I’ll die on the hill that horses live as essentially slaves for people to look at and occasionally ride. I’m not sure how we came to the conclusion that keeping these majestic animals in tiny boxes and the same field for their entire lives is anything but barbaric.
We came to the conclusion that keeping horses contained was a fantastic idea since they were an invaluable asset to our quality of life.
They were a mean of transportation, plowing our fields, gathering our wood, conquering and defending our lands.
The only part here is they lost their status as invaluable in the modernised world. Though their current status as “slaves” as you put it, isn’t without benefit.
Few animals get the medical care a horse does, I’d even argue the average horse have better access to Healthcare than the average human. Gone are the days where a horse with a broken leg has a death sentence, so their quality of life have only improved in the last 100 years. And they will never have to worry about predators, not even humans, since they’ve for the most part been taken off our menu.
I’m not here to change your mind, I’m just saying, I think most animals would swap places with them in a heartbeat given the oppertunity.
Absolutely, horses have it nowhere near as bad as animals that we farm for food and other products. If we are classifying animals lives in a simplistic manner, then I put horses in the “Slave” category and I put farm animals in the “Horrific torture” category. I totally agree with you that I’d rather be a slave than horrifically tortured.
I know you think you’re being very clever by creating a strawman and ridiculing said strawman, but everyone sees right through that and just rolls their eyes.
Horses have it far better than most wild animals. It’s not even close. You’re either underestimating the living conditions of most Horses, or overestimating the living conditions of most wild animals. Probably both.
Slaves also had it really good. Square meals, plenty of room to stretch their legs, lots of hard work to keep their minds and bodies active. They also received very good medical attention because obviously, their masters didn’t want them falling over dead - they were useful, valued, and had better living conditions of many other humans.
Not sure which strawman you are referring to. If you believe that “most animals” would choose to swap their freedom in nature for the opportunity to live in captivity, I think we are getting into quite philosophical territory. The only example we can use is Humans, and we can both agree that Humans would choose freedom over captivity.
They aren’t taken off Elmer’s menu
Hell, even during training there’s a part called “breaking” the horse, which refers to breaking its will. Not sure if this is still done these days since the demand for horses is way down, but I can’t see that being anything other than a form of torture for “problem” horses.
If you didn’t keep it in your field some idiot would probably just want to shoot it
Is there a problem with wild horses being hunted? I haven’t heard about that.
There aren’t really any wild horses left. A few live in the Yuma proving grounds in Arizona (they were basically just set free there about a hundred years ago. They aren’t native) , but other than that I think you’d have to go to the steppes of central asia to find any.
That isn’t what I mean by wild horse. I mean feral, undomesticated animals that roam freely.
Especially when you learn about how many were killed in WW1
I forget who, but some author (maybe Dave Barry?) suggested that if aliens came to Earth, they might think that dogs are the dominant race, since they have humans following them around picking up their shit for them.
Not quite the same thing, but in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams has the alien character Ford Prefect, who came to study Earth under the original impression that cars were the dominant life form. Hence his name.
Hitchhiker’s Guide also had the part about how humans thought they were smarter than dolphins because humans worked all day and built things, while dolphins just played around and ate fish, and meanwhile, dolphins thought they were smarter than humans for the exact same reasons.
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It’s the Chinese Stratagem: Sit back, relax, and let your antagonists’ laziness and idiocy win the game for you.
I know it is a joke but it is such a silly comparison.
The left one is a work horse, transporting you and whatever you need moving. The right one is likely a race or show horse which does no work other than racing or whatever tricks they do as a show horse. You wouldn’t want them exhausted for doing their thing, so obviously you transport them like this. If we didn’t have cars you would have a (or several) work horse(s) pulling a cart with the show horse guaranteed.
And now horses don’t work anymore. Sounds like a win for the horses to me.
They do work, as toys for spoiled rich people, which might be worse than doing actual useful work for someone who depends on their ability to do this work for a long time and therefore would take appropriate care of them.
The absolute numbers are likely much smaller. There were once so many horse carts that cities feared to drown in horse shit, just before the invention of the motorized car.
Honest question: how were race horses transported in the past? I assume you wouldn’t want them pulling a coach, even if they could, and riding them to a race could tire them out or risk injury?
Are there old “horse trailers” that would be pulled by coach horses?
Classic Mac StuntCopter flashbacks.
Brilliant.
