaths upon delivery. I wish to also add something to this thread of reddit factoids.
18th century france is also quite possibly the single worst place and point in time to use as a comparison, there’s a reason people beheaded monarchs.
A reminder that life expectancy in ancient history was so low not because people generally croaked by 40, but because of how many children died young.
It’s an average, not a maximum. People regularly lived into their 70s and 80s hundreds of years ago.
From what i’ve read and heard about the subject, the life expectancy generally looked something like this back in the hunter-gatherer days:
You were very likely to die as an infant, pretty likely to die before puberty, after that you were likely to make it to 40-50, and it wasn’t that rare to reach 70.
That was an evolutionarily insignificant time period.
[Edit : It turns out people have said the same thing while I was looking for the right source to confirm my point, so I guess this comment’s a bit redundant now. Still leaving it in case someone’s interested]
Child mortality The most significant difference between historical mortality rates and modern figures is that child and infant mortality was so high in pre-industrial times; before the introduction of vaccination, water treatment, and other medical knowledge or technologies, women would have around seven children throughout their lifetime, but around half of these would not make it to adulthood. Accurate, historical figures for infant mortality are difficult to ascertain, as it was so prevalent, it took place in the home, and was rarely recorded in censuses; however, figures from this source suggest that the rate was around 300 deaths per 1,000 live births in some years, meaning that almost one in three infants did not make it to their first birthday in certain periods. For those who survived to adolescence, they could expect to live into their forties or fifties on average.
So reaching 50 wasn’t too rare for someone who had survived childhood, and given how people often started having children younger then, that was well enough to be grandparent. Doesn’t mean everyone would’ve gotten to known their grandparents, but it wouldn’t have been super rare either.
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Generally sure. We’ve certainly evolved to want to be around for a while after reproduction though, for example human infants are completely worthless. That doesn’t mean we need to be top notch, but we do need to exist sufficiently to get children to even the most brutal, basic independence.
Compare that to something that hatches then is already just adulting, like many reptiles.
I think the keyword is precocial vs altricial
Especially considering how reliant we humans are on knowledge, without the previous generation teaching us we’re pretty well doomed.
Old people would have been highly valued just because they’re sitting on decades of knowledge and wisdom, in an age without permanent records of information grandma would have been the only source of information about the past, and would presumably spend most of their time just sharing that knowledge with everyone else.
Half our expected lifetime was our expected lifetime back when they evolved. Teeth are doing quite well, all things considered.
They just didn’t evolve to consume so much sugar.
Bro, eating oranges puts our tooth enamel in a weakened state. If we were designed, it was by an idiot.
Oranges do not naturally have that much sugar.
It’s not the sugar, but the acid that our teeth can’t handle.
The fact that healthy foods can’t be consumed without a risk of harm is not an intelligent design.
I mean, even apples (i.e. “Garden of Eden”) can promote the growth of plaque!
I mean, biblically speaking we weren’t supposed to eat those apples.
If an all-knowing creator didn’t want humans to eat fruit from a specific tree, he shouldn’t have grown that tree in the only garden he had humans in.
Missing the point of obedience by choice.
Oh, right. The obedience only matters if you have to make yourself do it. It doesn’t count if it’s natural and painless and costs you nothing. Can’t believe I forgot about that?
Yahweh and mind games. What an asshole. 😂
Cane and Abel tells us the gods don’t like vegetable farmers, that want meat
Meat doesn’t damage your teeth
Incidentally the damage from sugar is fermentation - it makes carbonic acid (the stuff that makes soda fizzy) which is a weaker acid than citric
Citrus didn’t make it to Europe quickly - it came from China
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Oranges don’t exist naturally, was the point I was making. Theyre a hybrid, derived at least partly from pomelo.
You are right, it’s just that in Spanish a “pomelo” is a grapefruit, and I was unaware of the whole rabbit hole that is the hybridwtion of the pomelo, mandarin, citrus and all that. I deleted my old comment because I was just confused.
No worries, I don’t know all the details and looking more deeply, it looks to be more complicated than I was remembering too.
Actually a bigger contributor is underdeveloped jaws due to no longer requiring to chew from.a very young age for nutritional requirements.
Why would stronger Jaws prevent teeth decay?
Why would not having developmentally impaired mouth including teeth, muscle, and bone be beneficial for longterm resilience?
Idk dude, figure it out. Some people, I swear.
Wow, are you always this much of an asshole when people ask you questions?
Why does being mean to you make me an asshole? (This is a facetious question)
You’re insufferable
This you?
(This is a facetious question)
At least we agree on your assholery then.
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Means they don’t know…
Although asshole might be strong.
“The hole ass is strong with this one”
