South Korean babies born on December 31 become 2-year-olds the next day.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

"I thought, `Ah, right. She's now 2 years old, though it's been only two hours since she was born. What the heck!'" South Korea's unusual age-calculating system means babies born on Dec. 31 become 2-year-olds the next day.

Link to tweet

[soryang]

1. This is the reason

From the article:

There are also some who say the concept of “Korean age” encourages a fixation on age-based social standing in this seniority-based country. In South Korea, those born in the same year often treat each other as equals, while people must use honorific titles to address those born earlier, rather than directly using their names.

선배 (seonbae) Sino-Korean word from 先輩, from 先 (“prior”) + 輩 (“group”) meaning "senior"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EC%84%A0%EB%B0%B0

후배 (hubae) Sino-Korean word from 後輩, from 後 (“after”) + 輩 (“generation”) meaning "junior"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%ED%9B%84%EB%B0%B0

Everyone is defined by whether they are senior or junior in Korean society. Classifying your age group determines who are your peers, who are senior, and who are junior to an individual in many social contexts. That determination will probably affect the form of speech (verb form, sentence ending, etc., not just the title) one uses to address others whether honorific, polite or familiar. It's embedded in the language.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

3. Hmmmm... The Orville.. similar episode recently.

Your 'zodiac sign' doomed you to to your future.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Hmmm. Rather like thorougbred horses.

They all have a January 1 birthday, regardless of exactly when they are born.

[csziggy]

4. Same for Quarter Horses

People try to bred the mares in late January or early February so the foals will be born as close to January 1 as possible. Average gestation in horses is about 340 days so if the mare is cycling appropriately, you can time the birth. Ocasionally a foal will be a few days early - and often those foals are not "discovered" in the fields until January 1.

I visited some horse farms in March and saw foals with very long tails and manes - obviously they were more than three or four months old. More like six or seven months in my opinion.

As a performance horse breeder, I did not have the pressure to produce foals that early, though the natural cycles favor conception in the spring. I did have a foal or two born in the fall, mostly when I had a mare with fertility problems that we turned out with our young stallion so she could teach him manners. He learned to be a gentleman when breeding and we got a lovely foal that we never expected!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Did not know that about Quarter horses.

Thanks for that info.

A question, since I know almost nothing about horses. I know that their hooves are a very large nail, got that way through evolution. But do they have right and left hoof differences, as we have right and left hands and feet?

[csziggy]

6. There are slight differences between left and right hooves, more between front and back

But not a lot of difference between the two sides unless there are conformation flaws that change the angle of the hoof and leg. If a horse's legs angle out, there will be a distinct difference between the two sides - but the angulation is not desirable and can lead to serious skeletal problems.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. Thank you.

So for all practical purposes the two front hooves and the two back hooves are identical, right?

For some bizarre reason I've been wondering about this lately, and I'm glad I've had the chance to get this cleared up for me.

[csziggy]

8. Pretty much identical, but since horse's legs are nevewr totally straight

There are slight differences. Regular trimming and/or shoeing is intended to minimize the differences as well as maintain a healthy angle of the hoof. I'm sure you've seen the pictures of neglected horses with their hooves grown out far too long - that is extreme neglect, but even letting their hooves grow too long on a regular basis can lead to problems.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. Thanks again.

The essential thing I want to clarify is that they don't have the kind of right/left differences so common in the rest of the animal kingdon.

I have seen such pictures, and they always make me wonder how it is that wild horses manage. Can you enlighten me on this?

[csziggy]

10. Wild (or feral) horses wear down their hooves more than domestic ones

They have to move constantly to find grazing and water, unlike domesticated horses, who are kept in fields of grass with few rocky areas or in stalls where their movement is restricted.

Also, wild horses self select for very hard wearing hooves, while domesticated horses are not necessarily bred for good hooves. I had one bloodline of horses with terrible hooves. Over five generations I bred that out of my herd but many breeders do not select for that and let the bad hooves be passed down.

The final thing is that wild/feral horses that get problems with their hooves simply do not survive. They cannot move around as much to graze, they can't keep up with the herd, and they become prey or simply die.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. Again, thank you.

Last year I read Wild Horse Country by David Phillips about mustangs in America, what they are, how they got here, and the ongoing management and mis-management of them. Quite an interesting read.

Somewhat earlier I read The Horse: the epic history of our noble companion by Wendy Williams. Likewise fascinating. For me, the real impact of this book was that it seems clear to me that human history would have unfolded very differently without the horse as we know it and as we bred it.

I keep a book list, which is highly helpful when I want to mention something I've read.

[csziggy]

12. I wonder how different American history would have been

If the Native Americans had domesticated horses rather than killing them off. It certainly would have changed the first contacts between Europeans and the Native Americans!

If I were a writer, it would make a great alternative history book.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Native Americans did domestic horses

once modern horses got to this continent.

The ancestors of horses started here, but left long before they became modern horses and vastly long before the original humans we call Native Americans arrived.

But yeah, just have some modern horses (or sufficiently close relatives of them) come across from Siberia when the land bridge was in place. That's plausible enough. The people already here or soon to arrive would have domesticated them in pretty short order. I'd love to read that alternate history.

It's hard to know if a technological civilization would have happened just because of the horse, but I think the case can be made for a lot more trading pretty much from edge to edge, north to south, east to west. And perhaps a genuine system of writing would have sprung up to keep records, which is pretty much how writing got its start in the Middle East. I don't know enough about the history of the Far East to know for sure what triggered the writing systems there, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if record keeping was the impetus there also. Hmmm. Real food for thought here.

[csziggy]

14. Horses survived in North America to as recently as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago

Long enough after the arrival of Native Americans that they could have contributed to the extinction of North American equines.

<SNIP>
HUMANS AND HORSES
North American horses disappeared around 8,000 - 10,000 years ago. Multiple factors including hunting by early Natives, climate change, and disease are thought to have helped contribute to their demise. They disappeared around the same time as other large mammals like Wooly Mammoths.
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/Magazine/ma05/indepth/

And there are some claims that horses never disappeared from North America, though I am not intimately associated with this theory:
http://protectmustangs.org/?page_id=562

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. I stand corrected.

For some reason I incorrectly thought that there weren't modern horses here when modern humans first arrived.

Which makes it even more interesting that they didn't domesticate them. As you said, an excellent subject for an alternate history novel. I likewise wish I could write well enough to write that book. Or series. It would make a great series, done right.