Because riding on their fronts is too intimate.
👏👏👏
Tons of comments, but no answer from an actual horse.
As a horse on the interwebs, I would have replied, but everyone would just call me a neigh-sayer
Standard. This place is turning into Reddit faster than a head of state can gas his own office.
I used to watch this video two years ago, and a few other horse history video on that channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMHqp0M0T4Q
It’s a more approachable video for general audience so it may not be super scientific. But they included the source/papers in the description from proper academics.
Wild horses were originally not fit for riding. It is found that their bones would not be able to support to be ridden. But at the time, horses also started interacting with human & being domesticated as food & material sources.
But human do realize the power horses have. Human started developing chariots to be pulled by horses. The chariot technology spread around the north eurasian steppe to south in the south-west asia & egypt. But I cannot definitively say if the chariot techbology in egypt or persia came from north or it’s developed locally. I haven’t exactly find out about the relationship of both region when it comes to chariot technology.
During few thousand years later horses also slowly evolved physicaly to be able to be ridden. And so in later bronze age, nomadic steppe people emerges such as the Saka/Scythians, Xiongnu, etc.
My personal searching two years ago was definitely very focused on central asia/eurasian steppe region. So I cannot say much about the same stuff happening in south-west asia despite I know there are a lot going on in that area at the same time. But then after writing this and re-read the question, this doesn’t exactly answer why horses allow human to ride them 🤣🤣 I only say about how human changed horse.
Horse evolution is an overlooked aspect that we ignore often. Think of them like dogs: today, there are several different breeds of varying sizes, some burlier, some sleeker. In the early stages of domestication, this variety wasn’t there, but with time and lots of selective (cross)breeding, we got to where we are today.
Belgian Drafts tend to be big, and this one was the absolute unit
It’s a work of fiction, but I highly recommend Last of the Amazons by Stephen Pressfield. He does fantastic, heavily researched historical fictions with an abundance of resources at the end to reaearch the history he bases his plots off of.
It’s basically about Eurasian tribes who had horses central to their religious mythos and how they dealt with the Greeks. It’s fantastic.
Thank you for the recommendation! That does sound familiar. The Scythian is the people the Greeks called to what Persian people call Saka.
They don’t, they’ve been domesticated and trained to allow it.
Cows didn’t let us ride them, and look what we did to them… Look what we did to them!!!
Yummy milkers
We have food
Why do the proletariat allow the bourgeoisie to ride on their backs?
the horse contains the spirit of the rider’s dead mom obviously
She maintains the desire to be ridden, even in the afterlife.
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.
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.That explains why my Red Dead horses always buck me off. To give their carnivorous friends a treat while they gallop away. Sonofabitch Rockstar, you did it again
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.
Because we spent generations training and breeding them to allow us.
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.
Cat lives to tower over horses lmao
TL;DR: Submission by cringe
How did you find a video of me with my cat??
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.
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.
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.
Big, scaredy cats
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
Usually we teach them from the time they are 3 years old. So basically when they are teens
Why do humans allow cats to ride in their arms?
Toxoplasmosis
Best. Parasite. Ever.
Because that fucker are not allowed on the kitchen bench
