deadcatwithaflamethrower:

vampireapologist:

simonalkenmayer:

kyraneko:

argumate:

nicdevera:

vegacoyote:

inquisitorhierarch:

betterbemeta:

volfish:

evnw:

railroadsoftware:

handsomejackass:

horse people are weird

what does this mean

horses can see demons

@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses can see netherbeings?? Will we ever know the extent of their powers???

I think I have reblogged this before but I’ll answer it again bc its a fascinating answer I feel and i was more funny than informational last time.

The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.

Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.

Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.

However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!

On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.

The joke in OP though is that many horses that are bred to be very fast, like thoroughbreds, are also bred and encouraged to be high-energy and highstrung. Making them more anxious and prone to seeing those ‘demons.’ All horses in a sense are going to be your anxious friend, but racehorses and polo ponies and other sport horses can sometimes be your anxious friend that thinks they live in Silent Hill.

Reblogging some horse knowledge for certain people who write fantasy books but know nothing about horses *cough cough*

YUUUUP. All this.

Horses are unpredictable uncanny demon-things, gotcha. And I love that there’s a Roman term for horse-gremlin.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

this is a great line.

I once talked to a guy who gives search-and-rescue training, and he says when there are mounted SAR trainees doing a search simulation, he has hidden himself in the woods and watched the human riders search past obliviously, while every single horse knew he was there.

This is quite amusing. It is true that horses have often been used to sniff out demons, witches, and monsters. I enjoy this, because while they may react to my presence, it is usually quite simple to subdue them, so long as I am well-fed. My aura has put the most skittish mount into a state of wide-eyed stillness.

The horse I ride is afraid of the sound of his own breathing smh.

My least favorite misconception about horses is that they can recognize fear and that they exploit this fear to take advantage of a nervous handler.

Now, I’ve handled horses with….willful attitudes who do like to take a mile for every inch a nervous or inexperienced ride allows.

HOWEVER. The truth is horses are almost never this devious. Horses are prey animals, and like is stated above, they’re programmed to be on edge. Humans are predators, and horses can tell. We raise horses to listen to, rely upon, and always be watching their human handlers for things as minuscule as hand gestures.
Imagine now a horse, programmed to watch out for predators and relying on this seemingly all-powerful human predator for direction. And the human is scared.

The horse can sense it, but it has no idea that it could be the source of fear.

To a horse, its human handler being frightened is the equivalent of you running into a an angry grizzly bear, only for the bear to run away frightened after glancing behind you. You’d turn around looking for whatever monster scared it off.

What I’m saying is, when a horse senses your fear, it thinks “holy hell. If the human’s afraid, something really bad must be here. We’re doomed!!! ”

So yes. Horses sense your fear and act out. But it’s almost never because they’re taking advantage of you.

And if they are, be excited; you have a very smart horse.

There is a reason that I named my last horse Trickster, and that is because that motherfucking bitch was one of the smartest horses I’ve ever met. 

Any horse who knows how to lull you into a false sense of “Everything is fine”, and then patiently waits for a split-second distraction to use an entire TREE to remove you from its back is a horse that knows what it’s doing, and what it’s doing is being a vengeful asshole.

We understood each other very well, she and I.