Post by Karat on Mar 1, 2013 9:21:43 GMT -5
It should be noted, when approaching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, that the creator, Lauren Faust, has commented that the ponies are ponies. They eat things like grass and flowers, typically being vegetarian outside of the use of eggs and dairy products. They typically use their mouths to move things as opposed to using their hooves as hands (though the hoof hand concept has become much more acceptable recently). They also do not wear clothes except for the sake of affectations or social status definers. They are not pony people, I believe I remember reading in an interview. They are ponies. They were meant for pony behavior and not to be overly personified outside of the realm of sentience.
This actually proves much deeper than preferring to be in groups and eating grass, however. It should be noted that all of the leaders, from Celestia to the mayor of Ponyville, are female. This is keeping in accordance to the fact that horses and other equines in real life often have their herds led by a lead mare. That’s right! Females are the government in real life amongst ponies just like in this series of animation. I’m not sure if Lauren Faust was specifically intending for this due to such knowledge. It is fact, though. Males just don’t run things (that’s why King Sombra proved such a terrible leader, I suppose).
Now, this isn’t to be sexist or anything. This is to lead up to what this portion of the analysis is about. Outside of the Canterlot Guard and the episode “Hearts and Hooves Day”, the typical ratio observed between stallions and mares is roughly 1:10 to 1:20. This is actually much like real life equine society again. The following is a quote from Wikipedia from the article on “Equine Behavior”:
“Biologically, and depending on the physical environment available to a herd in the wild, there is only a need for one stallion for every 10 to 20 mares, though most bands are smaller than this. Domesticated stallions, with careful human management, often "cover" more mares in a year than is possible in the wild. Traditionally, Thoroughbred stud farms limited stallions to breeding between 40 and 60 mares a year.”
Now, supposing that the ponies are technically domesticated without human hands, this is going a little far with the latter sentence. However, the former note upon wild populations is highly applicable. Let me spell this out clearly:
I am inferring that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic could support the natural practice of equine polygyny. This is applying logical fact to known fiction.
I apologize, if I have offended anyone's sensibilities with the idea of pony polygyny. You may choose whether you play here or not. I will not force you to play here, if you feel uncomfortable with it.
This actually proves much deeper than preferring to be in groups and eating grass, however. It should be noted that all of the leaders, from Celestia to the mayor of Ponyville, are female. This is keeping in accordance to the fact that horses and other equines in real life often have their herds led by a lead mare. That’s right! Females are the government in real life amongst ponies just like in this series of animation. I’m not sure if Lauren Faust was specifically intending for this due to such knowledge. It is fact, though. Males just don’t run things (that’s why King Sombra proved such a terrible leader, I suppose).
Now, this isn’t to be sexist or anything. This is to lead up to what this portion of the analysis is about. Outside of the Canterlot Guard and the episode “Hearts and Hooves Day”, the typical ratio observed between stallions and mares is roughly 1:10 to 1:20. This is actually much like real life equine society again. The following is a quote from Wikipedia from the article on “Equine Behavior”:
“Biologically, and depending on the physical environment available to a herd in the wild, there is only a need for one stallion for every 10 to 20 mares, though most bands are smaller than this. Domesticated stallions, with careful human management, often "cover" more mares in a year than is possible in the wild. Traditionally, Thoroughbred stud farms limited stallions to breeding between 40 and 60 mares a year.”
Now, supposing that the ponies are technically domesticated without human hands, this is going a little far with the latter sentence. However, the former note upon wild populations is highly applicable. Let me spell this out clearly:
I am inferring that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic could support the natural practice of equine polygyny. This is applying logical fact to known fiction.
I apologize, if I have offended anyone's sensibilities with the idea of pony polygyny. You may choose whether you play here or not. I will not force you to play here, if you feel uncomfortable with it.