A team at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, has discovered that nearly all today’s horses* trace tail-male back to Arabian and Turkoman stallions brought to Europe over the last seven centuries (yes, pre-thoroughbred). There is so little diversity in domestic horses’ Y chromosomes that it took an advance in research methods to be able …
Continue reading “The Daddies of Them All: How Arab and Turkoman Stallions Dominate the Gene Pool”
What the what? No, this is not breaking news, but something I discovered today. Lambourn will have the UK’s first “horse monorail” courtesy of Turkish industrialist and racehorse owner, Mehmet Kurt. As far as I can tell it’s a horsewalker from Tron (have a look at the photo here); apparently the “Kurtsystem” will be great …
How could you fit the history of horses and humans into a space? Not even the British Museum could hold it: it would be crammed like Tutankhamun’s tomb. Selene’s chariot horses on the eastern Parthenon pediment would be eyeball to eyeball with Da Vinci’s triple-life-size Spanish steed. The central atrium would be the tackroom to …
Continue reading “The Horse: from Arabia to Royal Ascot via the British Museum”
Thank you to Susan for sending me a link to this piece on horse prints in fashion at Style Bubble. Roo shared this, er, fascinating set of what you might call outsider art portraits of horses smoking cigarettes, for sale now on Craigslist New Orleans. Click now before they’re sold. Ed Ward let me know …
The Turkmen president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, is launching an annual national show for the famous Akhal Teke horses, says the BBC. Turkmenistan is the only former Soviet state in Central Asia where eating horse meat is strictly taboo. The national competition will also include an award for the best carpet featuring the horse, the best “holiday …
