Wait what's the deal with the horses? I want to feel good about myself today.
Edit: Wow, those bastards have it rough.
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.
What preditor was so fast horses had to evolve to that extent??
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?
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.
PBS Eons has a couple good videos on both horse evolution and domestication.
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.
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.
I did this too and will also never own a horse lmao. This is why horse people are weird.
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.
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.
Oh, wow, I had always thought that shooting a horse with a broken leg was an act of brutal expedience, not mercy.
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
Also their blood gets pumped through their hooves, and to much weight on one hoof can impede blood flow through their body.
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.
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.
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.
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.
tbf horses have big dicks, it could have been worse for them
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
The teeth thing is just because of our high sugar, high grain diet
The first* people with bad dental health were Egyptians as they lived on bread (which packs your teeth and feeds the bacteria that ferment it and make acid) before that, and until the invention spread, people died of old age with all their teeth intact
I eat very low carb - almost entirely meat due to allergies, and haven't had a cavity since I started doing that, despite me nearly never brushing or flossing my teeth
*There were also people who lived in the tropics and ate a lot of fruit, and those with sugar cane.
You never brush your teeth? It's not only good for health dude
Dolphins probably lament not being able to make milk come out of their buddy's nose by making them laugh while drinking.
THE APPENDIX HAS ENTERED THE CHAT.
Being able to make our own Vitamin C aside, the fact that a vestigial organ can randomly decide to fucking kill you is asinine from a design perspective. Its the equivalent to building a pool in the sims and removing the ladder for the first person who wanders inside.
It's not totally vestigial, it helps regulate colon bacteria. People without their appendix take longer to recover from diarrhea, which is important when bad water and spoiled food are a more regular part of your life.
Could be worse:
We don't have cloacas.
Idk, shitting an egg/baby sounds a lot better than present human childbirth..
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