They usually don’t and have to be “broken in”.
For those few that do so naturally, it’s more of a proto-symbiotic relationship where the rider helps provide food and safety, so they’re kept around as a pet or dumb kid.
Also, if a predator wants to bite you, having something on your back to throw at them as a distraction can be pretty damn helpful.Breaking in is just what we call the process of fostering trust and getting the horse slowly used to a rider.
The default setting in a horse’s mind is to not allow anything on its back. They will bite and kick you if you try. However, there is a clever way to change that setting, as ancient humans had discovered.
Horses are different from many other animals, such as zebras. Horses are clearly more malleable. That default setting can be changed if you’re skilled and patient enough. With zebras though, the setting to bite and kick is pretty much hard coded.
Some animals, such as camels and llamas can also be tamed and even ridden, but they will always know their position in the tier list of life i.e. way above all humans. They will tolerate humans up to a certain point, but once their patience runs out, the unfortunate human in their immediate vicinity will feel it in their skin. These animals are a bit like cats, but 10x more dangerous.
Tons of comments, but no answer from an actual horse.
Way to be a neigh-sayer =P
Because we spent generations training and breeding them to allow us.
and we then train the domesticated horses from a young age that letting us ride on them is something they WANT to do, because they get snacks and scritches and they get to go outside more.
It is called breaking them.
The traditional methods is to dominate the horse into accepting the various ropes and controls as well as a rider.
There are more modern approaches which focus on making the horse trust it all.
TL;DR: Submission by cringe
How did you find a video of me with my cat??
Cat lives to tower over horses lmao
Awww I loved that! The horse was weirded out but mostly ok. His body language was calm and he followed her when she walked away, which is a sign it respects you and sees you as someone to trust and follow
The horse was weirded out but mostly ok.
I mean, the whole idea is to teach the horse that these weird happenings won’t hurt it and are no cause for suicide by running away chaotically.
Why do the proletariat allow the bourgeoisie to ride on their backs?
They get trained. Think about humans for example. There’s lots of stuff we don’t think twice about doing that aren’t necessarily things we would naturally do; they’re taught to us socially and we get used to them as part of life. Horses were domesticated, firstly selectively bred to be friendlier to humans and faster, but secondly they still get trained to form a bond with humans and to do what humans want them to do. They get used to being ridden.
We bred them to be amenable to it and we teach them to do it from the time they are babies.
I wish horses had the gene dogs have that makes them good boys that love people
Horses are just bigger, dumber dogs.
Bigger yes, dumber no. It’s like saying dogs are dumber than cats. They’re just different and “smart” at different things. I don’t see packs of tracking cats going out on search and rescue missions
… You also don’t see horses doing that, without being under the direct control of human riders.
Whereas search dogs are trained to actually go looking and sniffing and finding and alerting and then returning/retreiving if no one has come to them in a sufficient amount of time…
… all on their own.
Most dog breeds are significantly more intelligent than most horse breeds.
Also random fun fact: Did you know that as part of our domestication of dogs, we essentially caused them to evolve eyebrow muscles that can convey human like facial expressions?
Wolves don’t have that. Domesticated dogs do.
Because it makes communication and bonding between both humans and dogs just work better.
Yeah, because cats are too smart for that shit.
Cats are scientifically less intelligent than dogs. They are not as capable of higher level reasoning.
that’s both true and completely hilariously incorrect: There is no one “intelligence”, there are effectively infinitely many different kinds of intelligence, but broadly you can break it up into stuff like “emotional intelligence”, “spatial reasoning”, “problem solving”, etc etc.
also it’s not fair to say that cats are less intelligent when no one bothers to train them, the few cats that actually get trained as much as dogs seem to be comparably good at doing quite complex things.
Big, scaredy cats
Usually we teach them from the time they are 3 years old. So basically when they are teens
This. The other comments have been watching too many cowboy movies.
The same reasons dogs work for us. They are domesticated animals, selective breeding for thousands of years. Then training, teach them when they are young to do complex tasks. They then enjoy the tasks because it makes us happy. Think of sled dogs, or seeing eye dogs. Not exactly a natural thing for them, but once they are trained they really enjoy it.
Why do humans allow cats to ride in their arms?
Because that fucker are not allowed on the kitchen bench
Because I’ve trained all of my cats to accept me carrying them around the house…
Oh fuck. They trained ME to be a cat taxi!
Because riding on their fronts is too intimate.
Real men fear no intimacy.
👏👏👏
… Try riding a horse bareback, without a saddle.
It’ll give you new meaning to the terms ‘ball-buster’ and well, ‘bareback’.
Because when they tried to ride humans they would break them.
They don’t, they’ve been domesticated and trained to allow it.
I’m pulling this from some random place in my head but horses have a strict hierarchy. There’s a head horse that runs first and people became the head horse. This is in stark contrast to zebras that don’t give a shit and cause chaos.
The random place in your head is likely a CGP Grey video about animal domestication. 😁
I first heard about this reading “guns germs and steel” around 2006 so I’ma guess that’s the origin or at least a waypoint for that thought
zebras are wild animals, even tamed they are pretty wild, and are prone to aggressive sitituations, because they have evolved with the predators in africa, so they are much more aggressive compared to other equines.
Removed by mod
Are you saying those slaves are basically animals? Or that horses are basically people? I’m assuming you’re more so going for the latter, which is still a wild idea. They are domesticated animals, not people.
With your logic, just think of all the enslaved cats and dogs being forced to live in homes with lots of pets and constantly be fed and loved. Does animal cruelty happen? Of course. But to suggest domesticated horses are being enslaved because people have ridden horses for 5,000 years is truly a wild take.
Removed by mod
the very fucking obvious answer that satisfies both questions is, “they don’t have a fucking choice”
You are comparing two things that are categorically different. Horses are not moral agents like people are, so slavery literally cannot apply. No animal has moral choices. We do not arrest an animal for breaking laws, because laws cannot apply to an animal. The issue with riding horses is one of welfare, not consent or freedom.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK616110/
You are wrong. All thinking, feeling animals have the capacity for morality. Do not confuse morality with lawfulness. These ideas are not connected in this context.
Compassion and empathy have long been touted to be the traits that separate man from beast, but lo, compassion exists in the animal kingdom as well.
Nothing that makes people be people is significantly different than anything else found in the animal kingdom. Segregation of empathy is also a learned trait of those who trend towards lower overall intelligence.
Yes, the enslaved animals who are inconsistently fed and ignored. All those dogs forced to live in apartments without any interaction the entire day while their slavers slave away as slaves themselves.
Just because a few people out there genuinely care and treat their pets correctly does not mean the rest are. This is why PETA exists.
Obviously you have some extremely thick rose colored glasses on.
