The bookmark: equine edition

Jeanette Herrle -

There's not a ton of equine-related material on Twitter (horse people definitely seem to favour Instagram & Facebook for their posts), but here's a sample of what I did find that seemed to me noteworthy enough to save.

The indispensible equus asinus

Self-medicating wild horses

Horse-human connection

Revising the history of the horse in the Americas

When hay was king

The indispensible equus asinus

Donkeys are fascinating creatures. They differ significantly from horses: hardier, thriftier, perhaps cleverer and definitely more challenging to work with for all these reasons. They are also a vital element of the transportation infrastructure in many places all over the world. And they are often subject to some very rough treatment: not just beatings, but ill-fitting homemade tack that causes terrible injuries and shoeing practices that are anything but friendly to their feet.

Self-medicating wild horses

Rosa is working with Brenda Holder, a traditional knowledge keeper of plant medicine and member of the Métis Nation of Alberta.

The year-and-a half-long research project consists of field work and data collection. Over the summer, Rosa, Holder, and the two students observed several bands of feral horses in the Sundre area, using a combination of remote cameras and direct observations to see what plants they were eating that may have anti-parasitic properties. They also took samples to determine the parasite loads of the horses; this will allow them to determine if there is a correlation between parasite burden and the plants ingested.

Horse-human connection

Revising the history of the horse in the Americas

Accounts of the horse's history in the Americas from indigenous peoples have long conflicted with the scholarly consensus, which has insisted that the horse only returned to the Americas with the Spanish invasion forces. What's especially interesting about this latest piece of scholarship is that it incorporates indigenous knowledge rather than simply dismissing it.

When hay was king

Not directly about horses, but a fascinating study of the economic impact of their needs--in the form of hay--at time when the working horse was central to everyday life.