THE
ABOVE SENTENCE CONTAINS SIX STATEMENTS
OF TOTALLY FALSE AND INACCURATE SPECIAL
INTEREST AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA. Yet,
these parts of its contents have been repeated
so often, out of malice, ignorance or journalistic
carelessness, that probably a majority
of Americans believe at least most of it
to be true. |
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The
origins of much of the misleading and inaccurate propaganda
type of statements that keep being made about America's
wild horses can be traced to various special interest
groups, seeking to benefit financially and/or politically
from the removal of these horses from public lands.
The careless
use of such propaganda connected material by those
who are recognized as scientists raises serious questions
about such things as their actual motives and whether
their scientific studies and findings, likewise, have
been conducted in a very careless manner.''
A prime example
of this, appears in the very first sentence of the
propaganda example displayed in the right hand column
at the very top of this page, alongside of the 'Popular
PROPAGANDA' page title, where the horses are described
as being FERAL. And, this may be a good example
of how some people have manipulated and distorted what
actually are some fairly simple issues concerning wild
horses, making them falsely appear to be so complex
as to require a train load of intellectual giants to
understand and solve the problem. It is the editorial
opinion of this web site's ecology project group that,
if we look closely and carefully, we discover that
some of the generally respected scientists, in an effort
to validate their self proclaimed status as wild horse
experts by showing off how smart they are, actually
are revealing how careless and unreliable they are
in the conclusions they draw and the findings they
publish.
WILD HORSES
ARE FERAL ??
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You
don't need to have a Ph. D. designation attached to
your name to be able to use a dictionary. Ours
gives three definitions of 'feral' which are as follows:
1. "having
reverted from domestication back to the original wild
or untamed state."
2. "wild;
untamed; uncultivated."
3. "characteristic
of wild beasts; brutal; savage."
Considering
the third one first, this may be the reason why the
word is used for propaganda purposes so often. Many
cattle ranchers, their family members and friends,
use the word feral all the time, because it has this
kind of nasty connotation in the minds of so many people. In
reality, anyone who really knows anything about wild
horses will tell you that their nature is to be the
exact opposite of anything like brutal and/or savage. Why
in the world, then, would any wild horse type of scientist
even want to suggest such a thing? So, the use
of this part of the definition in regard to wild horses
is absolutely inappropriate and ludicrous.
Considering the second
definition, this (were it considered exclusively of the other two definitions)
could be used to pretty accurately describe ALL wildlife animals. Yet, the
wielders of 'anti wild horse natural preservation propaganda' selectively have
chosen to apply it only to the equids, not to such animals as wolves, bears
and mountain lions, whose table manners often seem to indicate that they're
far more "uncultivated".
This leaves only
a consideration of the first defination, above, which may be explained
more sufficiently by considering the word "domestication". which
my dictionary says is a form of the verb, "domesticate",
which is defined as follows:
v.t.
1. to change (animals, savages, or plants) from
a wild to a tame or cultivated state; tame.
2.
(Figurative.) to make fond of home and family life.
3.
(Figurative.) to cause to be or feel at home; naturalize.
v.i.
to live much at home; become domestic.
To
try and address this as briefly as possible, whatever
issues actually may be of any true significance have
been applied mainly to wild horse ANCESTORS,
either those who historically have been reported to
have been brought to North America by Spanish conquistadores
and domesticated horses that repotedly were used for
riding by western ranchers, later to be abandoned by
these humans, who simply set them free onto the range
lands. To varying degrees, the same sort of thing
has happened with man's encroachment upon all kinds
of other wildlife creatures all around the planet. From
elephants to raccoons, to snakes, to mice, even to
killer whales of the seas and birds of the air, such
as hawks and the American bald eagle, man methodically
has taken various wild creatures into custody, sometimes
ridden on them or trained them to pull heavy objects
or to assist in hunting for other animals or simply
to perform tricks for the amusement of other people,
finally to turn their unfortunate, often spiritually, instinctively
and physically abused and weakened victims back to
their freedom in the wild, where they may interbreed either with individuals of their species who never had been taken into captivity, or breed exclusively among themselves. So, whenever I
begin to hear or read something from a person who calls
wild horses feral, I immediately conclude that this
is a deliberately malicious individual and/or someone who is too stupid
to even bother to check in a dictionary and recognize
which of the two animal groups, wild horses or dumb
humans, actually is the most feral (i.e.: "uncultivated")
!
A
further note seems appropriate, to point out that comprehensive
historic records basically are non existent for really
accurate determination of such things as how many horses escaped from
or were turned loose my conquistadores in Mexico, to
migrate onto what now are U.S. rangelands. And,
how can we know to what degree, if any, such particular
horses may have been trained, or "domesticated"? It
also is not known whether they may have mixed in with
already free roaming wild horses whose native ancestors
may have survived the ice age event while remaining
in North America, if such survivals did, in fact, take
place. So
much of all this continues to be unknown and simply
a number of different theories that may be more or
less scientific.
More
infomation about the biological evolution of wild horses,
can be found on this site's Wild
Horse ORIGINS page.
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