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There's nothing here on the consumption of horse meat. -- Tarquin 17:25, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Also, the section on the horse as food, while relevant to the topic of horse, is a bit overbearing within this article. The reason being, (and I realize that some contemporary cultures which have distanced themselves from the concept of what horses are all about may not 'get it') is that the horse, both today and most assuredly yesterday, played such a significant role in the uplifting of mankind and his civilization, in the form of warfare, agriculture, and recreation, that such contributions far outweigh the relatively inconsequential notion that some people eat horse flesh. And this opinion isn't just one of fondness and affection for the horse, but really just a fact.
To be honest, the food section needs to be relegated to a separate topic, or a footnote. You don't agree? I'll find you 45,000 books on the subject of horses and horsemanship as documented through the ages. How many can you find me on eating horses? Yes, the number 45,000 is not just a number pulled out of my hat, but rather a researched figure. In fact, more has been written about the horse since man began writing than virtually any other subject. --Bryan
I'm new here, and I don't personally want to do such a massive move/rearrange as I have suggested (axing the horse as food subsection), but I certainly encourage it. I mean no disprespect to the creator/s of that section, but in all honesty, it's blatantly offensive within the context of the article.
Yes, I'm a horse lover, but I can be objective as well, and, well, the discussion of horses as sandwich meat deserves to go... --Bryan
Fair enough. However the claim "In some parts of Europe horses are specially raised for their meat." deserves a source. I have never heard about that. // Liftarn
I see that ALL references to horse-eating have now been excised - where has this information been moved? ( Mmartins 21:22, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC))
I've removed a recently added picture of horse meat and some one liners regarding the use of horse meat as it is:
A reminder that consumption of horse meat is not in context for this article and has been moved to a new article titled horse meat. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
I (being Bryan) was the original person who suggested that the "horse as food" section go. Despite the claim that those in favor of "horse meat" are being unbiased, let's look at it from another angle:
If I google the phrase: "horse meat" or "horses as food" (be sure to use quotes when googling in the instance so that we don't capture sites just discussing food and horses) I notice that in both instances, the number of hits is less than if I google "dog meat" or "dogs as food". Yet, I gave a cursory look at the Dog entry here on Wikipedia and I failed to notice any discussion of dogs used as meat (Total of one sentence in fact). - Bryan
Certainly, those Wikipedia editors, in their desire to be unbiased, objective, and dare I say, consistent, as they have expressed themselves that they wish to be consistent, should immediately be making additions to the dog article. Or wait - let me guess, they own dogs? - Bryan
In light of past contention on the horse meat issue, I thought I'd make an official referendum to capture the consensus.
This is just DISGUSTING AND SAD. But I have a new idea. Why don't we add "as food" to other animal pages? people need to find out. Don't take me wrong though: Its horrible. Dogs, cats, even hamsters get more attention than horses, as if they are liked much more. Makes it seem that horses are disliked. I remember in first grade (5 years back) my best friend told me, the biggest horses lover in the class that she hated horses, because they were "annoying". what is up with that? I think that we should teach some people a lesson. Who will join me to change the animal pages? -- Divya da animal lvr 18:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, I added some stuff about coat colors and markings, but more can and should be said - I merely provided the framework. -- Bryan
To whom it may concern: Please feel free to visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds/Categories because I think that structuring Horse articles and Dog articles could take a similar tack--would be nice to use same subcategories for consistency. Elf | Talk 04:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The general rule to be followed is to stick with the spelling conventions (American or British) used by the article when it was begun. (Otherwise we would find mentions of color and colour, etc., in the same article.) Therefore I have reverted the change from "meter" to "metre." P0M 23:41, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"The most common date of domestication of the horse and its first use as a means of transport is circa 2000 BC." This is Horse-S***. The Indo-Iranians were using horse-drawn chariots at the date. 4000-5000 is a better date, and do your homework.-- FourthAve 10:48, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
The article on the chariot which FourthAve links us to says:
The earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca. 2000 BC and their usage peaked around 1300 BC (see Battle of Kadesh). Chariot races continued to be popular in Constantinople until the 6th century.
A quick look at The Horse in Art (by Lida L. Fleitmann) doesn't show any earlier pictures of humans using horses as beasts of burden either.
Writing "s***" may mean something acceptable on these pages, such as "horse stall", but it creates the impression that offensive vocabulary is being used on the sly. Let's avoid these words. P0M 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
The other link that FourthAve gave leads to the following quotation, which does not support his/her conclusion either:
They were nomadic and had domesticated horses, probably as early as their time in the Steppes, and they had a complex pantheon of gods and natural forces.
The guessimate of the time they left the steppes is 2000 BCE, which pushes things back a bit, but another 2000 years? Sorry, bad language will not take the place of citations to reliable authorities.
P0M
00:20, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
One source asserts:
However, the earliest chariot currently known dates to the end of the 3 rd millennium B.C. and was found in Kazakhstan, thereby confusing the issue as to where exactly chariots originated.
That's still some fairly short time before 2000 BCE. (See: http://longtermchange.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=getit&lid=19) P0M 01:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Dear Editors of the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. I can appreciate the work you go through to provide us with useful information. But I can't help but feel that the part of evolution was not very neutral. Please consider a christians point of view as well. User:Leather 13:11, 4 August 2005
Check Sredny Stog culture. An article, Dereivka, which is a site pertaining to this archaeological culture from Ukraine will be coming along; it's 4500-3500 BC, with a superabunance of very early horse remains (it was a meat animal), with equivocal evidence of horseback riding as well. EIEC has an enormous article on the horse, and I will be sending some of this along into this article; I will resist turning this article into a meditation on the horse and its place in Indo-European studies. Domestication is sometime around or after 4000 BC. As I think about it, an article along the lines of Domestication of the Horse would be in order. I have enough good information for a short article. -- FourthAve 17:08, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
At the moment this entry under other horse sports says it is popular in the South. The South where? the US? Britain? POV text here. Deirdre 01:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Horse, as it look, everyone can see - This was full description of horse in first Polish encyclopediae in XVIII century :))) szopen
Are there no entries on horse psychology, horse training, etc.?
Patrick0Moran 18:58, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)
"Noncompetitive Horse Sports"? I think the author of that was confused. Daniel Quinlan 06:57, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
This part does not make clear sense. If originally there were three events, how many are there now? Is "military" one of them? I doubt it, but that is the fourth thing mentioned. Where, then, does the list of current olympian events stop?
Patrick0Moran 08:36, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I'm interested in writing an article on equine locomotory anatomy. Should I start this as a separate article or include it under Horse? I think it could be separate since the article will be quite large (I'm doing my PhD on this topic - equine biomechanics - so there's a lot for me to write!).
Jonathan Merritt 26 Aug 2003
Excellent! I will look forward to reading it. I think a seperate article would be appropriate. With, of course, appropriate links from here. Tannin 13:31, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
OK - I'm starting to add stuff to the Equine forelimb anatomy page, but it's going to be quite a long process. Please dig in and change anything required to make things more readable as I go along! :-)
Jonathan Merritt 27 Aug 2003
Some points not yet made:
Horse whisperers - call them what you will - are advocates of the horse through the application of training which attempts to see the world from the horse's point of view. Communication (two way) is important.
One might call Xenophon the original horse whisperer. Today, in the US, one might call Tom Dorrance and Ray as some of the original horse whisperers, with the contemporaries John Lyons, Monty Roberts, Pat Parelli, Mark Brannaman, Mark Rashid and so on continuing their work.
Horses, unlike cattle, are not ruminants. They digest their food with the aid of a cecum, which although derives less energy per unit mass of food, allows for much quicker digestion, allowing more energy per unit time to be extracted.
Horses have 20/30 vision. Humans have 20/20. Dogs and cats have less. Horses see color, but not so well in the red spectrum. Horses respond to the Ponzo Illusion the same way that humans do, indicating that in addition to possessing bifocal vision, also achieve depth perception through perspective cues.
-- Bryan
See the page I made called List of equine topics. --Bryan
Travel was much more dangerous and polluting when it was based on the horse. Even with modern innovations such as helmets, horses are much more dangerous than automobiles on a per passenger mile basis. New York City had to remove more than 10,000 tons of horse manure per day, before the automobile significantly cleaned up their environment. There should be more on these issues within the article.-- Silverback 16:09, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
Where is the data for your claims on accidents? It's hard to imagine that head-on crashes of stage coaches were common occurrences. Accidents in competitions involving horses are fairly common, but bad outcomes on simple trips to town from the herders' camp to town for grub would most likely have involved bandits and other such hazards. And another thing, at the time when horses were in common use for transportation, traffic density was much lower than at the present time. Riding through a deserted Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, a rider on a horse going at a walking pace and a rider in a car doing the speed limit would both be quite safe. Riders galloping would at most risk falling off going at about 25 mph. Drivers speeding with an equal degree of recklessness might spin out on a curve at 75 mpg. Riders can wear helmets that protect against brain damage but not broken necks. Drivers can use seat belts, and racing drivers can use other protections, so it is a little difficult to know what is being compared to what. Even so, the deadly injuries among non-competition horse accidents are almost all head injuries suffered by riders whose horses spook for some reason. (See Jessica Jahiel's website.) The commonest injuries would most likely be broken arms from riders who fall. A car crash at even relatively low speeds can produce the same head injuries (which is why cars now have padded dash boards), and as speeds increase the probability of serious injuries to the head and trunk becomes much higher.
As for feces, true, horse manure is not too appealing to walk through with bare feet, and somebody needs to remove it from the road. On the other hand, it is not toxic the way lead is. Once removed from the road, it can be used to produce good compost. Even if people just leave it on a country road, it soon packs down into a uniform brown soft and well-compacted mass. Leave a clump of horse manure on your front yard and it become fertilizer. Dump a cup of used engine oil on your yard and you have long-term contamination. P0M 19:49, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
One course would involve a simple paragraph or two that calls attention to the fact that travel by horse is inherently hazardous (as is travel by foot, bicycle, and any other known method of transportation). The natures of the hazard are pretty well known and discussed by people like Jessica Jahiel who keep dunning into parents the idea that their kids should keep their helmets on. Runaway horses, both under saddle and pulling a carriage, are real hazards. "Mean" horses (usually = badly abused horses) that rear up and fall over backwards on riders, bite, or kick riders deliberately are also hazards. Getting unintentionally stepped on is a hazard. Those hazards would be easy to find citations for.
Similarly, horse manure on the open prairie is one thing, and horse manure in a stable where horses are kept in stalls for much of the time, in urban settings where many animals frequent the same streets, etc., is quite another thing. Still, stepping in horse manure can be unpleasant whereas breathing high levels of automobile exhaust can be deadly. (Check the number of deaths in hospitals at times of high air pollution.)
If the article is going to make comparisons with automobile transportation the task is inherently daunting because the scale of injuries involved horse accidents can vary from a mild nip from a curious colt to death from a very few kind of accidents that happen when horses are not under control. (One good thing about horse transport is that the horses sometimes have better accident avoidance capabilities than are exhibited by their owners. For instance, if a human being is lying on the road or falls right in front of a horses, then the horse will do everything in its power to avoid stepping on the human.) Maybe some understandable figure like deaths per mile traveled could be found.
As a practical matter, I don't think you could make anything much out of the "pollution" argument. The half-lives of radioactive materials are mostly quite long. The problems posed by disposing properly of a ton of used car oil filters would be immense compared to dealing with a ton of horse manure. For one thing, the horse manure can be dried, bagged, and sold. I guess if you have sick horses you might get an accumulation of tetanus microbes, but horses are now routinely immunized against tetanus. In practice the only time people think about pathogens when they are dealing with healthy horses is after they have stepped on a rusty nail in the pasture. I just checked my standard reference on the diseases of horses and it doesn't even mention manure control as a factor to be monitored. It does have a section on diseases that are shared by humans and horses, but the content is entirely directed to monitoring the health of the horses. No warnings from the State of California about washing your hands after being exposed to motor oil.
I am not sure whether what you want to talk about belongs in this article as anything more than a brief article and a reference to a separate article on hazards, transportation hazards, etc. It is true that horses produce manure, and it is true that in interacting with a horse a human can come off second best. But problems with horse manure and racing accidents (equine hotrodding)seem to me to have more to do with humans than with horses.
What is done in the article on bicycles about injuries due to bicycle vs. automobile encounters, bicycle vs. bicycle-trap storm drains (front wheel trapped stopping bicycle, rider continues forward at 35 mph) P0M 04:03, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
P.S. The first article cited above is interesting and looks entirely responsible. The second link is dead. The implicit idea behind thinking reported in the first article is that automobiles produce less pollution than horses, cars are modern, cars are clean. The story reminds me that at a time when Philadelphia (and maybe some other major US cities) closed some center-city streets to automobiles because of air pollution and traffic congestion caused by automobiles, the city of Taipei was outlawing the downtown use of pedicabs because they got in the way of the automobiles, took business away from taxicabs, etc. Soon the downtown area was clogged with taxis. Taipei outlaws the burning of coal for cooking and replaced that kind of (very bad) pollution with NOx, lead, blaring horns, etc.
The fuel for horses removes nitrogen from the air and sends it as fertilizer to the soil. It captures carbon dioxide from the air and returns it to the air within a year or so with no net gain or loss. Each unit of the fuel for automobiles frees carbon dioxide from petroleum, adding a major volume of hothouse gas. Coal burning not only frees carbon dioxide long locked away, but also addes radium to the air, a health cost that is perhaps not widely known. So quantifying these comparisons is going to be very difficult to do well. P0M 04:22, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
The selection of photos in this article currently leaves a bit to be desired. For example, there is not a single photo of a human riding a horse. Can someone with more knowledge about horses than myself pick, add and properly caption a few useful photos from the categories on Commons?-- Eloquence * 07:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I believe I may have seen one or two horses at some time in my life. (Joking, my point is, I'm no expert). I am interested in the horse as a pre-technological tool. I would like to know how mobile a group of humans riding horses could have been. That is:
I don't know how to find out this material. Is this article the appropriate place for this material? If so, can someone put it in?
With regard to the horse as a tool, perhaps some rather more interesting questions to ask are how the domestication and subsequent use of the horse as a tool affected mankind and civilization.
Some examples of using a horse as a tool which greatly affected civilization in extraordinary ways:
* Military transport * Cavalry (Rome, Greece, Medieval age, British Colonization) * Transport of goods * Pulling of fire wagons in urban areas * Agriculture (plows, herding) * Royalty (status symbols)
Another way of looking at it is this: if the horse wasn't doing those things (listed above), what would have been doing those things? Answer: with the exception of oxen pulling plows, likely there was no substitute. - Bryan
Someone has been adding vernacular terms to the list of equine anatomical names. Probably we should keep these weeded out. P0M 04:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does the section on wild mustangs read like some sort of ad for a mustang adoption agency? I don't think mustang adoption is relevant to the article at all. If anything, it may warrant a mention on the separate mustang page. Osprey39 02:02, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Does anyone have any free-license pictures of a stable that we could add to that article? Most of the horse pictures I can find are of horses in beautiful fields or horses doing exciting things. A horse in a stable might be a good picture to add to this article, too, since it's very relevant to the topic. -- Creidieki 23:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
What type of stable do you want to illustrate? Field shelters, American Barns, loose boxes? I can take some Creative-Commons licensed American Barn photos. -- Nick Wallis 14:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
The article currently says:
Although a race track is an enclosed area, it is designed for a horse to gallop around, without being too enclosed which may cause the horse to slip while turning.
Is this sentence trying to say something about the need to leave margins of grass or some such surface outside the regular racing track so that a horse can have somewhere to go if it can't make a turn for some reason? The only way I can imagine a horse being caused to slip because of the geometry of the track would be if the lane were narrow and the turn too abrupt so that the radius of the turn would be extremely small.
The webmaster of www.equiworld.net claims that parts of this article were taken from this website without permission and that those are a copyright violation. Gerrit C U T E D H 19:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
don't forget the use of slaughterhouses as a legal way out of providing care for an elderly animal. When horses are bought, it must be realized that you have made a commitment to that animal that should last anywhere from 20-30 years under normal conditions and health. But no, that's not the way it works. when a horse becomes arthritic or suffers an accident disabling it from performing certain tasks such as jumping as is common in former race horses, the common reaction on behalf of the owner is to sell the animal because it no longer makes enough income. The animal will likely go to an auction as it is easier to sell horses there because it is quicker than the gruelling process of interviewing applicants and carefully selecting the next owner of the animal for its well being. i'm not sure of the statistics, but i know for certain that the majority of horses that are sold at these auctions are sent to slaughterhouses. Now, do not mistake me as being completely "antislaughterhouse". I have no objections to making use out of what we have, I do have a problem with how killing the animal is done. it has been reported that some slaughterhouses have resorted to using nails instead of bullets to kill the animal because they are more cost efficient. of course I have no concrete evidence, but it certainly does open up one's eyes when you hear more shoking stories of inhumanity that I will not describe here. I do not only hold these views for horses and slaughterhouses either. I hold the same opinion when it comes to euthanasia in animal shelters due to lack of space or in vet hospitals becasue the owner does not wish to take care of the animal any more. This is barely above dumping an animal on the side of the road! on the other hand though, there is the question of over population: "Where would all the animals go?"
I've changed some scientific names. Previous name of these animals (tarpan, wild horse & Donkey/Wild Ass) was mainly based on the list of mammals published by Wilson and Reeder in 1993. Their list was based on the code of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (www.iczn.org). Thus the oldest name was used: Equus caballus for the horse and Equus asinus for the Donkey/Ass. These names were first given to the domesticated forms and this had created confusion. However, in 2003 to end the confusion of the names, the Commission ruled that the name for each of the wild species listed in their publication (see reference) is not invalid by virtue of being predated by a name based on a domestic form.
The following names are hereby placed on the Official List of Specific Names in Zoology: (a) africanus Heuglin & Fitzinger, 1866, as published in the binomen Equus africanus (North African wild ass) (Mammalia); (b) ferus Boddaert, 1785, as published in the binomen Equus ferus (Russian wild horse, tarpan) (Mammalia); (c) ...etc....
Website of International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature: http://www.iczn.org The publication (Opinion 2027) can be ordered there for free.
Main reference: International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 2003. Opinion 2027 (Case 3010). Usage of 17 specific names based on wild species which are pre-dated by or contemporary with those based on domestic animals (Lepidoptera, Osteichthyes, Mammalia): conserved. Bull.Zool.Nomencl., 60:81-84. Pmaas 21:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
A lot of the external links on this page are very "unencyclopedic". I think someone needs to trim out the rest! -- Malcolm Morley 21:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)Horses are alsome ya!' Why would anyone want to kill a horse? please if you Know the answer write to
I need your help if you know something about horses. I've create a new template for adding a standardized infobox to each horse listed in List of horse breeds. The template is shown here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Horse breeds and there's a sample with minimal information in American Paint Horse. The problem is that I don't really know what should or could go in the box. For example, for the Dog breeds template, we can identify specific major breed registry organizations. But for horses, is that true? And what else makes sense to go in the table--e.g., "type"? (Draft, pony,...what else?) Please respond at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse breeds. Thanks! Elf | Talk 23:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
There's nothing here on the consumption of horse meat. -- Tarquin 17:25, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Also, the section on the horse as food, while relevant to the topic of horse, is a bit overbearing within this article. The reason being, (and I realize that some contemporary cultures which have distanced themselves from the concept of what horses are all about may not 'get it') is that the horse, both today and most assuredly yesterday, played such a significant role in the uplifting of mankind and his civilization, in the form of warfare, agriculture, and recreation, that such contributions far outweigh the relatively inconsequential notion that some people eat horse flesh. And this opinion isn't just one of fondness and affection for the horse, but really just a fact.
To be honest, the food section needs to be relegated to a separate topic, or a footnote. You don't agree? I'll find you 45,000 books on the subject of horses and horsemanship as documented through the ages. How many can you find me on eating horses? Yes, the number 45,000 is not just a number pulled out of my hat, but rather a researched figure. In fact, more has been written about the horse since man began writing than virtually any other subject. --Bryan
I'm new here, and I don't personally want to do such a massive move/rearrange as I have suggested (axing the horse as food subsection), but I certainly encourage it. I mean no disprespect to the creator/s of that section, but in all honesty, it's blatantly offensive within the context of the article.
Yes, I'm a horse lover, but I can be objective as well, and, well, the discussion of horses as sandwich meat deserves to go... --Bryan
Fair enough. However the claim "In some parts of Europe horses are specially raised for their meat." deserves a source. I have never heard about that. // Liftarn
I see that ALL references to horse-eating have now been excised - where has this information been moved? ( Mmartins 21:22, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC))
I've removed a recently added picture of horse meat and some one liners regarding the use of horse meat as it is:
A reminder that consumption of horse meat is not in context for this article and has been moved to a new article titled horse meat. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
I (being Bryan) was the original person who suggested that the "horse as food" section go. Despite the claim that those in favor of "horse meat" are being unbiased, let's look at it from another angle:
If I google the phrase: "horse meat" or "horses as food" (be sure to use quotes when googling in the instance so that we don't capture sites just discussing food and horses) I notice that in both instances, the number of hits is less than if I google "dog meat" or "dogs as food". Yet, I gave a cursory look at the Dog entry here on Wikipedia and I failed to notice any discussion of dogs used as meat (Total of one sentence in fact). - Bryan
Certainly, those Wikipedia editors, in their desire to be unbiased, objective, and dare I say, consistent, as they have expressed themselves that they wish to be consistent, should immediately be making additions to the dog article. Or wait - let me guess, they own dogs? - Bryan
In light of past contention on the horse meat issue, I thought I'd make an official referendum to capture the consensus.
This is just DISGUSTING AND SAD. But I have a new idea. Why don't we add "as food" to other animal pages? people need to find out. Don't take me wrong though: Its horrible. Dogs, cats, even hamsters get more attention than horses, as if they are liked much more. Makes it seem that horses are disliked. I remember in first grade (5 years back) my best friend told me, the biggest horses lover in the class that she hated horses, because they were "annoying". what is up with that? I think that we should teach some people a lesson. Who will join me to change the animal pages? -- Divya da animal lvr 18:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, I added some stuff about coat colors and markings, but more can and should be said - I merely provided the framework. -- Bryan
To whom it may concern: Please feel free to visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds/Categories because I think that structuring Horse articles and Dog articles could take a similar tack--would be nice to use same subcategories for consistency. Elf | Talk 04:08, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The general rule to be followed is to stick with the spelling conventions (American or British) used by the article when it was begun. (Otherwise we would find mentions of color and colour, etc., in the same article.) Therefore I have reverted the change from "meter" to "metre." P0M 23:41, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"The most common date of domestication of the horse and its first use as a means of transport is circa 2000 BC." This is Horse-S***. The Indo-Iranians were using horse-drawn chariots at the date. 4000-5000 is a better date, and do your homework.-- FourthAve 10:48, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
The article on the chariot which FourthAve links us to says:
The earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca. 2000 BC and their usage peaked around 1300 BC (see Battle of Kadesh). Chariot races continued to be popular in Constantinople until the 6th century.
A quick look at The Horse in Art (by Lida L. Fleitmann) doesn't show any earlier pictures of humans using horses as beasts of burden either.
Writing "s***" may mean something acceptable on these pages, such as "horse stall", but it creates the impression that offensive vocabulary is being used on the sly. Let's avoid these words. P0M 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
The other link that FourthAve gave leads to the following quotation, which does not support his/her conclusion either:
They were nomadic and had domesticated horses, probably as early as their time in the Steppes, and they had a complex pantheon of gods and natural forces.
The guessimate of the time they left the steppes is 2000 BCE, which pushes things back a bit, but another 2000 years? Sorry, bad language will not take the place of citations to reliable authorities.
P0M
00:20, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
One source asserts:
However, the earliest chariot currently known dates to the end of the 3 rd millennium B.C. and was found in Kazakhstan, thereby confusing the issue as to where exactly chariots originated.
That's still some fairly short time before 2000 BCE. (See: http://longtermchange.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=getit&lid=19) P0M 01:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Dear Editors of the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. I can appreciate the work you go through to provide us with useful information. But I can't help but feel that the part of evolution was not very neutral. Please consider a christians point of view as well. User:Leather 13:11, 4 August 2005
Check Sredny Stog culture. An article, Dereivka, which is a site pertaining to this archaeological culture from Ukraine will be coming along; it's 4500-3500 BC, with a superabunance of very early horse remains (it was a meat animal), with equivocal evidence of horseback riding as well. EIEC has an enormous article on the horse, and I will be sending some of this along into this article; I will resist turning this article into a meditation on the horse and its place in Indo-European studies. Domestication is sometime around or after 4000 BC. As I think about it, an article along the lines of Domestication of the Horse would be in order. I have enough good information for a short article. -- FourthAve 17:08, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
At the moment this entry under other horse sports says it is popular in the South. The South where? the US? Britain? POV text here. Deirdre 01:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Horse, as it look, everyone can see - This was full description of horse in first Polish encyclopediae in XVIII century :))) szopen
Are there no entries on horse psychology, horse training, etc.?
Patrick0Moran 18:58, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)
"Noncompetitive Horse Sports"? I think the author of that was confused. Daniel Quinlan 06:57, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
This part does not make clear sense. If originally there were three events, how many are there now? Is "military" one of them? I doubt it, but that is the fourth thing mentioned. Where, then, does the list of current olympian events stop?
Patrick0Moran 08:36, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I'm interested in writing an article on equine locomotory anatomy. Should I start this as a separate article or include it under Horse? I think it could be separate since the article will be quite large (I'm doing my PhD on this topic - equine biomechanics - so there's a lot for me to write!).
Jonathan Merritt 26 Aug 2003
Excellent! I will look forward to reading it. I think a seperate article would be appropriate. With, of course, appropriate links from here. Tannin 13:31, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)
OK - I'm starting to add stuff to the Equine forelimb anatomy page, but it's going to be quite a long process. Please dig in and change anything required to make things more readable as I go along! :-)
Jonathan Merritt 27 Aug 2003
Some points not yet made:
Horse whisperers - call them what you will - are advocates of the horse through the application of training which attempts to see the world from the horse's point of view. Communication (two way) is important.
One might call Xenophon the original horse whisperer. Today, in the US, one might call Tom Dorrance and Ray as some of the original horse whisperers, with the contemporaries John Lyons, Monty Roberts, Pat Parelli, Mark Brannaman, Mark Rashid and so on continuing their work.
Horses, unlike cattle, are not ruminants. They digest their food with the aid of a cecum, which although derives less energy per unit mass of food, allows for much quicker digestion, allowing more energy per unit time to be extracted.
Horses have 20/30 vision. Humans have 20/20. Dogs and cats have less. Horses see color, but not so well in the red spectrum. Horses respond to the Ponzo Illusion the same way that humans do, indicating that in addition to possessing bifocal vision, also achieve depth perception through perspective cues.
-- Bryan
See the page I made called List of equine topics. --Bryan
Travel was much more dangerous and polluting when it was based on the horse. Even with modern innovations such as helmets, horses are much more dangerous than automobiles on a per passenger mile basis. New York City had to remove more than 10,000 tons of horse manure per day, before the automobile significantly cleaned up their environment. There should be more on these issues within the article.-- Silverback 16:09, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
Where is the data for your claims on accidents? It's hard to imagine that head-on crashes of stage coaches were common occurrences. Accidents in competitions involving horses are fairly common, but bad outcomes on simple trips to town from the herders' camp to town for grub would most likely have involved bandits and other such hazards. And another thing, at the time when horses were in common use for transportation, traffic density was much lower than at the present time. Riding through a deserted Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, a rider on a horse going at a walking pace and a rider in a car doing the speed limit would both be quite safe. Riders galloping would at most risk falling off going at about 25 mph. Drivers speeding with an equal degree of recklessness might spin out on a curve at 75 mpg. Riders can wear helmets that protect against brain damage but not broken necks. Drivers can use seat belts, and racing drivers can use other protections, so it is a little difficult to know what is being compared to what. Even so, the deadly injuries among non-competition horse accidents are almost all head injuries suffered by riders whose horses spook for some reason. (See Jessica Jahiel's website.) The commonest injuries would most likely be broken arms from riders who fall. A car crash at even relatively low speeds can produce the same head injuries (which is why cars now have padded dash boards), and as speeds increase the probability of serious injuries to the head and trunk becomes much higher.
As for feces, true, horse manure is not too appealing to walk through with bare feet, and somebody needs to remove it from the road. On the other hand, it is not toxic the way lead is. Once removed from the road, it can be used to produce good compost. Even if people just leave it on a country road, it soon packs down into a uniform brown soft and well-compacted mass. Leave a clump of horse manure on your front yard and it become fertilizer. Dump a cup of used engine oil on your yard and you have long-term contamination. P0M 19:49, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
One course would involve a simple paragraph or two that calls attention to the fact that travel by horse is inherently hazardous (as is travel by foot, bicycle, and any other known method of transportation). The natures of the hazard are pretty well known and discussed by people like Jessica Jahiel who keep dunning into parents the idea that their kids should keep their helmets on. Runaway horses, both under saddle and pulling a carriage, are real hazards. "Mean" horses (usually = badly abused horses) that rear up and fall over backwards on riders, bite, or kick riders deliberately are also hazards. Getting unintentionally stepped on is a hazard. Those hazards would be easy to find citations for.
Similarly, horse manure on the open prairie is one thing, and horse manure in a stable where horses are kept in stalls for much of the time, in urban settings where many animals frequent the same streets, etc., is quite another thing. Still, stepping in horse manure can be unpleasant whereas breathing high levels of automobile exhaust can be deadly. (Check the number of deaths in hospitals at times of high air pollution.)
If the article is going to make comparisons with automobile transportation the task is inherently daunting because the scale of injuries involved horse accidents can vary from a mild nip from a curious colt to death from a very few kind of accidents that happen when horses are not under control. (One good thing about horse transport is that the horses sometimes have better accident avoidance capabilities than are exhibited by their owners. For instance, if a human being is lying on the road or falls right in front of a horses, then the horse will do everything in its power to avoid stepping on the human.) Maybe some understandable figure like deaths per mile traveled could be found.
As a practical matter, I don't think you could make anything much out of the "pollution" argument. The half-lives of radioactive materials are mostly quite long. The problems posed by disposing properly of a ton of used car oil filters would be immense compared to dealing with a ton of horse manure. For one thing, the horse manure can be dried, bagged, and sold. I guess if you have sick horses you might get an accumulation of tetanus microbes, but horses are now routinely immunized against tetanus. In practice the only time people think about pathogens when they are dealing with healthy horses is after they have stepped on a rusty nail in the pasture. I just checked my standard reference on the diseases of horses and it doesn't even mention manure control as a factor to be monitored. It does have a section on diseases that are shared by humans and horses, but the content is entirely directed to monitoring the health of the horses. No warnings from the State of California about washing your hands after being exposed to motor oil.
I am not sure whether what you want to talk about belongs in this article as anything more than a brief article and a reference to a separate article on hazards, transportation hazards, etc. It is true that horses produce manure, and it is true that in interacting with a horse a human can come off second best. But problems with horse manure and racing accidents (equine hotrodding)seem to me to have more to do with humans than with horses.
What is done in the article on bicycles about injuries due to bicycle vs. automobile encounters, bicycle vs. bicycle-trap storm drains (front wheel trapped stopping bicycle, rider continues forward at 35 mph) P0M 04:03, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
P.S. The first article cited above is interesting and looks entirely responsible. The second link is dead. The implicit idea behind thinking reported in the first article is that automobiles produce less pollution than horses, cars are modern, cars are clean. The story reminds me that at a time when Philadelphia (and maybe some other major US cities) closed some center-city streets to automobiles because of air pollution and traffic congestion caused by automobiles, the city of Taipei was outlawing the downtown use of pedicabs because they got in the way of the automobiles, took business away from taxicabs, etc. Soon the downtown area was clogged with taxis. Taipei outlaws the burning of coal for cooking and replaced that kind of (very bad) pollution with NOx, lead, blaring horns, etc.
The fuel for horses removes nitrogen from the air and sends it as fertilizer to the soil. It captures carbon dioxide from the air and returns it to the air within a year or so with no net gain or loss. Each unit of the fuel for automobiles frees carbon dioxide from petroleum, adding a major volume of hothouse gas. Coal burning not only frees carbon dioxide long locked away, but also addes radium to the air, a health cost that is perhaps not widely known. So quantifying these comparisons is going to be very difficult to do well. P0M 04:22, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
The selection of photos in this article currently leaves a bit to be desired. For example, there is not a single photo of a human riding a horse. Can someone with more knowledge about horses than myself pick, add and properly caption a few useful photos from the categories on Commons?-- Eloquence * 07:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I believe I may have seen one or two horses at some time in my life. (Joking, my point is, I'm no expert). I am interested in the horse as a pre-technological tool. I would like to know how mobile a group of humans riding horses could have been. That is:
I don't know how to find out this material. Is this article the appropriate place for this material? If so, can someone put it in?
With regard to the horse as a tool, perhaps some rather more interesting questions to ask are how the domestication and subsequent use of the horse as a tool affected mankind and civilization.
Some examples of using a horse as a tool which greatly affected civilization in extraordinary ways:
* Military transport * Cavalry (Rome, Greece, Medieval age, British Colonization) * Transport of goods * Pulling of fire wagons in urban areas * Agriculture (plows, herding) * Royalty (status symbols)
Another way of looking at it is this: if the horse wasn't doing those things (listed above), what would have been doing those things? Answer: with the exception of oxen pulling plows, likely there was no substitute. - Bryan
Someone has been adding vernacular terms to the list of equine anatomical names. Probably we should keep these weeded out. P0M 04:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does the section on wild mustangs read like some sort of ad for a mustang adoption agency? I don't think mustang adoption is relevant to the article at all. If anything, it may warrant a mention on the separate mustang page. Osprey39 02:02, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Does anyone have any free-license pictures of a stable that we could add to that article? Most of the horse pictures I can find are of horses in beautiful fields or horses doing exciting things. A horse in a stable might be a good picture to add to this article, too, since it's very relevant to the topic. -- Creidieki 23:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
What type of stable do you want to illustrate? Field shelters, American Barns, loose boxes? I can take some Creative-Commons licensed American Barn photos. -- Nick Wallis 14:00, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
The article currently says:
Although a race track is an enclosed area, it is designed for a horse to gallop around, without being too enclosed which may cause the horse to slip while turning.
Is this sentence trying to say something about the need to leave margins of grass or some such surface outside the regular racing track so that a horse can have somewhere to go if it can't make a turn for some reason? The only way I can imagine a horse being caused to slip because of the geometry of the track would be if the lane were narrow and the turn too abrupt so that the radius of the turn would be extremely small.
The webmaster of www.equiworld.net claims that parts of this article were taken from this website without permission and that those are a copyright violation. Gerrit C U T E D H 19:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
don't forget the use of slaughterhouses as a legal way out of providing care for an elderly animal. When horses are bought, it must be realized that you have made a commitment to that animal that should last anywhere from 20-30 years under normal conditions and health. But no, that's not the way it works. when a horse becomes arthritic or suffers an accident disabling it from performing certain tasks such as jumping as is common in former race horses, the common reaction on behalf of the owner is to sell the animal because it no longer makes enough income. The animal will likely go to an auction as it is easier to sell horses there because it is quicker than the gruelling process of interviewing applicants and carefully selecting the next owner of the animal for its well being. i'm not sure of the statistics, but i know for certain that the majority of horses that are sold at these auctions are sent to slaughterhouses. Now, do not mistake me as being completely "antislaughterhouse". I have no objections to making use out of what we have, I do have a problem with how killing the animal is done. it has been reported that some slaughterhouses have resorted to using nails instead of bullets to kill the animal because they are more cost efficient. of course I have no concrete evidence, but it certainly does open up one's eyes when you hear more shoking stories of inhumanity that I will not describe here. I do not only hold these views for horses and slaughterhouses either. I hold the same opinion when it comes to euthanasia in animal shelters due to lack of space or in vet hospitals becasue the owner does not wish to take care of the animal any more. This is barely above dumping an animal on the side of the road! on the other hand though, there is the question of over population: "Where would all the animals go?"
I've changed some scientific names. Previous name of these animals (tarpan, wild horse & Donkey/Wild Ass) was mainly based on the list of mammals published by Wilson and Reeder in 1993. Their list was based on the code of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (www.iczn.org). Thus the oldest name was used: Equus caballus for the horse and Equus asinus for the Donkey/Ass. These names were first given to the domesticated forms and this had created confusion. However, in 2003 to end the confusion of the names, the Commission ruled that the name for each of the wild species listed in their publication (see reference) is not invalid by virtue of being predated by a name based on a domestic form.
The following names are hereby placed on the Official List of Specific Names in Zoology: (a) africanus Heuglin & Fitzinger, 1866, as published in the binomen Equus africanus (North African wild ass) (Mammalia); (b) ferus Boddaert, 1785, as published in the binomen Equus ferus (Russian wild horse, tarpan) (Mammalia); (c) ...etc....
Website of International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature: http://www.iczn.org The publication (Opinion 2027) can be ordered there for free.
Main reference: International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 2003. Opinion 2027 (Case 3010). Usage of 17 specific names based on wild species which are pre-dated by or contemporary with those based on domestic animals (Lepidoptera, Osteichthyes, Mammalia): conserved. Bull.Zool.Nomencl., 60:81-84. Pmaas 21:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
A lot of the external links on this page are very "unencyclopedic". I think someone needs to trim out the rest! -- Malcolm Morley 21:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)Horses are alsome ya!' Why would anyone want to kill a horse? please if you Know the answer write to
I need your help if you know something about horses. I've create a new template for adding a standardized infobox to each horse listed in List of horse breeds. The template is shown here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Horse breeds and there's a sample with minimal information in American Paint Horse. The problem is that I don't really know what should or could go in the box. For example, for the Dog breeds template, we can identify specific major breed registry organizations. But for horses, is that true? And what else makes sense to go in the table--e.g., "type"? (Draft, pony,...what else?) Please respond at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse breeds. Thanks! Elf | Talk 23:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)