The Secret Reason Horses Let Us Ride Them
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a classic on why some animals are suited to farming and domestication and others are not.
What it is
CGP Grey explains why horses could be ridden and why other animals like zebras and bears were never domesticated for war or riding. It is a follow-up on the topic of animal domestication.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2018 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends emj · 2018-03 · on “Network of fortified towns indicates Amazon was once heavily populated”
CGP grey has a great video based on that book: [LINK] , there is also a follow up on the related subject of animal domestication [this video]
Recommends oblio · 2022-11 · on “Beyond Meat Is Struggling, and the Plant-Based Meat Industry Worries”
A classic: [this video] "Ten pounds of grass make a pound of steak. And ten pounds of steak make a pound of tiger. But these have the same number of calories - so you might as well just eat the cow and save yourself a lot of work."
Recommends bizzletk · 2023-09 · on “Digging In: Why Don’t Americans Eat Mutton?”
CGP Grey has a great video [0] that goes into why some animals are better to farm/breed/eat than others. The top selection criteria are animals that are: 1. Friendly 2. Feedable 3. "Fecund" 4. Family-friendly [0] [this video]
Cites jerf · 2018-02 · on “The Horse Helped Shape Our World at Great Expense to Itself”
One way in which horses shaped the world is precisely that they only existed in certain places: [this video] Absence vs. presence is an effect too!