for hauling carts and stuff, that’s physical labor a horse was never meant to do
this is super fascinating because what about those draught horses, which brings in the whole can of worms about selective breeding. but they can definitely handle pulling modern day shit (but were bred for a lot of heavier, more dangerous tasks in the 19th century)
we still enjoyed their company where it seems any attachment to a horse is based mostly around the riding of it
i wonder if ‘early’ relationships with dogs were viewed the same way. is there space for pet-like conditions for horses? and like dogs would that be accompanied with some labor uses (herding dogs, watch dogs) while most of them were just companions? i think donkeys are a total shoo-in for pets but horses are awful big
Yes, most dogs were generally kept for their labor use and smaller lap dog types were generally bred by royalty as a status symbol. And generally speaking your working dogs are in a bit of a symbiotic relationship, dogs sorta followed people eating leftovers and also had the benefit for people of having packs of dogs watching their backs and keeping other scary stuff more nervous and that turned from a mutually beneficial relationship to us using dogs as tools and companions at the same time. However as utility shrank the angle of companionship stayed and became.e more important and thar was also to the detriment of dogs, look at pugs etc. Also this is starting to cross into the territory of I think we also have historically mistreated dogs, there are differences in how and I fo think dogs and people are more set up to coexist than horses and humans because of how the relationship developed, there is a pretty old symbiosis with dogs and people, horses were pure animal exploitation.
dogs are a bit older than other domestic animals but i hesitate to put too much meaning in dates that can vary 1,000 years in a period where the biggest advancements are in ways to put stone-headed sticks into things. i’m a firm believer in animal agriculture being after plant agriculture ofc but that hypothesis does imply some symbiosis with the progenitors of domestic species, so it’s hard to say how different that is.
Dogs were domesticated prior to agriculture and there’s evidence of that. You maybe just don’t know shit about anthropology and when and how different animals were domesticated.
i know that, but how little we know about domestication and stone age shit shouldn’t give one confidence in making huge character differences between how different animals were domesticated originally. nobody wrote down that dogs are friends but cow-aurochs are food. could aurochs or horses be a benefit to have around the agricultural community before domestication? we don’t know
There are wild populations descended from the same ancestors as horses and dogs, those are not the same thing as wild horses and dogs. They have fundamental biological and behavioral differences.
Yes, domesticated horses and dogs can interbreed with their wild counterparts, but at that point you’re getting into the “What is a species?” question. Polar bears and grizzly bears can interbreed just fine if they’re in the same place, same for chimps and bonobos.
And for horses there aren’t even really still wild horses. There’s Przewalski’s horse, but they separated from the ancestors of domestic horses long before domestication. They have a different number of chromosomes. Whatever wild horse populations we originally took the first horses from are long extinct.
this is super fascinating because what about those draught horses, which brings in the whole can of worms about selective breeding. but they can definitely handle pulling modern day shit (but were bred for a lot of heavier, more dangerous tasks in the 19th century)
i wonder if ‘early’ relationships with dogs were viewed the same way. is there space for pet-like conditions for horses? and like dogs would that be accompanied with some labor uses (herding dogs, watch dogs) while most of them were just companions? i think donkeys are a total shoo-in for pets but horses are awful big
Yes, most dogs were generally kept for their labor use and smaller lap dog types were generally bred by royalty as a status symbol. And generally speaking your working dogs are in a bit of a symbiotic relationship, dogs sorta followed people eating leftovers and also had the benefit for people of having packs of dogs watching their backs and keeping other scary stuff more nervous and that turned from a mutually beneficial relationship to us using dogs as tools and companions at the same time. However as utility shrank the angle of companionship stayed and became.e more important and thar was also to the detriment of dogs, look at pugs etc. Also this is starting to cross into the territory of I think we also have historically mistreated dogs, there are differences in how and I fo think dogs and people are more set up to coexist than horses and humans because of how the relationship developed, there is a pretty old symbiosis with dogs and people, horses were pure animal exploitation.
dogs are a bit older than other domestic animals but i hesitate to put too much meaning in dates that can vary 1,000 years in a period where the biggest advancements are in ways to put stone-headed sticks into things. i’m a firm believer in animal agriculture being after plant agriculture ofc but that hypothesis does imply some symbiosis with the progenitors of domestic species, so it’s hard to say how different that is.
Dogs were domesticated prior to agriculture and there’s evidence of that. You maybe just don’t know shit about anthropology and when and how different animals were domesticated.
i know that, but how little we know about domestication and stone age shit shouldn’t give one confidence in making huge character differences between how different animals were domesticated originally. nobody wrote down that dogs are friends but cow-aurochs are food. could aurochs or horses be a benefit to have around the agricultural community before domestication? we don’t know
There are literally still wild horses and dogs.
There are wild populations descended from the same ancestors as horses and dogs, those are not the same thing as wild horses and dogs. They have fundamental biological and behavioral differences.
Yes, domesticated horses and dogs can interbreed with their wild counterparts, but at that point you’re getting into the “What is a species?” question. Polar bears and grizzly bears can interbreed just fine if they’re in the same place, same for chimps and bonobos.
And for horses there aren’t even really still wild horses. There’s Przewalski’s horse, but they separated from the ancestors of domestic horses long before domestication. They have a different number of chromosomes. Whatever wild horse populations we originally took the first horses from are long extinct.