Credit: Dan Soder on the Your Mom’s House podcast
If horses were obligate carnivores, they probably wouldn’t have been as readily domesticated. It’s cheaper to feed a plant-eater than a meat-eater. Dogs are omnivores, for example, because human scraps are often plant-based so it was an advantage to be able to eat more plants than a wolf might have.
And if horses weren’t domesticated, that would have changed the development of technology and warfare massively. We might have still had the wheel from the potter’s wheel, but things like carts and chariots might not have developed and spread like they did if one of the main animals to pull carts was not domesticated.
The way the horse and stirrup changed warfare also would have made ancient war very different, as there’d be no sudden incursions of horse-mounted warriors invading various regions at various times so I bet a lot of national borders in the modern day would be quite different.
Eh, I mean, donkeys? Camels? Elephants? We’d probably just use different animals.
brb, saddling up my buffalo
Horses are known to eat small animals. There’s a video floating around of a horse eating a chick (baby chicken).
So many people seem to not realize this.
Most animals will eat whatever they can get in their mouth. They may be specialized for some things, but it’s not like koalas won’t eat bugs.
Especially for, like, typical, common animals. My ducks eat anything. It’s especially fun when one of them catches a tiny snake.
People also seem to ask me what I feed them a lot and then get confused when I tell them I feed them duck food, as if they don’t feed their dogs dog food and their cats cat food.
I always get a giggle outa that one
Since they would be predators, their eyes would be positioned on the front of their skulls instead of the sides for better stereoscopic vision, and they would likely have sharp incisor teeth. Those 2 things alone are pretty creepy.
Yes, super scary. And another commenter mentioned they would also have paws with claws and legs more like big cats. Oh man
That one person you know who absolutely loves horses would be a lot creeper
Not really. People still love cats, and cats are as carnivorous as it gets.
Watch LotR to see ridden carnivores.
I don’t know, how would the world be different, but to spark your fantasy, imagine horses being herbivores, but turn carnivorous at every conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn (~ every 20 years).I read that as cannibals imao. I would imagine in a world like that there would be shows where horses would face each other to the death in a battle and eat the loser in front of everyone.
You reminded me of a standup show by Anthony Clark (He was the main on the show, Yes, Dear) where he talked about growing up on a farm and always thought about feeding the cows a hamburger, lol.
Pigs will eat anything you give them. It would be very easy to feed pork to pigs.
Horses would probably be dead or endangered if they were more trouble than they were worth.
