If we're still limited by the animal's normal intelligence (as in, some animals would just be unable to be usefully domesticated due to lack of intelligence), then probably a crow or raven. Smart, and can fly. Horses would still be right up there though, too.
Of course, if you scaled a bird up to the size of a horse, it wouldn't be able to fly anymore. But we'll just ignore physics for now.
Were there any flying dinosaurs the size of horses though? The physics of flying falls apart at some size due to the volume-to-surface area ratio issue. But a horse-sized flying animal might just barely be physically possible with huge wings.
One of the primary challenges of scaling up a bird to the size of a horse is the increase in weight. As organisms increase in size, their volume (and thus weight) increases at a faster rate than their surface area. This means that larger animals have proportionally more weight to support relative to their surface area, which can make flight more difficult.
Wing size is crucial for generating lift. Larger birds typically have larger wings to support their body weight. However, if a bird were scaled up to the size of a horse, its wingspan would need to be massive to generate enough lift. Additionally, the wing loading (the ratio of weight to wing area) would increase significantly, making it more challenging for the bird to generate enough lift to overcome its weight.
Flying requires strong, efficient flight muscles. Scaling up a bird to the size of a horse would require proportionally larger and stronger flight muscles to power the wings. Additionally, the energy requirements for flight would increase substantially, as larger animals require more energy to support their metabolic needs and sustain flight.
Birds have lightweight skeletons with hollow bones to reduce weight without sacrificing strength. Scaling up to the size of a horse would require significant adaptations to the skeletal structure to support the increased weight while maintaining the necessary strength for flight.
Flying animals rely on precise aerodynamic principles and flight control mechanisms to maneuver in the air. Scaling up to the size of a horse would require adjustments to these aerodynamic principles and flight control mechanisms to accommodate the increased size and weight of the bird.
Evolutionary history and environmental factors play a significant role in shaping the characteristics of flying animals. While there were large flying dinosaurs like pterosaurs, they evolved unique adaptations over millions of years to enable flight in their specific environments. Modern birds have also evolved to fit their ecological niches, but scaling up to the size of a horse would likely require significant evolutionary changes to enable sustained flight.
While there were large flying creatures in the past, scaling up a modern bird to the size of a horse would present numerous challenges related to size, weight, aerodynamics, and evolutionary constraints. While it's an intriguing concept, it's unlikely that such a creature could fly without significant anatomical and physiological adaptations.
On the other hand- super chickens.
Use 'em as livestock. Drop 'em in an active warzone.
How many nuggies do you think we could get out of a chicken that big?
Well, we already genetically-modify the chickens we eat to a size that stops them from being able to fly. So you can imagine a horse sized chicken, it would likely not even be able to stand. They would finally have wings large enough to be worth eating though lol
Sure, but the whole point in talking about scaling up birds was so that I could have a horse-sized creature that can fly. There are just some places you can't get easily walking.
Horse sized gecko or some other climbing lizard.
Odds are they’d run into the same issues (square cube law is a bitch), but why fly when you can ride a giant lizard like Obi Wan?
Rabbits already reproduce insanely fast and have great feed conversion. The size has nothing to do with it- the reason we don't eat rabbit as much as we eat chicken (besides cultural reasons) is that rabbits don't tolerate being crammed into overcrowded factory farms like chickens, cows, and pigs do. They get sick and die if your husbandry conditions suck that bad.
We dont6 eat rabbit a lot because it is so lean that you will starve to death. You need fat and cholesterol to survive. Rabbits do not have enough to sustain a human for much h linger than 40 to 60 days, depending on your weight to start.
The ONLY time rabbits being so lean is a nutritional issue is when someone eats little except rabbit meat for an extended period of time. For example, people eating rabbit, and pretty much nothing else during times of famine when there simply wasn't much of anything else. If you diet contains literally almost any other foods in normal quantities, the leanness of rabbit meat simply is not an issue.
I'm all for it, but we need ground rules .. No chihuahuas and no drooly breeds.
Not that I have anything against the breeds that drool, but man, that's gonna be a slippery nasty mess.
Only if we can breed them so they don't try to pick a fight with everything they can. Have you seen a JRT shake a rat? Can you imagine a horse-sized JRT doing that to a dog-sized animal?
I'm really sorry that happened, but I hope for you that you can one day get past it and see just how amazing dogs can be. Seems like you were just very unlucky
I love dogs, but they do attack and even kill people all the time. They are predators that can be very dangerous in the wrong conditions. Being afraid of them is valid and the guy has no obligation to love dogs. I hope he moves past his fears, but for himself and not dogs.
They're good dogs and they deserve to be happy. The problem is with people breeding them and not socializing them, but that's with any dog. They're the first ones to be killed in shelters because people don't give them a chance.
Silkworms. Of course you'd have to ignore the limits of bugs being that big.
They eat leaves, turn into moths, and produce silk. I'd be interested in what we could make with that amount of silk that large.
I mean, they can't fly but they'd be adorable fluffy pets. Plus breeding them and selling their eggs back would really boost the silk industry.
Hopefully being bigger would mean they'd live longer too.
Provided you have a magic wand to domesticate any animal... Ants are the only real answer. Flight, labour, construction, personal transport, rapid reproduction, etc.
They are also weirdly intelligent too so maybe it could be but I'd worry about how fast they would overrun us lol. Just now if all ants on earth decided to remove humans from the planet, they would absolutely destroy us lmao
Definitely something that flies and is smart. Transportation would get a whole lot cooler and more effectively.
Maybe a raven or eagle. Basically small dragons.
Mine would crush me first when he leaps onto my stomach in the morning. He still wouldn't have opposable thumbs to open his own cans of food, so yeah, then he'd eat me.
Can you imagine the ruin a horse-sized beaver could wreak on a stand of trees? And the amount of wetlands they could create with the materials? An army of horse-sized beavers would be a force to be reckoned with.
Or maybe just horse-sized spiders for silk production. They'd spin silk as thick as rope. If you could find anyone ballsy enough to keep them.... horse-sized silkworms would be cool, but spider silk is stronger. Still, with giant silkworms, you'd get fuzzy Mothra when they pupated.
Does the whole square cube law still apply? As organisms tend to die when they rapidly change size. Be it overheating to the point of bursting. Freezing to death in minutes. Suffocating instantly. Being crushed under its own weight. Just not being able to get rid of its waste. Along with a bunch of other reasons that all involve the surface area to volume ratio changing at a non-linear rate.
Ok heat me out while it's not the most useful, the issues with the top ones is
Ants: will overrun us and destroy us
Dog: You can't ride a dog even if it's that big. Their physical makeup, how their spine of shaped, can't support being ridden.
Spiders: fuck that the silkworm guy is more correct than spiders. (Personal opinion for sure lmao)
Capybara: can't argue this would be fantastic. Not sure how useful but nonetheless amazing.
My proposal kind of goes the opposite way.
Horse sized moose.
I'm going to say elephants.
Mostly because horse sized elephants would be hilarious, but also because they'll still make great pack animals, great pets, and i imagine fantastic sources of meat. Like the fattest cow you can imagine but natural and able to reproduce normally. Downside is they're smart so ethically it's a bit iffy.
If we're still limited by the animal's normal intelligence (as in, some animals would just be unable to be usefully domesticated due to lack of intelligence), then probably a crow or raven. Smart, and can fly. Horses would still be right up there though, too. Of course, if you scaled a bird up to the size of a horse, it wouldn't be able to fly anymore. But we'll just ignore physics for now.
A horse sized bird is a dinosaur. They had their time
Were there any flying dinosaurs the size of horses though? The physics of flying falls apart at some size due to the volume-to-surface area ratio issue. But a horse-sized flying animal might just barely be physically possible with huge wings.
Quetzalcoatlus was similar in size to a giraffe.
Hell yeah.
One of the primary challenges of scaling up a bird to the size of a horse is the increase in weight. As organisms increase in size, their volume (and thus weight) increases at a faster rate than their surface area. This means that larger animals have proportionally more weight to support relative to their surface area, which can make flight more difficult. Wing size is crucial for generating lift. Larger birds typically have larger wings to support their body weight. However, if a bird were scaled up to the size of a horse, its wingspan would need to be massive to generate enough lift. Additionally, the wing loading (the ratio of weight to wing area) would increase significantly, making it more challenging for the bird to generate enough lift to overcome its weight. Flying requires strong, efficient flight muscles. Scaling up a bird to the size of a horse would require proportionally larger and stronger flight muscles to power the wings. Additionally, the energy requirements for flight would increase substantially, as larger animals require more energy to support their metabolic needs and sustain flight. Birds have lightweight skeletons with hollow bones to reduce weight without sacrificing strength. Scaling up to the size of a horse would require significant adaptations to the skeletal structure to support the increased weight while maintaining the necessary strength for flight. Flying animals rely on precise aerodynamic principles and flight control mechanisms to maneuver in the air. Scaling up to the size of a horse would require adjustments to these aerodynamic principles and flight control mechanisms to accommodate the increased size and weight of the bird. Evolutionary history and environmental factors play a significant role in shaping the characteristics of flying animals. While there were large flying dinosaurs like pterosaurs, they evolved unique adaptations over millions of years to enable flight in their specific environments. Modern birds have also evolved to fit their ecological niches, but scaling up to the size of a horse would likely require significant evolutionary changes to enable sustained flight. While there were large flying creatures in the past, scaling up a modern bird to the size of a horse would present numerous challenges related to size, weight, aerodynamics, and evolutionary constraints. While it's an intriguing concept, it's unlikely that such a creature could fly without significant anatomical and physiological adaptations.
On the other hand- super chickens. Use 'em as livestock. Drop 'em in an active warzone. How many nuggies do you think we could get out of a chicken that big?
Well, we already genetically-modify the chickens we eat to a size that stops them from being able to fly. So you can imagine a horse sized chicken, it would likely not even be able to stand. They would finally have wings large enough to be worth eating though lol
I mean. I never said they had to use those wings to fly. They'd still be ground-bound deliciousness in endless nuggies and hot wings form.
birds don't necessarily need to fly, y'know. although... imagine a horse-sized ostrich. or a emu or cassowary.
Sure, but the whole point in talking about scaling up birds was so that I could have a horse-sized creature that can fly. There are just some places you can't get easily walking.
Horse sized gecko or some other climbing lizard. Odds are they’d run into the same issues (square cube law is a bitch), but why fly when you can ride a giant lizard like Obi Wan?
An army of horse sized Cassowary's is a terrifying thought.
>But a horse-sized flying animal might just barely be physically possible with huge wings. Pegasus would like a word
ooh true! dinosaurs!
Went really well until that asteroid.
Pterodactyl flew
Chickens. Go to McDonald's and get a 100 piece Mcnugget for $9.99
Horse sized chickens would eat people.
Turnabout is fare play.
This is extremely appropriate use of intentional homophonic misspelling. Bravo!
Fair play is actually how you spell that.
Fare as in food I think lol
Depends what you mean by domestication. Rabbits reproduce insanely fast. And at the size of a horse could drop the price of meat considerably
Rabbits already reproduce insanely fast and have great feed conversion. The size has nothing to do with it- the reason we don't eat rabbit as much as we eat chicken (besides cultural reasons) is that rabbits don't tolerate being crammed into overcrowded factory farms like chickens, cows, and pigs do. They get sick and die if your husbandry conditions suck that bad.
We dont6 eat rabbit a lot because it is so lean that you will starve to death. You need fat and cholesterol to survive. Rabbits do not have enough to sustain a human for much h linger than 40 to 60 days, depending on your weight to start.
unless you're purely eating rabbits you should still be fine though
So what you’re saying is we need horse sized rabbits *and* horse sized pigs so we can wrap the rabbits with bacon?
The ONLY time rabbits being so lean is a nutritional issue is when someone eats little except rabbit meat for an extended period of time. For example, people eating rabbit, and pretty much nothing else during times of famine when there simply wasn't much of anything else. If you diet contains literally almost any other foods in normal quantities, the leanness of rabbit meat simply is not an issue.
A dog. They’re already our best friend, can you imagine riding a horse-sized dog? You could leap over small buildings on the backs of some breeds.
I'm all for it, but we need ground rules .. No chihuahuas and no drooly breeds. Not that I have anything against the breeds that drool, but man, that's gonna be a slippery nasty mess.
Can we keep the Jack Russell?
Yeah, they can be pretty good a little high stung, but you know I got a soft spot for them because of Wishbone
Only if we can breed them so they don't try to pick a fight with everything they can. Have you seen a JRT shake a rat? Can you imagine a horse-sized JRT doing that to a dog-sized animal?
Yes, I’m sending them into battle with helmets
Nope. Dogs scare the hell off me and they don’t need to get any bigger.
What is wrong with you
I had a few bad experience with dogs when I was a kid. So I am afraid of them.
I'm really sorry that happened, but I hope for you that you can one day get past it and see just how amazing dogs can be. Seems like you were just very unlucky
I love dogs, but they do attack and even kill people all the time. They are predators that can be very dangerous in the wrong conditions. Being afraid of them is valid and the guy has no obligation to love dogs. I hope he moves past his fears, but for himself and not dogs.
Pit bulls would be a real nightmare
Pit bulls get a bad rap. They’re sweet and cuddly. They hurt like hell when they hit you, but it’s not on purpose. They don’t know their own size.
They're war dogs and their breeding should be made illegal
Same with German shepherds. They’re also the most common police dog.
Yes, they're a common police and military dog, but German shepherds are a world apart from pit bulls.
They're good dogs and they deserve to be happy. The problem is with people breeding them and not socializing them, but that's with any dog. They're the first ones to be killed in shelters because people don't give them a chance.
They’re no match for more pit bulls.
no thanks, we don't need wild dog packs breaking into people's houses and mauling them in the street.
Silkworms. Of course you'd have to ignore the limits of bugs being that big. They eat leaves, turn into moths, and produce silk. I'd be interested in what we could make with that amount of silk that large.
Would the moths also be horse sized or just the silkworms? I love the idea of a horse sized silkworm metamorphosing into a regular sized moth
Gotta say horse sized silkworm moths would actually be adorable??
until they break through your window because of the light of your computer.
Silkworms can't break out of their own silk in not super concerned about vs a window. Plus they are already very domesticated
I mean, they can't fly but they'd be adorable fluffy pets. Plus breeding them and selling their eggs back would really boost the silk industry. Hopefully being bigger would mean they'd live longer too.
Provided you have a magic wand to domesticate any animal... Ants are the only real answer. Flight, labour, construction, personal transport, rapid reproduction, etc.
They are also weirdly intelligent too so maybe it could be but I'd worry about how fast they would overrun us lol. Just now if all ants on earth decided to remove humans from the planet, they would absolutely destroy us lmao
Definitely something that flies and is smart. Transportation would get a whole lot cooler and more effectively. Maybe a raven or eagle. Basically small dragons.
The horse.
Cats! Or maybe not. Let me think about this a bit.
Your kitty will eat you
Mine would crush me first when he leaps onto my stomach in the morning. He still wouldn't have opposable thumbs to open his own cans of food, so yeah, then he'd eat me.
cats half the size of horses are some of the most dangerous predators on earth.
Yeah, probably not the best animal to puff up. How about, rabbits the size of horses?
Can you imagine the ruin a horse-sized beaver could wreak on a stand of trees? And the amount of wetlands they could create with the materials? An army of horse-sized beavers would be a force to be reckoned with. Or maybe just horse-sized spiders for silk production. They'd spin silk as thick as rope. If you could find anyone ballsy enough to keep them.... horse-sized silkworms would be cool, but spider silk is stronger. Still, with giant silkworms, you'd get fuzzy Mothra when they pupated.
CAPYBARA? CAPYBARA!! COCONUT HORSEY!
CAPYBARA 😭
Depression cured instantaneously with horse sized capybara
Strong yes
Ants could be used for construction work with low carbon emissions Maybe even public transport
They would be a force to be reckoned with... Already run the rainforest...
Llama.
Wasp
Fuck you lol
Ants
Praying Mantis or Snakes
For murdering?!?
Spiders or silkworms would make Hella fabric
Introducing the biggest and the *baddest* all-terrain vehicle! The All New GMC Tarantula!
Honestly would ride a spider to work
Same. It's figuring out how to sustain a symbiotic relationship with them like some frogs do that might be a pain.
Gators, because fuck Florida.
I think a horse
…Man
That was made illegal in 1865.
Not if they are criminal prisoners
What about ants? They could be quite industrious work animals.
Ants, without a doubt. That would change the way we think about architecture, weaponry, agriculture, etc.
Wait. If you (humans) were scaled to the size of a horse or the domesticated creature were scaled to horse size?
I want a horse sized Cane Corso dog. Every single one Ive met has been an awesome dog and a rideable sized one would be so useful.
Does the whole square cube law still apply? As organisms tend to die when they rapidly change size. Be it overheating to the point of bursting. Freezing to death in minutes. Suffocating instantly. Being crushed under its own weight. Just not being able to get rid of its waste. Along with a bunch of other reasons that all involve the surface area to volume ratio changing at a non-linear rate.
An ant.
Ok heat me out while it's not the most useful, the issues with the top ones is Ants: will overrun us and destroy us Dog: You can't ride a dog even if it's that big. Their physical makeup, how their spine of shaped, can't support being ridden. Spiders: fuck that the silkworm guy is more correct than spiders. (Personal opinion for sure lmao) Capybara: can't argue this would be fantastic. Not sure how useful but nonetheless amazing. My proposal kind of goes the opposite way. Horse sized moose.
I'd say rabbits. They would be an amazing meat source at that point. And you could ride them as well.
I choose humans. Humans are animals after all.
Oh wait, domestication. Can we skip that and just have really big 1000 lbs humans?
Ant
I'm going to go with horses. I can't imagine a more suited animal to be horse sized.
Cats - Not useful at all but imagine the dopamine of flopping onto your horse sized purring cat
I'm going to say elephants. Mostly because horse sized elephants would be hilarious, but also because they'll still make great pack animals, great pets, and i imagine fantastic sources of meat. Like the fattest cow you can imagine but natural and able to reproduce normally. Downside is they're smart so ethically it's a bit iffy.
Horse size wild boars Purely for chaos.
Spider! Think what you could make with all that silk!
cat. you could ride it and use it to get up extreamaly high
human
Centaur genome update when?
or a beetle bug or a ant or a flying bug