Territories

[Illu]

Any chance of stallions claiming land?

[Tiggs]

Hmm, I think I thought about it long ago, but the fact that horse herds tend to roam a lot might cause problems. Aya used a "favourite grazing area" thing in her signature for Aleo. So perhaps instead of official claiming of land, we use some kind of unofficial claiming like that?

How territorial are horses? I guess they stick to familiar areas, but in the books, the herds overlap some grazing areas.

[Illu]

Yeah, they overlap on the edges in the books but will force another herd out if they get too deep. In real life, stallions will challenge another the second they see them and furiously guard their herdlands and only leave if living there becomes too hard or another stallion beats them.

[aya]

I think this would probably complicate things a little

[chibinezu]

If that's the way it works in real life it isn't going to make for very interesting roleplay moment since each of the stallions will be expected to fight if they come into range.

Besides I like to go by Wiki and it mentions no such thing, hell in the mustang section all it mentions is that they travel several kms. every day which also makes it hard to define territories.

[Corowa]

I'm not really certain if horses have defined grazing areas. In the books I've read, most of the fights seem to be about dominance, and most of the time mares aren't even taken. A lot of fighting between horses is sorted out through posturing, and most of the time the fights resulted when two herds grazed too close to each other.

[Tiggs]

Aye. And on a more administrative note: organising territories is downright tedious x.x Kossy is quite low-maintenance really which is great for me XD

[aya]

illuminance said:

Yeah, they overlap on the edges in the books but will force another herd out if they get too deep. In real life, stallions will challenge another the second they see them and furiously guard their herdlands and only leave if living there becomes too hard or another stallion beats them.

This is a huuuuuge fallacy. This is taken from a Professor of Animal Behaviour's lecture:

"This is why domesticated horses can be harnessed one after another in a row. They’re programmed to follow the lead of another horse. On top of that, you often find different herds of horses in the wild occupying overlapping areas. They don’t fight off other herds that enter the same territory. But it’s exactly the opposite with an animal like the antelope, which … well … antelopes are herd animals too. But unlike horses, a male antelope will fight fiercely to prevent another male for entering its territory during the breeding season. OK. Very different from the behaviour of horses. Try keeping a couple of male antelopes together in a small space and see what happens."

I'd just like to add its common knowledge that it is very hard to domesticate fiercely territorial animals.

[chibinezu]

Well there we go, no extra work for the mods and makes for better roleplaying and all based on actual fact XD