Horse of a Different Color: Difference between revisions

And one of the major needs is for animals to fill the niches that horses fill on Earth: basic transportation in areas where mechanical transport are impractical, unknown, or expensive; or prestige transportation in areas where mechanical transport is cheap and easy. Horse-replacements may also be used as draft animals.

 

 

Evil, bloodthirsty races will often use a giant form of a common predator, like a wolf. Cats are a mixed bag, they are predatory, and notoriously disobedient, but both heroes and villains can be seen riding them, and performing great feats of sure-footed trick riding.

** Nausicaa also features another type of unusual mount, referred to as Warbeasts, which are something like giant, shaggy dogs with cow horns & lizard-like feet.

* In ''[[Maze Megaburst Space (Anime)|Maze Megaburst Space]]'', a two-legged brown dinosaur is the preferred cavalry mount.

* ''[[Trigun (Anime)|Trigun]]'' has the Tomas, weird cross-breeds between ostriches and dinosaurs.

* ''[[Last Exile (Anime)|Last Exile]]'' has some very chocobo-esque flightless birds. Although they were never used as mounts they replaced horses as the animal of choice for racing.

== Literature ==

* Goblins in ''[[The Hobbit]]'' ride on Wargs -- huge, intelligent, evil wolves.

* The 1987 Ardath Mayhar/Ron Fortier [[After the End]] collab ''Trail of the Seahawks'' also featured giant riding dogs (and giant mutant ''foxes'' that could be trained as mounts).

* Another series with dog mounts was Mike McQuay's painfully sucky duology of ''Pure Blood'' and ''Mother Earth''. But McQuay felt the need to call them "[[Call a Rabbit A Smeerp|woofers]]" for some reason.

** The Empire of Blood is implied to utilize dinosaurs as cavalry.

* Koark from ''[[Order of Tales]]'' rides Potok, who resembles a giant cross between a dog and an aardvark. (Hey, insectivores are carnivores!)

* ''[[Unsounded]]'' has giant dogs that appear to replace equids and bovines altogether.

 

* Do the Thestrals from ''[[Harry Potter (Literature)|Harry Potter]]'' count? Technically they're pegasi -- carnivorous, borderline undead pegasi...

* In Julian May's ''[[Saga of the Exiles (Literature)|Saga of the Exiles]]'', the mount of choice for the Tanu dwelling in Earth's prehistoric past is the chaliko- short for chalicothere. Chalicotheres are extinct relatives of horses, rhinos, and tapirs. (Unfortunately they're also generally pretty slope-backed and have a gait that really wouldn't work well at all on a riding animal. Oh well.)

* In [[Neal Stephenson|Neal Stephenson's]] ''Diamond Age'', the upper-class transport of choice is the Chevaline, which is a kind of robot horsey with a vestigial knob for a tail.

* In ''[[Dune]]'' the Fremen ride the sandworms of Arrakis. Great-worms and lesser-worms are used in teams to pull a chariot.

* The MMOG ''[[Ultima Online]]'' has an array to choose from. Bipedal dinosaurs without front arms called ostards, llamas, ki-rins, and giant beetles are among the choices.

* [[Gaia Online]] has a few mount options, mostly from the Wild Things set. The Roc is pretty obviously a chocobo knockoff, and the other Wild Things are a wolf (Fenrir) and a tiger (Khan). In addition, the Fallen Wish item has a serpentine dragon that you can ride, and the Kelp o' the Loch gave you a proper horse... as well as a hobby horse.

* The ''[[War Craft]]'' series, particularly ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', features such a wide variety of mounts that listing them all would be impractical. For starters, each of the ten playable races has a distinctive basic mount, ranging from undead horses to mechanical ostriches to [[Call a Rabbit A Smeerp|elephant-like]] elekks. In fact, humans are the only race that gets an actual honest-to-goodness horse. Then there are the various flying mounts, starting with griffons and giant furry bats and later progressing to sporebats, drakes, miniature helicopters, hippogriffs, etc. Lastly, ''Wrath of the Lich King'' introduced a variety of new land and flying mounts including mammoths, proto-drakes, flying carpets, motorcycles, and turtles; not to mention achievements for acquiring as many mounts as possible. The highest of these requires 100 mounts, and grants as its reward ... yet another mount.

** It's worth noting that pre-release promotional material for the ''Burning Crusade'' expansion referred to the Blood Elf mount as a Cockatrice; eventually, however, someone at Blizzard realized that introducing a creature with "cock" in its name into a game largely played by teenagers and immature twentysomethings was just ''[[Tempting Fate|asking]]'' [[Tempting Fate|for trouble]]. They were renamed Hawkstriders.

 

 

*** Note that regular animals were always part of the series - it's just that Vvardenfell is ''very'' strange, but the rest of the world is much more like our own, and contains ordinary horses (and cows), as seen in ''Daggerfall'' and ''Oblivion''.

* In ''[[Puzzle Quest]]: Challenge Of The Warlords'', you can capture and ride a number of creatures, from a giant rat or wolf to a giant, ''fire-breathing spider''.

* In ''[[Age of Wonders]]'' most mounted units ride horses or wolves, but the Lizardmen are the most unusal ride giant frogs. There are also specialized units which ride giant eagles, wyverns, giant moles, and giant beetles.

* Before she became an expert [[Miko]] and learned to fly on her own, [[Touhou Project|Reimu Hakurei]] used to mount an intelligent, talking, flying turtle named Genji.

 

== Western Animation ==

** Promotional material for The Legend of Korra adds polar bear dogs to the list.

** And can't forget the eelhounds, for those times when you aren't just satisfied with running on land.

** They're also useful for heavy work, such as logging- they're bright, social animals and can have a good relationship with humans with the right training.

* During the 18th century the Swedish military supposedly experimented with moose cavalry. Compared to horses a moose has better stamina and is far better equipped at traversing difficult terrain. Also they're really big and scary, especially to Johnny Foreigner who often had never even heard of a moose. The Swedes were able to ride and train them as horses in all respects but one: Moose are pretty damn headstrong animals and no-one was ever able to persuade them to stop running away from pikes, bayonets, muskets, and cannons.

** There are camels in Australia (both dromedaries and bactrians) for similar reasons. They were imported for use in the 19th century, then abandoned as automobiles came in. The freed beasties are thriving, (the only feral (i.e. ex-domesticated) camels in the world) to the extent that today Australia frequently ''exports camels to Arabia.''

* Some people have managed to ride [[Everything's Better With Llamas|llamas]] (or better said, to be tolerated by them), but all serious attempts to turn them into real riding animals have ended in failure. On the one hand, they are too light and weak compared to a horse or a camel (hence why most pictures of "llama riders" you'll ever find show children). On the other, they simply hate to have living beings on their back. Also, they can spit. [[Squick|And turn their necks 180º back]]...

[[Category:Travel Cool]]

[[Category:Cool Horse]]