Talk:Equus (genus)

"Latin equus, "horse",[1] cognate with Greek "ἴκκος"

I've tentatively changed this to say it is cognate with ἵππος, as this is the more usual version (used in all dialects except Ionic) and added a ref for the LSJ entry for ἵππος, while retaining the ref for ἵκκος in the appropriate place, although that ref's utility is limited as the LSJ merely defines it as "=ἵππος". Additionally, I've retained the previous version by noting it as the Ionic variant. I imagine the Ionic variant was used here to make the relation to Latin equus more clear, although, as far as I am aware, this is not the usual practice on Wikipedia or elsewhere. I have also added a ref noting that ἴκκος is the Ionic variant of ἵππος.

One more thing, I changed it to say that the Mycenaean form is the earliest attested, since the ancestor word of equus and i-qo is, of course, in unattested PIE.

If this is disagreeable to anyone, feel free to revert it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.182.235.190 (talk) 07:13, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Mongolian Wild Ass

Why are the Mongolian Wild Ass and the Dzeggetai listed as separate subspecies? Links from both refer to the same page where the subspieces name of each is said to be synonymous. It seems to me that that means that they are not separate subspecies. Caeruleancentaur (talk) 19:48, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't know. Check with User:KimvdLinde she's the resident taxonomist. Montanabw^(talk) 20:33, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hind gut digestion of cellulose?

As a point of clarification--well, I am not 100% sure of the information and have no documented source, but I recall reading from numerous sources that horses and other equines have no ability to digest cellulose in the hind-gut, and the "heavy lifting," biochemically speaking, is done by bacterial fermentation of cellulose in the hind-gut, the bacteria in question having a symbiotic relationship with their hosts and producing useful amounts of protein as byproducts. Is this an appropriate detail to add, assuming it can be verified, or would it be excessively pedantic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.41.40.24 (talk) 13:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomy

I separated into a subsection the seven living species of Equus. I came to this article to look for that information, and found it difficult and tedious to extract it from the extinct species and the subspecies in the complete table. I left in the subgenus labels as that gives an idea of how the seven species are grouped, and I do not think it impedes legibility. Nick Beeson (talk) 21:42, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I think there are multiple articles on the genus and a need for some general cleanup... Montanabw^(talk) 01:30, 8 December 2012 (UTC)