Long Frozen DNA Shows How Humans Made Horses Faster - and

The WaPo ^ | April 27 2017 | Ben Guarino

[SteveH]

At some point in the past two millennia — peanuts on an evolutionary time scale — humans transformed their horses into equine speed demons. Selective breeding had a price, though, beyond $30,000 vials of pedigreed racehorse sperm. Unhelpful mutations plagued the animals. The current population of domesticated horses is about 55 million, but at some point in their history, their genetic diversity crashed. The Y chromosomes of all the world's stallions are now quite similar, suggesting that only a relatively few males were the ancestors of today's horses.

Humans have not always bred so selectively, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday. Horse domestication began about 5,500 years ago. Ancient equestrians “were not interested in superfast animals. They were more interested in diversity and potential,” said Ludovic Orlando, a professor of molecular archaeology at the University of Copenhagen's Natural History Museum of Denmark and an author of the new study.

[Mr Rogers]

I’m in Arizona. I had a mare raised here - Arabian - who had no problem with mud puddles in her corral...but in the wild? She was 100% certain a wild mud puddle was instant death!

She had speed too. I also have a BLM mustang pony. His main limit on speed is being 13.0 hands tall - and now in his upper 20s - but I’d swear he can live on air, has perfect feet and...yeah...he can move when he wants.

[Twotone]

We had several horses when I was a youngster. Almost all of them would pause & walk around a little tiny puddle of water on the macadam outside their paddocks. I figured it was because such puddles weren’t usually there, given we were in a pretty dry area.

I also remember a horse losing the Kentucky Derby, as it tried to jump the shadow of the twin spires right at the finish. It was neck & neck with another & that little hop caused it to lose by just a fraction of a second.