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::::::::::::::::::::::Improving sourcing there would probably be a good idea anyway... Maybe I can get Kim out of retirement to lend a hand here. [[User:Montanabw|<font color="006600">Montanabw</font>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 17:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC) |
::::::::::::::::::::::Improving sourcing there would probably be a good idea anyway... Maybe I can get Kim out of retirement to lend a hand here. [[User:Montanabw|<font color="006600">Montanabw</font>]]<sup>[[User talk:Montanabw|(talk)]]</sup> 17:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC) |
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== Evolution of horses == |
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about 600 years ago horses looked very different. Most of them were light gray in color. They also all had rainbow mains and tails. they were also found in pink, baby blue, and light purple. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/173.86.31.52|173.86.31.52]] ([[User talk:173.86.31.52|talk]]) 00:25, 25 September 2013 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> |
Revision as of 00:33, 25 September 2013
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Fight or flight
Hi Montanabw, Regarding your reversion of my deletion about the comment on the strength of fight-or-flight "instinct". If this "instinct" is "strong" in the horse, how has this been measured and compared with other animals? In which animals is it weak? The fight-or-flight response is generally considered a combination of physiological and behavioural responses, but the text expansion does not refer to this. Futhermore, the expansion in the text refers to the fight-or-flight "response", not instinct. It also then describes how horses sometimes do not flee which is rather counter to the statement that it is a "strong" response. I suggest that the sentence in the opening paragraph reads "Horses' anatomy enables them to make use of speed to escape predators and they have a well-developed sense of balance and flight response"__DrChrissy (talk) 16:53, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
- Read the source material; the "fight or flight" behavior-whatever you want to call it- is strongly inborn and while horses also have curiousity and other behaviors, but the horse is a prey animal and it is a fundamental part of their makeup. Horses can be trained to be less fearful and to "spook in place" (so to speak) but it is a desensitization process. You are welcome to suggest more good source material, but this is something absolutely critical to anyone wanting to understand and work with horses and core to safety of humans handling them. Montanabw(talk) 20:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
- Hi. I think we have been looking at this from different perspectives. I am thinking of the untrained animal. A horse living wild would learn whether it needs to increase the intensity of its response through e.g. observational learning, or decrease the intensity of its response due to e.g. habituation. It was the word "strongly" linked with instinct that I disagreed with. Having said this, I have just checked the article and see that you have accepted the word response instead. Thank you - I am perfectly happy with this. Good to interact amicably with you again.__DrChrissy (talk) 23:50, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
- I realized that tossing unneeded adjectives and working on correct phrasing was not a huge issue and that the section needed additional sourcing as well, so you were of help to point out a legitimate weakness. As for the rest, given that there is only one truly "wild horse" subspecies, we are actually talking about "wild" meaning feral or semi-feral conditions; rather like the feral dog or feral cat. While it IS true that environment will influence the degree of intensity that any inborn behavioral tendency may have, nonetheless, any horse's first gut instinct when startled is to run away - or at least to jump about 15 feet sideways when the plastic grocery bag blows up against the fence while you are riding (plastic bags eat horses, didn't you know?) :-P . They can learn that they don't need to run off at every little thing (except for the aforementioned plastic grocery bag), and their instinct to run off is countered by a natural instinctive curiosity as well, so yeah, some horses learn to put up with A LOT, it takes time, training and a lot of confidence in humans! Montanabw(talk) 18:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- I live near a place called Exmoor which has populations of Exmoor ponies. I was thinking these were wild but after reading your comment I checked and sure enough, they are categorised as semi-feral, so thanks for the tip-off. Cute little guys!__DrChrissy (talk) 20:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- There used to be a cartoonist named Thelwell who did the most hilarious series of cartoons about the British pony breeds -- all fuzzy and treacherous! Montanabw(talk) 22:56, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
- I just looked at his web-site [1] and I recognise the style. His name does not appear in Horse or Horses in art. Perhaps it should? I would make the edit myself but I always get told off when I dare enter the horsey world ;-) __DrChrissy (talk) 18:08, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
- I think we have Norman Thelwell, which needs help. This Horse article is probably not the place for art discissions, but the art article -- well, I avoid discussing what art is! The problem is getting past copyright issues with his cartoons, the various pony breed articles would be enriched by them! ;-) Montanabw(talk) 20:59, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
- I just looked at his web-site [1] and I recognise the style. His name does not appear in Horse or Horses in art. Perhaps it should? I would make the edit myself but I always get told off when I dare enter the horsey world ;-) __DrChrissy (talk) 18:08, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
- There used to be a cartoonist named Thelwell who did the most hilarious series of cartoons about the British pony breeds -- all fuzzy and treacherous! Montanabw(talk) 22:56, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
- I live near a place called Exmoor which has populations of Exmoor ponies. I was thinking these were wild but after reading your comment I checked and sure enough, they are categorised as semi-feral, so thanks for the tip-off. Cute little guys!__DrChrissy (talk) 20:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
- I realized that tossing unneeded adjectives and working on correct phrasing was not a huge issue and that the section needed additional sourcing as well, so you were of help to point out a legitimate weakness. As for the rest, given that there is only one truly "wild horse" subspecies, we are actually talking about "wild" meaning feral or semi-feral conditions; rather like the feral dog or feral cat. While it IS true that environment will influence the degree of intensity that any inborn behavioral tendency may have, nonetheless, any horse's first gut instinct when startled is to run away - or at least to jump about 15 feet sideways when the plastic grocery bag blows up against the fence while you are riding (plastic bags eat horses, didn't you know?) :-P . They can learn that they don't need to run off at every little thing (except for the aforementioned plastic grocery bag), and their instinct to run off is countered by a natural instinctive curiosity as well, so yeah, some horses learn to put up with A LOT, it takes time, training and a lot of confidence in humans! Montanabw(talk) 18:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
After horses stopped being used in combat
"The popularity of equestrian sports through the centuries has resulted in the preservation of skills that would otherwise have disappeared after horses stopped being used in combat."
This is too simplistic. While fox hunting was seen as imparting useful skills for officers (between the world wars the Army Staff College at Camberley, Surrey kept 200 hunters for use by the officers there at a time when the British armed forces were on very small appeasement budgets -- leading Bomber Harris to quip that the army commanders would only be happy with the tank if it could learn to eat hay and defecate like a horse), fox hunting was seen as a stand alone pastime for which horse balance etc (for which a limited amount of dressage and showjumping skills were useful as a mean to an end) were least as important and probably more so than similar skills for war. Here is a quote from the first book I found with a Google book search that mentions fox hunting and the Peninsular War, but I am sure there are many more such quotes as this is well known stuff:
Classical dressage ... in the United Kingdom ... was regarded even as long ago as the seventeenth century, as for foreign "continental" overformalized (like French and German ideas about gardening), and unsuited to the three basic uses of horses, which were, in English eyes, foxhunting, horse racing and the cavalry charge [(The Swedish model not the 17th century French way of trotting up, firing pistols and retreating)].
So great was the English belief in foxhunting as the true test of horsemanship that Wellington encouraged all his officers to foxhunt in Spain during the Peninsular War, and even had foxes brought over from England, since they were in short supply there.
The most famous fox hunts on the Peninsular took place behind the Lines of Torres Vedras during the stalemate of the winter of 1810/11.[2][3]
So from a British point of view it is just not true that "The popularity of equestrian sports through the centuries has resulted in the preservation of skills that would otherwise have disappeared after horses stopped being used in combat", and while the sentence is cited the sentence need qualifying to indicate that this is a view of the author (Sandra L. Olsen) because it is not a widely held view in Britain. -- PBS (talk) 09:41, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
- This article is an overview and as such is somewhat generalized, a British view such as this is undue weight for this particular article. We have a lot more detail on horses in warfare in other articles, and your comment may be particularly useful as an addition at Fox hunting. Montanabw(talk) 17:23, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
Images
Hi, Some of the sections in the horse article have no pictures, so i'm not sure if I understand what the rationale is for having no illustrations. Take, for example, the sections on pony and hooves. It's not like there was already a picture and then I added a redundant 2nd picture. There was and now is no pictures in many sections. What is your rationale for not having, to take an example, the hoof picture? Is there an unwritten rule that a GA should have only x number of pictures? The usual rule of thumb I have seen is people saying not more than one picture or media file per section, but in this case there are multiple un-illustrated sections. OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 15:56, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
- I just put the hoof image back. I'm not sure what the grounds for excluding it are. It is encyclopedic, informative, directly illustrates the topic at hand (hooves). I know it will be removed. But I want to know what the policy rationale is. Just because this is a GA, it doesn't mean it can't be touched by outside editors (i.e., people not known on the article space). OnBeyondZebrax (talk) 16:02, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
- The hoof image is unsourced. Compare to File:Points_of_a_horse.jpg where the diagram IS sourced to a specific work. That's the sort of thing we need. But there is no "rule" that every section has to have a picture, the pony example you gave was one where we already had a photo with both a full sized horse and a mini, where the extra photo of a pony was not needed, it bled into the next section on some computers, and particularly where we have a link to the pony article that provides people with more detail about ponies. Montanabw(talk) 17:33, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
As an "outside editor" with an interest in animal articles in general, I have looked at the images in this article and I do not believe it is overpopulated. The hoof image is clear and informative and should remain in the article. The "horse world" is full of its own terms and for me (not being a particularly horsey person) the hoof image had several terms I was unaware of but are self-explanatory from the image. The only image I would take issue with is the one of a horse's eye. This is dull and uninformative. A more striking image yet remaining informative would be of the gustatory sense in the horse, e.g. when used during the flehmen response, (e.g. image included in this edit) Incidentally, there is no mention of the flehmen response in the article at all - an omission that needs looking at.__DrChrissy (talk) 17:41, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
- See horse behavior and horse breeding, where we go into a lot of that sort of thing. A general overview article is really challenging because you correctly note that we have to exclude some things; and usually everyone's sacred cow gets gored (I feel for PBS's comment above on history because I'm the history geek here; I'm also the genetics geek, but thank god for wikilinks to the articles that allow people like me to geek out to my heart's content... LOL) Montanabw(talk) 17:33, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
- Images used in GA status articles must have good free use or fair use licenses. Just because something is on Commons does not ensure that. Every image needs to be checked for that before being added. And we've been working (slowly, very slowly) towards FA status for this article - so not only does every image need good licensing, it must be perfect with reliable sourcing for any information in it also. Thus, any images added need to be reliably sourced if they are a diagram, and have perfect licensing. Just adding images doesn't always help an article. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:59, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
- .Wow - I really did not realise that something on Commons might not be suitable. Thanks for the heads up on that. I agree that simply adding an image does not necessarily improve an article. I deal mainly with animal behaviour articles and do photography as a hobby. I therefore take a great deal of time in selecting photos for addition to articles - the image I suggested here to illustrate flehmen was the first I encountered on Commons - I was not suggesting this actual image should be used. Flehmen response contains the image in this edit. Please understand I am not suggesting a flemen image must be included. I simply feel the horse's eye image is really dull and made a suggestion if replacement was thought suitable, by including use of a sense people generally know little about__DrChrissy (talk) 18:33, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
- If you want a real education, try running any article you care about through the GA or FA gauntlet. It's pretty rough, especially for a long, complex article like this one. It was a nightmare (pun intended) just getting this one to GA (long story, we had a WP:CHEESE problem there) and those of us who were on the team are probably still a bit twitchy from the experience. We are very open to article improvements (which may include addressing the images again, but eeek!!) but with careful thought. Montanabw(talk) 17:33, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
- .Wow - I really did not realise that something on Commons might not be suitable. Thanks for the heads up on that. I agree that simply adding an image does not necessarily improve an article. I deal mainly with animal behaviour articles and do photography as a hobby. I therefore take a great deal of time in selecting photos for addition to articles - the image I suggested here to illustrate flehmen was the first I encountered on Commons - I was not suggesting this actual image should be used. Flehmen response contains the image in this edit. Please understand I am not suggesting a flemen image must be included. I simply feel the horse's eye image is really dull and made a suggestion if replacement was thought suitable, by including use of a sense people generally know little about__DrChrissy (talk) 18:33, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
- Well I had been thinking of submitting Pain in invertebrates for GA, but sounds like it is more effort than it's worth! An interesting fact about the horse's eye is that it has a horizontal pupil (although this is not mentioned on the Equine vision page). This adaptation enables horses to see predators on the horizon more easily. The current image of a horse's eye does not show this pupil shape clearly (so editing the caption is probably not an option) but the top image of the image in this edit does. I really feel that the current photo with much reflection (you can even see a human reflected off the cornea!) and a caption "A horse's eye" can be improved upon.__DrChrissy (talk) 18:31, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
- Feel free to add stuff to the equine vision page, and maybe we could think about swapping images here and or adding one to the vision article. The Pain in invertebrates article might do well with a WP:Peer Review, I think it's close to GA but may need a little work before you nominate it. Montanabw(talk) 19:40, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
Evolution of Equus
I think rather than mentioning other equids in a "Other modern equids" subsection, zebras and asses should be mentioned in context of horse evolution, (when did their lineages split from the horse lineage?). Just a suggestion. LittleJerry (talk) 16:21, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
- The detail is in Evolution of the horse, and they debate that a fair bit over there, here we just have a summary and a link to the main article. And this article is about horse, not zebras anyway. Montanabw(talk) 17:20, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
African wild ass
Why doesn't the Equus mention the African wild ass? I added a link to the article but Montanabw reverted stating "African wild ass is only one of many in asinus." The African wild ass is actually THE species while the donkey and others are merely subspecies of it. Also Mb, when I added in the wild ass to the list mentioning the donkey as the subspecies you stated "Not how it's sourced". The closest one ([140]) only confirms Equus hemionus. LittleJerry (talk) 04:53, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
- Equus africanus asinus is the donkey, larger members of which are called asses; both domesticated. The African wild ass is Equus africanus, a different subspecies; even that article indicates there is a taxonomic dispute and I cannot tell from the article if there is an independent Equus africanus independent of all the subspecies (Nubian wild ass, etc...) . The source cited here is Pallas; if you want to present different sourcing, we can discuss further, and maybe link the wild ass separately from the domesticated animals - but the point is that the donkey is not the African wild ass, which appears to be a never-domesticated animal. (In horses, the ancestral e. ferus is extinct with e. ferus caballus and e. przewalskii the only living descendants.) I guess this can be solved with a new source beyond what we have in there now. Montanabw(talk) 01:00, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
- This states that the African wild ass is the ancestor of the donkey. This states that the donkey and ass are sometimes called separate species for "convenience". This doesn't seem to be usual as the horse is sometimes called Equus caballus, the cat Felis catus and the dog Canis familiaris. I don't understand what you mean when you say the African wild ass is Equus africanus and therefore a subspecies. Equus africanus is a Binomial nomenclature, hence a species name. The donkey is Equus africanus asinus a Trinomial nomenclature and thus a subspecies of the African wild ass. LittleJerry (talk) 22:37, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
- Factual accuracy. The African wild ass is the species. This is relevant to a section that discusses equids in general. LittleJerry (talk) 03:04, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
- DO NOT alter someone else's edits. If you think I made an error, say so in your own message. As for the rest, the point is that the donkey and the ass are the same animal, equus africanus asinus; there is no actual Equus africanus: there are four subspecies, one extinct, one of which is the donkey/ass, the other two extant ones being the Somali and the Nubian wild asses. From the article' "Different authors consider the African wild ass and the domesticated donkey one or two species; either view is technically legitimate, though the former is phylogenetically more accurate." Montanabw(talk) 18:51, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
- I didn't alter any edits. By the same token the mountain zebra doesn't exist, only the Cape mountain zebra and Hartmann's mountain zebra. Why do you have a problem linking to the African wild ass? It would cover the donkey, Somali and Nubian wild asses. The article currently links to the domestic donkey article which excludes the other two. LittleJerry (talk) 20:18, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
- Yes you did, you changed MY edit here. Basically, your initial edit linked ass to the African wild ass, which it technically isn't. Now the concern is that we list the whole taxonomic tree at [{Equus (genus)]] and I see no reason to go into much detail here; this is just the article about horses. I'm kind of pissed that you changed my edit here and I'll let the other editors weigh in on this because I need to just cool off a bit and think it over. Montanabw(talk) 22:37, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
- Sorry, that was an accident. But yes, the "ass or donkey" technically is the African wild ass. All I'm suggesting is that ass and donkey should link to the species Equus africanus not the subspecies Equus africanus asinus. Its that simple. LittleJerry (talk) 02:22, 11 June 2013 (UTC)