On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 11:48:48AM -0800, Nancy Sturm wrote: > So (semantics aside) I think we have animals who are ponies by genetics and
i'm skeptical, honestly, about the "ponies by genetics" idea. this has worked moderately well in the past, when groups were genetically isolate (and can be presumed to continue to work in iceland, which has a closed population). in the rest of the world, though, equines can be expected to be interbred as often as humans, and i suspect the genetic groupings will become as meaningless as human "races". (as an example, the boston glob recently did dna-family-tree analysis on a group of local celebrities. a black man who plays on one of our sports teams turns out to be of the "finnish" branch, which apparently quite bemused him, and he said in his interview he now wanted to visit there....) i rode, showed, and pinned on a 12.2 pony (over fences) the summer i was 38, iirc...but i'm short and fairly slight myself, and i don't remember anyone saying anything untoward in my hearing :) (incidentally said pony was a delicate little thing, with a thin mane, long legs and neck, and not much winter coat....) --vicka
