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there's other exemple of reintroduced species by accident. mainly in Europe - welsh catfish in central and western Europe - tamia in Europe - racoon dog in Europe - wapiti in some part of Europe - macaque in Gibraltar - camel in north america (even if there's no real feral or wild population, just captive one)
It's funny how many facts I see in videos like this that I unconsciously assume was common knowledge just because I learned it at an early age. Every time it happens, I realize that it's just thanks to getting a subscription to _Zoobooks_ when I was six (and re-reading them a hundred times because the internet didn't exist yet), but it always throws me off for a second.
Yes!! I don't know what Zoobooks is but your comment made me realize I have the exact same pattern of not realizing when my animal knowledge (or knowledge of other things I'm specifically hyper-interested in) is in fact not common knowledge. It's hard to tell what's what!
You didn't bring up my favorite weird horse fact. They don't really walk on their toesnails. They walk _in_ them. The hoof has this complex and physiologically delicate suspension structure that holds the foot up off the ground.
One of the most common words for horse in Ojibwe is bebezhigooganzhii, which translates literally to "one finger-/toe-nail for each", talking about its weird-ass legs. Ojibweg call it like we see it. Most animal names describe animals like that, but its really funny when it just is pointing out its weirdest feature/behavior. But the naming is very useful tbh, you get a sense of the animal rather than English nouns that often aren''t descriptives. For example a firefly is called "waawaatesi" literally translating to "the one that flashes lights," white-tail deer are "waawaashkeshi" which translates to "the one that flashes when it runs," and a spider is "asabikeshii" translating to "the one that makes nets."
It's true for a lot of things in most languages. You'll usually find when you translate say, a city name, into a language you know it'll end up being something rather straight forward. Namekagon lake? Sturgeon lake. Белгород? white city--in reference to the stones that made up the area. Shanghai/上海? On the sea. God knows how many places are named 'Spring Field' or 'Oak Land' as is--once you start translating them all into English it'll be too many! Arguably, 'Horse' itself is very probable to have linguistic roots in an ancient word that meant something like 'to run'--that meaning however would simply be lost to time as the word ends up sticking around just for the animal it refers to. And not to mention all the modern animals with english names that are rather self evident. Anteater. Fly. Woodpecker. Redwing Blackbird. Mudskipper. And words with meaning in root languages of english--like Rhinoceros=Nose Horn, Octopus=Eight Feet, and Squirrel = Shade Tail.
Missed one of my favorite horse facts: they have a nearly 360 degree field of vision. Those big beautiful eyes (with oval-ish pupils) aren't just for show! The only place they can't see is directly behind them in a roughly 5-10 degree arc and a tiny bit in front of their nose. One downside of their side-mounted eyes is that they have a relatively narrow band of binocular vision (where the FOV from both eyes overlaps) of roughly 55-60 degrees for depth perception and whatnot.
Horses actually still have extra toes, but they are up near the "knee" (more technically the ankle, but it's so far from the hoof we don't tend to recognise that) and simply vestigal, probably. Called chestnuts.
Forget the foot: they have split brains! Anyone who trained horses can tell you that you need to teach a horse everything TWICE: If a horse is scared by something, say, a rustling bush, and you want to get them accustomed to it, you need to do it separately from BOTH SIDES: passing the scary bush when its from the horse's left, and then the right. And further more: they have a stronger side. Most horses are left-brained, meaning they would learn faster on their left side, find it easier to bend their bodies to the left, and naturally start their gate with their left foot.
Minor quibble, but horses would actually be mostly right-brained - the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of bilaterally symmetrical animals, and the left hemisphere controls the right side.
@@lynvanderwel3124Eh, some mammals have more split brains than others. I don't know about horses but if you look at dolphins, one side of their brain can sleep while the other keeps them swimming and going to the surface to breathe, and then the sides switch. Humans can't do that. We have a mix between hemisphere specialization and cross-hemisphere specialization, and young brains are much less specialized, with interesting results like the fact that a baby who has one healthy hemisphere and one that failed to develop will end up as a normal-presenting teenager and adult who can walk, talk, do math, etc.
As a long time horse owner, I can confirm that they are wildly weird. It’s such an ill advised hobby for so many reasons, but I can’t help myself, I just love the little sausages
HORSES! HORSES! This was great fun :D I appreciate the pronunciation correction quite a lot, I only just learned that myself a few months ago and it's awesome. Horses are bizarre indeed, in more ways than those big ol' toes - you mentioned they can't breathe through their mouths, but another weird one is: if they are standing still for too long and/or in an enclosed space (say, a plane) for too long, they can get pneumonia! They're incredibly susceptible to bronchial and lung problems if they don't have the opportunity to frequently walk and trot at the least, and it's best if they have space to gallop because they are, quite literally, built to RUN, they need it for their best mental and physical health. And for anybody squicked by the idea of hoof trimming and horse shoes - as Hank said, that's a gigantic, VERY thick toenail, hoof trimming is a pedicure for the horse. They have to be trained to tolerate it because for them it's really very weird for a human to handle their feet and the sensations ARE unusual; but it isn't painful and in many cases it's a real relief. And the shoes provide cushioning for the most sensitive part of the hoof, a soft fleshy bit just behind the cuticle part that gets trimmed (and is where the horseshoe nails go). That cuticle is something like an inch thick in the front!! It's not a thing for us humans to do piercings of our fingernails the way we pierce our ears, but if you did so, it wouldn't hurt you, right? So, same for the horse. I think it's also pretty damn incredible to consider that a half inch thick piece of iron or steel is necessary to actually withstand the abuse of the horse just doing its thing. That's one tough set of toes!! ...yes, I got called horse-crazy a lot as a kid, and I wear the label proudly to this day hahaha!
Horses also store readily oxygenated red blood cells in their spleen. That's how an animal that size can run as quickly as they can and still have enough oxygen for all of their muscles.
but have you heard that they breathe while running because their elasticy guts literally smoosh their lungs back and forth with momentum? And it's particularly easy for those weird elastic guts to get tangled and cause fatal problems?
The vet during my large animal classes during my vet tech program was a horse person and loved to say that horses spend most of their life actively trying to die because of how sensitive they are to stuff like that 😂
@amberdawn5372 yesss another person who went through a vet tech program ^^ my professor would have agreed he always said that horses would have died off themselves or evolved if humans didn't interfere 😂 they are just so incredibly susceptible to getting ill and dying, though alpacas aren't much better >.
@@houndgirl7365 I don't know about that. A lot of cultures and individual places keep their horses semi-feral with little to no notable issue. The Spanish Riding School in Vienna keeps their mares, foals and young horses free range on a huge mountain, the Camargue horses just roam around the marshlands, the Mongols and Icelandic don't bother with fences. I think, maybe, what's wrong isn't so much that horses are extremely fragile as it is that they're prone to a lot of lifestyle illnesses. But I'll also have to add all the standard disclaimers to this. Not an expert in any way.
Another case of an animal technically being invasive but technically being reintroduced would be camels in the southwestern US. Camels were brought there as an experimental camel corps for the US army during the mid-1800s as pack animals. The project was abandoned I believe due to the Civil War, with some being sold and supposedly some being in the wild, probably didn’t last, but it is a case
The main reason camels did not become very numerous in North America is that 1.mostly male camels were imported. Very few females were imported and further very few gave birth on American soil. The reason mostly males were imported was as work animals. 2. Camels were not well liked by horse and cattle farmers. If camels were not owned, both Native and Whites killed camels either for the Hell of it, or as food. The fact males were more numerous accounts for people here thinking camels are ill tempered. Deprive a male animal of the opportunity to mate and he will be grumpy.
Bactrian camels were imported into Canada. They were used by gold miners in the area of Kamloops and a few others in other parts of the Yukon. In the U.S. both Dromedary and Bactrian camels were imported, but Dromedary were considered better for use in the desert Southwest.
I'm glad that someone else acknowledges how weird (and imo creepy) horses are.. The way humans talk about then it's like "so beautiful, so magestic!" and then you look at one and it's features are so uncanny and distorted it's like the deadhand of ungulates...
mmhm, and if you haven't already (and aren't easily squicked out) you should see what a newborn foal's hooves look like. See, they kinda have knives for feet, which is counter-productive for getting born (and having your mother live long enough to nurse you). So.. nature came up with a workaround. A horrid, nasty workaround
For real, as someone who grew up around horses, it’s amazing that they’ve managed to survive into the modern era. At the same time our modern civilization wouldn’t exist without them.
Horses are the swans of mammals. We've projected all these ideas of grace and wisdom onto them, made art of them, written poetry about them. Then you meet one IRL and you realise it's just a highly strung large animal that farts a lot and is often startled by its own farts (or in the case of swans, an overgrown aggro goose that eats soggy leaves and sounds like an old man with a cold)
A friend of mine once said that “horses are just giving their middle finger to the earth, all the time” because essentially the only bone they have is an enlarged 3rd digit! Have fun with that!
Even weirder, horses have a cartilaginous bit at the back of their hooves that acts as a shock absorber, and a pump to help move the blood back up into their legs.
I've never heard or thought that camels look like moose before, but now that you say it, my mind is reeling from the thought that camel and moose are actually quite similar and that camels somehow came from North America. Now I'm imagining if things had gone a bit differently we could have moose with humps and camels with antlers... so weird.
@@Thinginator It's actually even weirder. All the desert traits were evolved for the tundra. The big flat feet were for walking on the snow, and the humps of fat were for surviving long winters. Imagine giant Bactrian camels. They're ice age llamas!
Camels also originated in North America, migrated to Asia, and then became extinct, at least in North America (although some migrated south and evolved to become vicunas, llamas and alpacas). Also like horses, camels were reintroduced into North America much later. Wild (actually feral) camel populations never flourished like horses, but camels were seen as late as 1890 in the desert southwest. They are not present in the wild in North America any longer.
3:58 technically, you're incorrect. Tarsus (second blue bone from the top) is already part of the foot, and BTW the same is true for e.g. birds. It's just that some animals walk on toes rather than their whole feet. Science calls them digitigrades. Equidae are a specific case of the latter because the only walk on the very tips of their toes, we call such animals unguligrades.
Not just running on their toes. They run on their toenails. They also only have one toe on each foot. 3:20. In general, yes, feet (or hands) at the end of each limb. Go look at the skeleton of Stellar's Sea Cow (now extinct as they were reportedly delicious). It's got no hands on it's arms. No hand bones at all. The arm (flipper) ends in it's radius and ulna.
Don't MOST mammals walk on their toes? Equines may be the only ones that walk on ONE toe, but it's MUCH more common to have three-section limbs than the two-section ones we have. Bears are the main quadruped I can think of that doesn't have three-section limbs (they walk on the flat of their foot like humans do). Dogs walk on tiptoe -- the lowest section of their leg is made of the bones we have between our toes and heel. Same for all the ungulates Hank mentioned at the end. Even elephants walk on their toes, though the lowest section of their limbs is very short. The limb skeleton plan that's unusual is OURS.
Good point! Though I would say that really most quadrupeds are evolved for movement on flat land, but not necessarily big open land if that makes sense? Horses seem to be uniquely adapted to specifically grassland environments and move faster across such terrain than any other herd animal, and the foot/toe construction appears to be vital to that. But primates mostly DON'T walk on flat ground, they stick to the trees for most "long distance" travel. (Not sure if baboons were in the trees at first or what, though.) So in arboreal species, it seems like gripping hands are way more common, since they're more useful - thinking of sloths as well as monkeys. Arboreal cats seem to have some differences too in the limbs but it's maybe more to do with tendons than bones... time to go chase down an idea or two!
There are kinda three basic foot/locomotion strategies: unguligrade animals (or ungulates) who bear their weight on the tips of their toes [these are basically your hoofed mammals... & whales], digitigrade animals whose toes are flat on the ground & bear their weight more on what would be the ball of the foot in a human [your cats, dogs, most rodents & birds to name a few], & plantigrade animals whose toes & foot bones are flat on the ground & bear their weight on the soles of their feet [us, bears, rabbits, hedgehogs, most marsupials, etc]. Some animals can alternate between methods (mostly plantigrade animals picking their heels up for some gait) but those are the three basic divisions. tl;dr when Hank's saying "walks on its toes" here he means on the very tips of its toes, like a ballet dancer en pointe, without any foot bones flat on the ground
@@Beryllahawk Thanks for the reply. I half agree and half disagree about "big open land." All the North American, southern African, and, say, Siberian (or Asian plain) animals evolved for big open land -- bison, pronghorn, giraffe, rhino, all the plains antelope species from wildebeest to gazelle. But they seem to only run when something's chasing them -- they sprint and then stop. Horses (like humans) seem to be uniquely suited for long distance running. (Yet I'm not sure even horses can match humans as marathoners -- being able to run down almost anything we hunted may have been our original edge in survival). So, I disagree about uniquely adapted to grassland terrain -- many other species fit that. But I agree about uniquely adapted to moving faster than any other herd animal on average (in a marathon, not a sprint where the gazelle wins).
@@MartyMango0 Thanks for the reply. You were much more precise and scientific about this than I was. Yes, hoofed animals walk on the END of their toe bones. I failed to make that distinction. Both unguligrade and digitigrade (I learned two words today!) animals wind up with 3-section legs, which is what I was focused on and why I conflated them, but they aren't identical -- in digitigrade animals, the lowest section of the leg consists of the bones we have from our toes to our heels, whereas in unguligrade animals, it's those bones plus the toe bones. (There's probably a scientific term for 2- versus 3-section legs, too, but I can't think how to Google for it.)
@@gmsherry1953 Completely valid points! I agree about the distance running. Though I think maybe horses (today) do it for fun in a sense. I fully admit to bias here! But watching horses just hanging out in the pasture, even an older gelding will sometimes just seem to get the urge to run. Maybe that's why horses, with wolves (also pretty good distance runners) were such great candidates for our earliest companions.
Fun fact! Dolphins are also even-toed ungulates! But then they decided to get rid of the whole get 6 situation. So deer are more closely related to dolphins than horses.
Horse also have 4 nostrills. Galloping pull air in and pushes itout their lungs (that can expend to fill almost all of the rib cage). They can not breat through their mouth, so they can not pant. They have a heart rate range from 20 to 240 beats per minute (which is huge!) and have enough reserve red blood cells in their spleen to dubble the amount of oxygen given off during maximal exercise. Also, the lowest parts of the leg doesn't have muscle in it.
I suppose if the dromedary were released into America like they were in Australia, that could be said, that they were reintroduced, but I do remember the episode saying that camellids went extinct in North America partly because they weren't as well adapted to grasslands, whereas horses were (America today still being pretty much the same grasslands of the miocene, pliocene, and pleistocene). I guess maybe if you released the alpacas from all the alpaca farms. How different really are the Rockys from the Andes?
@@TiggerIsMyCatthey were. The US Army brought camels over for travel across the deserts in our Southwest. They then decided they were too ornery to be worthwhile. And they still wander and breed in our desert. They just weren't as widespread as the horse in America. They were actively part of the army from 1856-1866. Then they just released them.
I have seen a thriving peacock/ peahen tribe in the wooded mountain farm environment of southern Vermont. They escaped from a college project. @@TiggerIsMyCat
In New Mexico, we have 'wild' horses that are the direct descendants of the horses brought by the conquistadors, which are a bit different than the ones brought later
I have an example of a family of animals originating in an area, going extinct and then being re-introduced. Primates are thought to originate in North America before going extinct, and were re-introduced when new world monkeys and we arrived.
In ‘92 I went on a road trip from SoCal to Pike’s Peak in CO, stopping at places like Bryce/Grand Canyons. One of the stops was at the petrified forest where I got a book detailing a ton of the extinct NA megafauna. The bit about 3-toed horses and reintroduction to NA after their extinction fascinated me as a child.
it has been confirmed that the botai horses were in fact, not domestic, so przewalski's are indeed not "feral", however a few of the founding members were hybrids with domestic horses, it is minimal, kinda like american bison and cattle. on horses in the americas, it has also been confirmed in a new study published in 2023 that przewalski's interbred with extinct north american horses, such as haringtonhippus, in their own words "relatively recently", and another study describes how eurasian and north american equus ferus interbred frequently and would often migrate in and out of beringia for thousands of years. there is also the eDNA studies from alaska, yukon, and alberta showing signs of horses as recently as 5,000 years ago. and remains found in mexico also have some interesting results, that paper was published in 2022. equus caballus (domestic horses) are also genetically the same thing as equus ferus which was also found to be genetically the same as equus lambei, the "yukon horse". so, if horses, equus ferus, evolved in north america at least 1 million years ago, and survived right up until the time their species was beginning to be domesticated in eurasia... shouldn't it be considered native? and its not like their predators are truly extinct either. wolves, cougars, jaguars, brown bears, they all have long histories alongside horses too.
3:03 I don't know an exact example, but there is a funny similar one. Romans introduced Fallow Deer to the UK in the first century. These guys got out, and went extinct (although there is some debate on if it was all of them and some populations survived...but you will see what I mean). Later, in the 1100s, Normans introduced Fallow Deer AGAIN. And once again, they got out and started a population. This time thought they DID stick. Not sure why, perhaps a larger gene pool gave them just enough to stick. But yeah, multiple accidental introductions of the same species.
One thing I don't get about horses is how Arabian horses have one less vertebra and set of ribs compared to other horses, but they're all still the same spices. How?
I’ve always wondered that too. My guess would be that it was selective breeding since there are a few advantages; a shorter back equals a stronger back, gives them a better ratio between their neck length and back length that supposedly helps with speed, and it gives them that beautiful high tail set. They’re still perfectly capable of producing viable offspring with other breeds of horses so they wouldn’t qualify as being their own species. It’s just a genetic variation same as eye or coat color.
There are humans who have fewer or more vertebra or ribs than average. A difference like that is called individual variation where certain traits can vary between individuals of a species. A mutation in one or two genes is not enough to split an animal into a subspecies or a new species, if that were the case than you would have to ask why humans with blue eyes aren't a different species from those with brown eyes. For the Arabian to be a different species it would have to not be able to produce fertile offspring with other horses (there are of coarse exceptions to this rule like with Polar Bears and Brown Bears being able to hybridize.) and prefer to only reproduce with other Arabians vs other horse breeds unless there's no other Arabians available. You could also make a similar comment on dog breeds. Dogs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but are all the same species biologically.
dont most animals walk on their toes? If you look at a dog's legs for example you will realize that the bones that are analogous to our feet have been stretched upwards to the point where the dog is actually walking around on its toes and the "foot" has become part of the leg, same is true for cats, so horses are not unique in that regard, the abnormal bit is walking on only one toe
Speaking from experience, horses are very difficult animals to keep and you really need to know what you’re doing if they’re going to be happy and healthy under your care. You have to be careful about when and what you feed them precisely because they can’t throw up. If they eat something that upsets them they could “colic” which means their intestines start to twist and could lead to their death. Also you need to be very careful about their legs because if they damage one of their legs enough where they can’t stand on it, it’s pretty much a death sentence. They really need all four legs to support their weight and they aren’t like dogs or cats that can just rest and lay down while they heal. They can for a little while but their legs and feet are actually an important part of their circulatory system where the act of them standing and moving helps pump the blood from their feet back into their heart. Also if they lay down too long their weight crushes their lungs. It would cause a domino effect of health issues that’s very difficult to stop even if you put them in a sling. Casts don’t work very well either because they’re so rough on anything you put on their legs they most likely won’t stay on long enough to allow them to heal properly. I think they are making strides in better treatments but it remains a stubborn problem. For as much as they depend on their legs and feet you’d think they’d be more sturdy and tough but sadly their anatomy makes them prone to serious injury. On the other hand they’re also very strong. They really are strange animals.
I'm surprised there was no talk about the horse's front limbs too, like the "knee" on the front legs is actually their wrist and the long bone under their wrist is an elongated palm (metacarpal) bone.
I think camels had a pretty similar biogeographic history, also originating in the americas before going extinct in North America before also being reintroduced
Horses also have bone-bone-foot as do most four-legged animals. It is just that their foot bones are extended into their own leg structures from the olecranon (equivalent to the human heel, called the horse's "knee") down. Same bones, different structure. Some of their bones have merged and others come from what is just cartilage in our own limbs. The hoof is basically their second toe (Now their only toe. The other digital bones are either missing or repurposed. Holding a horse's "forearm" is basically holding its hand. Holding the hoof of the front leg is like holding its index finger. ("Pull my finger," the horse says.)
Camels are also an example of an invasive/reintroduced species. They too were native to North America but went extinct here shortly after some moves to Asia.
"Common" animals are often misconstrued as, but anything but, "boring." Their "common" status was earned through some really exceptional traits we take for granted just because familiarity breeds contempt.
Horses can be very relaxed and friendly and let anybodyride them and others are just naturally a bit highly strumg and love a few people and hate most. Some are bit naughty and kick over thier water bucket just for fun and other very large horses when you need a couple of stept sto mount them, if they don;t like you just move forward slightly so you can't, becuase the stirrup has gone out f reach of your foot. Horses! You've just got to love them!!
Thing is, we bred horses to be beautiful from the perspective of a person standing up (as we are noted for doing) on our hind legs. So we see this: 🐎 But if you’ve ever been down on the ground gazing up, even the most magnificent, romantic, heartthrob of a stallion looks sillier than a camel. 🐪 Great show. Hank looks good any way you look at him.
Another example of an "invasive but also reintroduced" species could be the camel. Much like the horse, they originated in North America, crossed into Asia and beyond, then went extinct in North America. But in the camel's case, the US military imported a bunch for use as pack animals in the 19th century, and the remnants of some of those herds went feral and could be seen in the wild throughout the American Southwest for a period of time stretching into the early 20th century. I'm not sure if any feral camels remain, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a very small population still roaming about.
If you want to add something really bizarre, cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are also even-toed ungulates. We know that as mammals, they had to once have been land animals, and they had to evolve from somewhere. Molecular biology says that they are most closely related to hippopotamuses. Something else that is really cool is that if you look at the bone structure of a dolphin, you can see the general vertebrate body plan. Particularly, you can see the remnants of finger and toe bones in their flippers.
not only all of that but the bone that got chosed for the toe is analogous to our middle fingers so they're just walkin around flippin us off all day every day.
Another weird horse fact: their teeth continue to erupt their whole life, to counteract the wear and tear of eating fibrous grasses. But unlike rodents, the teeth aren't actually growing. They just start out life with several inches of pre-developed tooth jammed into the jaw and skull. Look up x-rays of young horse skulls and you'll see especially in the lower jaw the "stored" teeth can reach pretty much all the way down to the jawline. For horses, a lost tooth or imperfect bite alignment can lead to uneven wear that eventually makes chewing extremely difficult. OG wild horses probably had amazing dentition, but a lot of modern domestic horses need to have their teeth filed down by a veterinarian to keep them nice and even.
LMAO, you said hands are just legs you type with, which is even funnier to me because just a few days ago, I saw Forrest Valkai describe feet as stupid hands! 😂🤣😂🤣😂
So, the research about true wild horses (Takhi) actually being feral Botai horses has not really held up to scrutiny in the following years. Several rebuttal papers have since come out demonstrating that the supposed evidence for bit wear in the teeth of those Takhi was just regular wear and tear from grazing, not consistent with a bit in the mouth. And that same original paper claimed there was evidence of horse milk being consumed, which has also not stood up to scrutiny. The general consensus now is that the Botai were just hunting and eating these wild horses, like so many peoples on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. It also wouldn't have made any sense if this one culture managed to domesticate horses, breed them for riding, and then not spread these horses to any other cultures, and for these domesticated horses to never contribute to the gene pool of later (confirmed) domesticated horses. So the Takhi probably is indeed a truly wild horse. A bit and riding would have also been very anachronistic,
Kinda invasive: earthworms and honeybees kinda naturalized in North America. Although, some worms are truly invasive, like the Asian Jumping Worms I see being chaotic in Wisconsin. They eat 4x as much as the European earthworms we see as native, which destroys the soil structure.
Camels also were native to North America. There’s actually extant plants that are still adapted for being eaten by camels, and modern camels can still eat them! I’m not sure if there’s any feral population of camels in North America, but if there is, it would be also a reintroduced species, just like horses!
HANK. HANK WE NEED TO KNOW WHY HANDS ARE WEIRD, PLEASE. Its been years, we have to know why hands are weird, I've thought about this at least twice a week since the original Horse Video.
Thankyou for clearly and correctly calling them _"feral_ horses". We have a massive feral horse problem in Australia... they are incredibly destructive to our native species' habitats. Efforts to eliminate or even control their populations are constantly hindered by individuals that have a romantic view of _"wild horses"._
Dogs, specifically new world dog breeds, went extinct and then were reintroduced. Most species of dogs (one excluded) can trace their lineage to the old world breeds. But we know that similar breeds were here before colonization. The chihuahua being a perfect example. It was definitely here before colonization. But the genetic make up of the modern chihuahua suggests that it was developed in the old world.
Question about the Bizarre Beasts Valentine Cards! And posting it here because I'm not sure where else to go with this question lol: Is there anything written on the inside of the cards?
The Takhi is very close to the Norwegian Fjordhorse, by the looks of it? I never understood how such an unique horse was to be found in western Norway of all places. Kind of far away from, well everything. Viking travellers must have brought it home from work trips (migrating for mercenary work has always been a thing in Scandinavia since forever) in the Mongolian era (same as the last times of the Viking era).
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there's other exemple of reintroduced species by accident. mainly in Europe
- welsh catfish in central and western Europe
- tamia in Europe
- racoon dog in Europe
- wapiti in some part of Europe
- macaque in Gibraltar
- camel in north america (even if there's no real feral or wild population, just captive one)
Hank. I think we can all say here that we would love to hear you rant on for hours about how weird hands/feet are.
Thanks for the image.
(Horses tippy toeing around)
So happy I signed up. Should have done it sooner. I've got 2 so far waiting for what I guess is a coconut crab next
Dude I could really watch you rant on about how weird hands are
frggin shout outs to those ancient artists who liked horses as much as some humans do today and painted them on a cave wall
They painted all the big beasts on cave walls.
@@slappy8941 thats true. theyre so awesome
could we argue those were the first horse girls? lol
Horse girls: a tale as old as civilization
Horse cavegirls.
It's funny how many facts I see in videos like this that I unconsciously assume was common knowledge just because I learned it at an early age. Every time it happens, I realize that it's just thanks to getting a subscription to _Zoobooks_ when I was six (and re-reading them a hundred times because the internet didn't exist yet), but it always throws me off for a second.
Reading is Fundamental and AMAZING ❤
Yes, Zoobooks kid here too!
Ranger Rick was a big one for me!
I just went to the museum... Like that picture of the horse foot becoming one hoof was either there, or fossils were.
Yes!! I don't know what Zoobooks is but your comment made me realize I have the exact same pattern of not realizing when my animal knowledge (or knowledge of other things I'm specifically hyper-interested in) is in fact not common knowledge. It's hard to tell what's what!
I can't believe you didn't show an image of the super creepy hooves that newborn foals have
Fairy fingers!
Oh yeah, before they fall off, right?
I will never forget when I first learned about “foal slippers” such an innocent name for something with such an upsetting appearance!
He talked about it in another video period I think it was a vlogbrothers maybe?
I imagine there were a lot of brutal missteps on their evolutionary journey before foal slippers succeeded.
You didn't bring up my favorite weird horse fact. They don't really walk on their toesnails. They walk _in_ them. The hoof has this complex and physiologically delicate suspension structure that holds the foot up off the ground.
Heheh toesnails
One of the most common words for horse in Ojibwe is bebezhigooganzhii, which translates literally to "one finger-/toe-nail for each", talking about its weird-ass legs.
Ojibweg call it like we see it. Most animal names describe animals like that, but its really funny when it just is pointing out its weirdest feature/behavior.
But the naming is very useful tbh, you get a sense of the animal rather than English nouns that often aren''t descriptives. For example a firefly is called "waawaatesi" literally translating to "the one that flashes lights," white-tail deer are "waawaashkeshi" which translates to "the one that flashes when it runs," and a spider is "asabikeshii" translating to "the one that makes nets."
Interesting facts! 😊
Ya can't tell me fire fly doesn't describe the thing it does. Lightning bug also, tho less so. Spider, idk.
It's true for a lot of things in most languages. You'll usually find when you translate say, a city name, into a language you know it'll end up being something rather straight forward. Namekagon lake? Sturgeon lake. Белгород? white city--in reference to the stones that made up the area. Shanghai/上海? On the sea. God knows how many places are named 'Spring Field' or 'Oak Land' as is--once you start translating them all into English it'll be too many!
Arguably, 'Horse' itself is very probable to have linguistic roots in an ancient word that meant something like 'to run'--that meaning however would simply be lost to time as the word ends up sticking around just for the animal it refers to.
And not to mention all the modern animals with english names that are rather self evident. Anteater. Fly. Woodpecker. Redwing Blackbird. Mudskipper.
And words with meaning in root languages of english--like Rhinoceros=Nose Horn, Octopus=Eight Feet, and Squirrel = Shade Tail.
Missed one of my favorite horse facts: they have a nearly 360 degree field of vision. Those big beautiful eyes (with oval-ish pupils) aren't just for show! The only place they can't see is directly behind them in a roughly 5-10 degree arc and a tiny bit in front of their nose. One downside of their side-mounted eyes is that they have a relatively narrow band of binocular vision (where the FOV from both eyes overlaps) of roughly 55-60 degrees for depth perception and whatnot.
And that's why you don't come up from behind or touch the front of their head unannounced (when you don't know them)
@@ApequH I assume this is also because of their two main weapons being there as well
Horses actually still have extra toes, but they are up near the "knee" (more technically the ankle, but it's so far from the hoof we don't tend to recognise that) and simply vestigal, probably. Called chestnuts.
Forget the foot: they have split brains! Anyone who trained horses can tell you that you need to teach a horse everything TWICE:
If a horse is scared by something, say, a rustling bush, and you want to get them accustomed to it, you need to do it separately from BOTH SIDES: passing the scary bush when its from the horse's left, and then the right. And further more: they have a stronger side. Most horses are left-brained, meaning they would learn faster on their left side, find it easier to bend their bodies to the left, and naturally start their gate with their left foot.
Minor quibble, but horses would actually be mostly right-brained - the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of bilaterally symmetrical animals, and the left hemisphere controls the right side.
All mammals have split brains, the reason why you need to train on both sides is because they lack object permanence
@@lynvanderwel3124Eh, some mammals have more split brains than others. I don't know about horses but if you look at dolphins, one side of their brain can sleep while the other keeps them swimming and going to the surface to breathe, and then the sides switch. Humans can't do that. We have a mix between hemisphere specialization and cross-hemisphere specialization, and young brains are much less specialized, with interesting results like the fact that a baby who has one healthy hemisphere and one that failed to develop will end up as a normal-presenting teenager and adult who can walk, talk, do math, etc.
That's a myth and has been scientifically proven wrong
As a long time horse owner, I can confirm that they are wildly weird. It’s such an ill advised hobby for so many reasons, but I can’t help myself, I just love the little sausages
That is the first time I've seen a horse called a sausage 😂
Their sausages aren't that little in my experience.
well the meat makes good sausages, and also, a good foal steak is uber delish@@StonedtotheBones13
@@MrRizeAG...ayo🤨📸 you better explain this.
@@MrRizeAG hilarious, extremely clever, no one but you has thought of this joke. You should really go into standup
To avoid predators, you got to stay on your toes!
Quit horsing around with these jokes.
HORSES! HORSES!
This was great fun :D I appreciate the pronunciation correction quite a lot, I only just learned that myself a few months ago and it's awesome.
Horses are bizarre indeed, in more ways than those big ol' toes - you mentioned they can't breathe through their mouths, but another weird one is: if they are standing still for too long and/or in an enclosed space (say, a plane) for too long, they can get pneumonia! They're incredibly susceptible to bronchial and lung problems if they don't have the opportunity to frequently walk and trot at the least, and it's best if they have space to gallop because they are, quite literally, built to RUN, they need it for their best mental and physical health.
And for anybody squicked by the idea of hoof trimming and horse shoes - as Hank said, that's a gigantic, VERY thick toenail, hoof trimming is a pedicure for the horse. They have to be trained to tolerate it because for them it's really very weird for a human to handle their feet and the sensations ARE unusual; but it isn't painful and in many cases it's a real relief. And the shoes provide cushioning for the most sensitive part of the hoof, a soft fleshy bit just behind the cuticle part that gets trimmed (and is where the horseshoe nails go). That cuticle is something like an inch thick in the front!! It's not a thing for us humans to do piercings of our fingernails the way we pierce our ears, but if you did so, it wouldn't hurt you, right? So, same for the horse. I think it's also pretty damn incredible to consider that a half inch thick piece of iron or steel is necessary to actually withstand the abuse of the horse just doing its thing. That's one tough set of toes!!
...yes, I got called horse-crazy a lot as a kid, and I wear the label proudly to this day hahaha!
I've been saying "BONE BONE FOOT" to myself whenever I saw a horse in the last four years.
Horses also store readily oxygenated red blood cells in their spleen. That's how an animal that size can run as quickly as they can and still have enough oxygen for all of their muscles.
but have you heard that they breathe while running because their elasticy guts literally smoosh their lungs back and forth with momentum? And it's particularly easy for those weird elastic guts to get tangled and cause fatal problems?
And it’s super easy to screw up feeding them - too much spring grass can kill them.
Ah yes, can't sleep on their back or roll over as the gut will crush their lungs, can't eat particular types of grass, will screw with their feet?!
The vet during my large animal classes during my vet tech program was a horse person and loved to say that horses spend most of their life actively trying to die because of how sensitive they are to stuff like that 😂
@amberdawn5372 yesss another person who went through a vet tech program ^^ my professor would have agreed he always said that horses would have died off themselves or evolved if humans didn't interfere 😂 they are just so incredibly susceptible to getting ill and dying, though alpacas aren't much better >.
@@houndgirl7365 I don't know about that. A lot of cultures and individual places keep their horses semi-feral with little to no notable issue. The Spanish Riding School in Vienna keeps their mares, foals and young horses free range on a huge mountain, the Camargue horses just roam around the marshlands, the Mongols and Icelandic don't bother with fences.
I think, maybe, what's wrong isn't so much that horses are extremely fragile as it is that they're prone to a lot of lifestyle illnesses.
But I'll also have to add all the standard disclaimers to this. Not an expert in any way.
Another case of an animal technically being invasive but technically being reintroduced would be camels in the southwestern US. Camels were brought there as an experimental camel corps for the US army during the mid-1800s as pack animals. The project was abandoned I believe due to the Civil War, with some being sold and supposedly some being in the wild, probably didn’t last, but it is a case
Came to the comments to mention camels!
As chronicled in the movie "Hawmps".
Terrific movie. Much better than that other movie " Blazing Saddles".
Yeah, the feral camels didn't last too long. They eventually got rounded up again, so there aren't any left in the Southwest.
The main reason camels did not become very numerous in North America is that
1.mostly male camels were imported. Very few females were imported and further very few gave birth on American soil.
The reason mostly males were imported was as work animals.
2. Camels were not well liked by horse and cattle farmers. If camels were not owned, both Native and Whites killed camels either for the Hell of it, or as food.
The fact males were more numerous accounts for people here thinking camels are ill tempered.
Deprive a male animal of the opportunity to mate and he will be grumpy.
Bactrian camels were imported into Canada. They were used by gold miners in the area of Kamloops and a few others in other parts of the Yukon.
In the U.S. both Dromedary and Bactrian camels were imported, but Dromedary were considered better for use in the desert Southwest.
I'm glad that someone else acknowledges how weird (and imo creepy) horses are.. The way humans talk about then it's like "so beautiful, so magestic!" and then you look at one and it's features are so uncanny and distorted it's like the deadhand of ungulates...
mmhm, and if you haven't already (and aren't easily squicked out) you should see what a newborn foal's hooves look like. See, they kinda have knives for feet, which is counter-productive for getting born (and having your mother live long enough to nurse you). So.. nature came up with a workaround. A horrid, nasty workaround
Haha, yeah. I have litterally said "she's super sweet, she bites though." About a 600 kg animal
Both. They're both.
Majestic and creepy
Their faces are so gross looking. Why are they so long?
horses are proof that evolution isn’t about being the best, it’s about being good enough
For real, as someone who grew up around horses, it’s amazing that they’ve managed to survive into the modern era. At the same time our modern civilization wouldn’t exist without them.
You don't need to outrun the fastest lion, only the slowest horse.
It’s about being in the right place at the right time and being able to adapt to changed conditions rapidly
And then there are Panda and koalas
All I can think of is the McElroys horsebonologist bit. “Thems is legs!”
I was thinking more about torsie the torso horse!
Horses are the swans of mammals. We've projected all these ideas of grace and wisdom onto them, made art of them, written poetry about them. Then you meet one IRL and you realise it's just a highly strung large animal that farts a lot and is often startled by its own farts (or in the case of swans, an overgrown aggro goose that eats soggy leaves and sounds like an old man with a cold)
Great analogy
A friend of mine once said that “horses are just giving their middle finger to the earth, all the time” because essentially the only bone they have is an enlarged 3rd digit! Have fun with that!
Even weirder, horses have a cartilaginous bit at the back of their hooves that acts as a shock absorber, and a pump to help move the blood back up into their legs.
“Bone, bone… bone, bone, bone”
Reminds me of Captain Holt yelling “Bone!” at Rosa for a good half hour
Another example of reintroduction is humped camels. They originally evolved in Canada, hence their moosiness.
I've never heard or thought that camels look like moose before, but now that you say it, my mind is reeling from the thought that camel and moose are actually quite similar and that camels somehow came from North America. Now I'm imagining if things had gone a bit differently we could have moose with humps and camels with antlers... so weird.
@@Thinginator It's actually even weirder. All the desert traits were evolved for the tundra. The big flat feet were for walking on the snow, and the humps of fat were for surviving long winters. Imagine giant Bactrian camels. They're ice age llamas!
Camels also originated in North America, migrated to Asia, and then became extinct, at least in North America (although some migrated south and evolved to become vicunas, llamas and alpacas). Also like horses, camels were reintroduced into North America much later. Wild (actually feral) camel populations never flourished like horses, but camels were seen as late as 1890 in the desert southwest. They are not present in the wild in North America any longer.
3:58 technically, you're incorrect. Tarsus (second blue bone from the top) is already part of the foot, and BTW the same is true for e.g. birds. It's just that some animals walk on toes rather than their whole feet. Science calls them digitigrades. Equidae are a specific case of the latter because the only walk on the very tips of their toes, we call such animals unguligrades.
Not just running on their toes. They run on their toenails. They also only have one toe on each foot.
3:20. In general, yes, feet (or hands) at the end of each limb. Go look at the skeleton of Stellar's Sea Cow (now extinct as they were reportedly delicious). It's got no hands on it's arms. No hand bones at all. The arm (flipper) ends in it's radius and ulna.
Whoa, that's wild! I had no idea that the sea cow's flippers were like that.
I was surprised to learn that horses can't breathe through their mouths. How common (or uncommon) a trait is that among air breathing "beasts"?
Don't MOST mammals walk on their toes? Equines may be the only ones that walk on ONE toe, but it's MUCH more common to have three-section limbs than the two-section ones we have. Bears are the main quadruped I can think of that doesn't have three-section limbs (they walk on the flat of their foot like humans do). Dogs walk on tiptoe -- the lowest section of their leg is made of the bones we have between our toes and heel. Same for all the ungulates Hank mentioned at the end. Even elephants walk on their toes, though the lowest section of their limbs is very short. The limb skeleton plan that's unusual is OURS.
Good point! Though I would say that really most quadrupeds are evolved for movement on flat land, but not necessarily big open land if that makes sense? Horses seem to be uniquely adapted to specifically grassland environments and move faster across such terrain than any other herd animal, and the foot/toe construction appears to be vital to that.
But primates mostly DON'T walk on flat ground, they stick to the trees for most "long distance" travel. (Not sure if baboons were in the trees at first or what, though.) So in arboreal species, it seems like gripping hands are way more common, since they're more useful - thinking of sloths as well as monkeys. Arboreal cats seem to have some differences too in the limbs but it's maybe more to do with tendons than bones... time to go chase down an idea or two!
There are kinda three basic foot/locomotion strategies: unguligrade animals (or ungulates) who bear their weight on the tips of their toes [these are basically your hoofed mammals... & whales], digitigrade animals whose toes are flat on the ground & bear their weight more on what would be the ball of the foot in a human [your cats, dogs, most rodents & birds to name a few], & plantigrade animals whose toes & foot bones are flat on the ground & bear their weight on the soles of their feet [us, bears, rabbits, hedgehogs, most marsupials, etc]. Some animals can alternate between methods (mostly plantigrade animals picking their heels up for some gait) but those are the three basic divisions.
tl;dr when Hank's saying "walks on its toes" here he means on the very tips of its toes, like a ballet dancer en pointe, without any foot bones flat on the ground
@@Beryllahawk Thanks for the reply. I half agree and half disagree about "big open land." All the North American, southern African, and, say, Siberian (or Asian plain) animals evolved for big open land -- bison, pronghorn, giraffe, rhino, all the plains antelope species from wildebeest to gazelle. But they seem to only run when something's chasing them -- they sprint and then stop. Horses (like humans) seem to be uniquely suited for long distance running. (Yet I'm not sure even horses can match humans as marathoners -- being able to run down almost anything we hunted may have been our original edge in survival). So, I disagree about uniquely adapted to grassland terrain -- many other species fit that. But I agree about uniquely adapted to moving faster than any other herd animal on average (in a marathon, not a sprint where the gazelle wins).
@@MartyMango0 Thanks for the reply. You were much more precise and scientific about this than I was. Yes, hoofed animals walk on the END of their toe bones. I failed to make that distinction. Both unguligrade and digitigrade (I learned two words today!) animals wind up with 3-section legs, which is what I was focused on and why I conflated them, but they aren't identical -- in digitigrade animals, the lowest section of the leg consists of the bones we have from our toes to our heels, whereas in unguligrade animals, it's those bones plus the toe bones. (There's probably a scientific term for 2- versus 3-section legs, too, but I can't think how to Google for it.)
@@gmsherry1953 Completely valid points!
I agree about the distance running. Though I think maybe horses (today) do it for fun in a sense. I fully admit to bias here! But watching horses just hanging out in the pasture, even an older gelding will sometimes just seem to get the urge to run.
Maybe that's why horses, with wolves (also pretty good distance runners) were such great candidates for our earliest companions.
Fun fact! Dolphins are also even-toed ungulates! But then they decided to get rid of the whole get 6 situation. So deer are more closely related to dolphins than horses.
Horse also have 4 nostrills. Galloping pull air in and pushes itout their lungs (that can expend to fill almost all of the rib cage). They can not breat through their mouth, so they can not pant. They have a heart rate range from 20 to 240 beats per minute (which is huge!) and have enough reserve red blood cells in their spleen to dubble the amount of oxygen given off during maximal exercise.
Also, the lowest parts of the leg doesn't have muscle in it.
But as a freak of nature, then can like humans, sweat.
@@Carewolf Yes! And the hairs carry water to the tips so they dry faster
Missed an opportunity to go into the weirdness of horse hooves' function in pumping blood out of the horse's leg.
At this point, it's no more bizarre, but more fantastic beasts. Aren't they all ?
Even cavemen had the weird horse girl in the village… you can’t escape them.
3:47 easily the hardest I've laughed at any educational video
Why they sneakin' around so much?
* narrows eyes *
Camels also share the same overall story as horses. PBS eons has some good videos about it.
I suppose if the dromedary were released into America like they were in Australia, that could be said, that they were reintroduced, but I do remember the episode saying that camellids went extinct in North America partly because they weren't as well adapted to grasslands, whereas horses were (America today still being pretty much the same grasslands of the miocene, pliocene, and pleistocene).
I guess maybe if you released the alpacas from all the alpaca farms. How different really are the Rockys from the Andes?
@@TiggerIsMyCatthey were. The US Army brought camels over for travel across the deserts in our Southwest. They then decided they were too ornery to be worthwhile. And they still wander and breed in our desert. They just weren't as widespread as the horse in America. They were actively part of the army from 1856-1866. Then they just released them.
Camel feet are amazing too!
I have seen a thriving peacock/ peahen tribe in the wooded mountain farm environment of southern Vermont. They escaped from a college project. @@TiggerIsMyCat
I bet John Green knows about that channel already ...
In New Mexico, we have 'wild' horses that are the direct descendants of the horses brought by the conquistadors, which are a bit different than the ones brought later
I have an example of a family of animals originating in an area, going extinct and then being re-introduced. Primates are thought to originate in North America before going extinct, and were re-introduced when new world monkeys and we arrived.
In ‘92 I went on a road trip from SoCal to Pike’s Peak in CO, stopping at places like Bryce/Grand Canyons. One of the stops was at the petrified forest where I got a book detailing a ton of the extinct NA megafauna. The bit about 3-toed horses and reintroduction to NA after their extinction fascinated me as a child.
it has been confirmed that the botai horses were in fact, not domestic, so przewalski's are indeed not "feral", however a few of the founding members were hybrids with domestic horses, it is minimal, kinda like american bison and cattle. on horses in the americas, it has also been confirmed in a new study published in 2023 that przewalski's interbred with extinct north american horses, such as haringtonhippus, in their own words "relatively recently", and another study describes how eurasian and north american equus ferus interbred frequently and would often migrate in and out of beringia for thousands of years. there is also the eDNA studies from alaska, yukon, and alberta showing signs of horses as recently as 5,000 years ago. and remains found in mexico also have some interesting results, that paper was published in 2022. equus caballus (domestic horses) are also genetically the same thing as equus ferus which was also found to be genetically the same as equus lambei, the "yukon horse". so, if horses, equus ferus, evolved in north america at least 1 million years ago, and survived right up until the time their species was beginning to be domesticated in eurasia... shouldn't it be considered native? and its not like their predators are truly extinct either. wolves, cougars, jaguars, brown bears, they all have long histories alongside horses too.
The UK and Ireland were mostly covered with ice for a long time, so perhaps several mammals were reintroduced by humans.
3:03 I don't know an exact example, but there is a funny similar one.
Romans introduced Fallow Deer to the UK in the first century. These guys got out, and went extinct (although there is some debate on if it was all of them and some populations survived...but you will see what I mean).
Later, in the 1100s, Normans introduced Fallow Deer AGAIN. And once again, they got out and started a population. This time thought they DID stick. Not sure why, perhaps a larger gene pool gave them just enough to stick.
But yeah, multiple accidental introductions of the same species.
Man time really flies. I can't believe its been so long
One thing I don't get about horses is how Arabian horses have one less vertebra and set of ribs compared to other horses, but they're all still the same spices. How?
I’ve always wondered that too. My guess would be that it was selective breeding since there are a few advantages; a shorter back equals a stronger back, gives them a better ratio between their neck length and back length that supposedly helps with speed, and it gives them that beautiful high tail set. They’re still perfectly capable of producing viable offspring with other breeds of horses so they wouldn’t qualify as being their own species. It’s just a genetic variation same as eye or coat color.
There are humans who have fewer or more vertebra or ribs than average. A difference like that is called individual variation where certain traits can vary between individuals of a species. A mutation in one or two genes is not enough to split an animal into a subspecies or a new species, if that were the case than you would have to ask why humans with blue eyes aren't a different species from those with brown eyes.
For the Arabian to be a different species it would have to not be able to produce fertile offspring with other horses (there are of coarse exceptions to this rule like with Polar Bears and Brown Bears being able to hybridize.) and prefer to only reproduce with other Arabians vs other horse breeds unless there's no other Arabians available.
You could also make a similar comment on dog breeds. Dogs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but are all the same species biologically.
dont most animals walk on their toes? If you look at a dog's legs for example you will realize that the bones that are analogous to our feet have been stretched upwards to the point where the dog is actually walking around on its toes and the "foot" has become part of the leg, same is true for cats, so horses are not unique in that regard, the abnormal bit is walking on only one toe
3:45 he said all animals, he meant to say all vertabrates.
Speaking from experience, horses are very difficult animals to keep and you really need to know what you’re doing if they’re going to be happy and healthy under your care. You have to be careful about when and what you feed them precisely because they can’t throw up. If they eat something that upsets them they could “colic” which means their intestines start to twist and could lead to their death.
Also you need to be very careful about their legs because if they damage one of their legs enough where they can’t stand on it, it’s pretty much a death sentence. They really need all four legs to support their weight and they aren’t like dogs or cats that can just rest and lay down while they heal. They can for a little while but their legs and feet are actually an important part of their circulatory system where the act of them standing and moving helps pump the blood from their feet back into their heart. Also if they lay down too long their weight crushes their lungs. It would cause a domino effect of health issues that’s very difficult to stop even if you put them in a sling. Casts don’t work very well either because they’re so rough on anything you put on their legs they most likely won’t stay on long enough to allow them to heal properly. I think they are making strides in better treatments but it remains a stubborn problem.
For as much as they depend on their legs and feet you’d think they’d be more sturdy and tough but sadly their anatomy makes them prone to serious injury. On the other hand they’re also very strong. They really are strange animals.
I'm surprised there was no talk about the horse's front limbs too, like the "knee" on the front legs is actually their wrist and the long bone under their wrist is an elongated palm (metacarpal) bone.
I think camels had a pretty similar biogeographic history, also originating in the americas before going extinct in North America before also being reintroduced
Don't mind me, I'm just here waiting for more examples of "extinct in the continent but later rewilded through human action" examples 👀
3:54 that's an Allosaurus skeleton
yeah you would say that, huh, Mr. T Rex.
I was going to say this!
There is an old saying horses have five hearts; their legs and hoofs act like bloodpumps when they walk or run :)
Horses run on 4 middle fingers. And if you upset them they will likely encourage you to buck right off.
"The thing that really freaks me out about horses is their legs". Hank, that's a feeling that every horse owner knows very well!
Horses also have bone-bone-foot as do most four-legged animals. It is just that their foot bones are extended into their own leg structures from the olecranon (equivalent to the human heel, called the horse's "knee") down. Same bones, different structure. Some of their bones have merged and others come from what is just cartilage in our own limbs. The hoof is basically their second toe (Now their only toe. The other digital bones are either missing or repurposed.
Holding a horse's "forearm" is basically holding its hand. Holding the hoof of the front leg is like holding its index finger. ("Pull my finger," the horse says.)
It's crazy to think, even when we were living in caves and scratching to survive, art was still important to us.
I love that about humans - we gotta cook, make something, draw something, and tell stories.
3:00 “Are you getting this!? I think this shot is totes going to turn out great!!”
Good to know the leg bone is connected to the…foot bone. 🥳🎶🎵
this remix, remaster, Hank commenting on Hank thing is outright ducking with my mind.
..and i love it.
Dear Hank, we Eons fans miss you, please come back.
Camels are also an example of an invasive/reintroduced species. They too were native to North America but went extinct here shortly after some moves to Asia.
So horses are literally giving you four simultaneous middle fingers at all times. Constantly.
"Common" animals are often misconstrued as, but anything but, "boring." Their "common" status was earned through some really exceptional traits we take for granted just because familiarity breeds contempt.
🎶🎵Bone! Bone! Foot!🎵🎶
🎶🎵Bone! Bone! Foot!🎵🎶
i had not considered just how weird horses are until now. and i've seen hooves up close many times
Horses can be very relaxed and friendly and let anybodyride them and others are just naturally a bit highly strumg and love a few people and hate most. Some are bit naughty and kick over thier water bucket just for fun and other very large horses when you need a couple of stept sto mount them, if they don;t like you just move forward slightly so you can't, becuase the stirrup has gone out f reach of your foot. Horses! You've just got to love them!!
Leave them wanting more, right Hank? Eff u! 😂 That ending stung.
i knew all of this except how to say przevalski's and half the leg bones being foot except the toenail. i knew about the one big toenail.
Thing is, we bred horses to be beautiful from the perspective of a person standing up (as we are noted for doing) on our hind legs. So we see this: 🐎
But if you’ve ever been down on the ground gazing up, even the most magnificent, romantic, heartthrob of a stallion looks sillier than a camel. 🐪
Great show. Hank looks good any way you look at him.
What is this? A Hank Green channel I didnt know about?!
I remember saying that, about digitigrade feet and horses, and I got yelled at and told I was wrong and it's "completely different".
Another example of an "invasive but also reintroduced" species could be the camel. Much like the horse, they originated in North America, crossed into Asia and beyond, then went extinct in North America. But in the camel's case, the US military imported a bunch for use as pack animals in the 19th century, and the remnants of some of those herds went feral and could be seen in the wild throughout the American Southwest for a period of time stretching into the early 20th century. I'm not sure if any feral camels remain, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a very small population still roaming about.
If you want to add something really bizarre, cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are also even-toed ungulates. We know that as mammals, they had to once have been land animals, and they had to evolve from somewhere. Molecular biology says that they are most closely related to hippopotamuses. Something else that is really cool is that if you look at the bone structure of a dolphin, you can see the general vertebrate body plan. Particularly, you can see the remnants of finger and toe bones in their flippers.
BONE BONE FOOT!
I watched the og episode, not when it originally came out but a bit ago. And that horses are toe-walkers still sticks in my mind!!!
not only all of that but the bone that got chosed for the toe is analogous to our middle fingers so they're just walkin around flippin us off all day every day.
It amuses me how much of this video describes how weird horses already were, and THEN humans helped them get weirder!
Another weird horse fact: their teeth continue to erupt their whole life, to counteract the wear and tear of eating fibrous grasses. But unlike rodents, the teeth aren't actually growing. They just start out life with several inches of pre-developed tooth jammed into the jaw and skull. Look up x-rays of young horse skulls and you'll see especially in the lower jaw the "stored" teeth can reach pretty much all the way down to the jawline. For horses, a lost tooth or imperfect bite alignment can lead to uneven wear that eventually makes chewing extremely difficult. OG wild horses probably had amazing dentition, but a lot of modern domestic horses need to have their teeth filed down by a veterinarian to keep them nice and even.
Get I get a BONE BONE FOOOOOT
horse hooves = four legged ballet dancers, permanently en pointe
LMAO, you said hands are just legs you type with, which is even funnier to me because just a few days ago, I saw Forrest Valkai describe feet as stupid hands! 😂🤣😂🤣😂
So, the research about true wild horses (Takhi) actually being feral Botai horses has not really held up to scrutiny in the following years. Several rebuttal papers have since come out demonstrating that the supposed evidence for bit wear in the teeth of those Takhi was just regular wear and tear from grazing, not consistent with a bit in the mouth. And that same original paper claimed there was evidence of horse milk being consumed, which has also not stood up to scrutiny. The general consensus now is that the Botai were just hunting and eating these wild horses, like so many peoples on every continent except Australia and Antarctica.
It also wouldn't have made any sense if this one culture managed to domesticate horses, breed them for riding, and then not spread these horses to any other cultures, and for these domesticated horses to never contribute to the gene pool of later (confirmed) domesticated horses.
So the Takhi probably is indeed a truly wild horse.
A bit and riding would have also been very anachronistic,
of course they escaped...horses always like escaping like the barn brats they tend to be.
Hank saying “ A$$es “ is hilarious
Kinda invasive: earthworms and honeybees kinda naturalized in North America. Although, some worms are truly invasive, like the Asian Jumping Worms I see being chaotic in Wisconsin. They eat 4x as much as the European earthworms we see as native, which destroys the soil structure.
1 bone, 2 bones, many bones, digits
Hank will have time to talk about how weird hands are after he gets a little stoned.
Camels originated here, went extinct, came back because of people. Now there in every N.A zoo.
Camels also were native to North America. There’s actually extant plants that are still adapted for being eaten by camels, and modern camels can still eat them! I’m not sure if there’s any feral population of camels in North America, but if there is, it would be also a reintroduced species, just like horses!
I first drew a horse at the age of 9 and started to understand how bizarre their anatomy is! Their stomachs are surprisingly round and large as well!
HANK. HANK WE NEED TO KNOW WHY HANDS ARE WEIRD, PLEASE. Its been years, we have to know why hands are weird, I've thought about this at least twice a week since the original Horse Video.
Thankyou for clearly and correctly calling them _"feral_ horses". We have a massive feral horse problem in Australia... they are incredibly destructive to our native species' habitats. Efforts to eliminate or even control their populations are constantly hindered by individuals that have a romantic view of _"wild horses"._
when you tell me "four digits on front leg, three digits on hind leg" - a deer NEVER crosses my mind. kapybara or 12 lbs guinea pig does.
Dogs, specifically new world dog breeds, went extinct and then were reintroduced. Most species of dogs (one excluded) can trace their lineage to the old world breeds. But we know that similar breeds were here before colonization. The chihuahua being a perfect example. It was definitely here before colonization. But the genetic make up of the modern chihuahua suggests that it was developed in the old world.
I'm pretty sure camels have the same story as horses, and are also kinda re-introduced to America.
Camelids are also like that I think. Originated in N. America, went extinct then camels came back and became feral.
Question about the Bizarre Beasts Valentine Cards! And posting it here because I'm not sure where else to go with this question lol: Is there anything written on the inside of the cards?
I love horses so much!
The Takhi is very close to the Norwegian Fjordhorse, by the looks of it? I never understood how such an unique horse was to be found in western Norway of all places. Kind of far away from, well everything. Viking travellers must have brought it home from work trips (migrating for mercenary work has always been a thing in Scandinavia since forever) in the Mongolian era (same as the last times of the Viking era).
Aren't north American camels kinda the same? Went extinct then kinda reintroduced?