Yakut Pony Extreme Cold Adaptations

A friend posted a photo of a rider and some Yakutia ponies in Siberia and noted the resemblance to Icelandics. I made an assumption that the Yakutia were closely related to the Icelandic horse but decided to research the origin of this rare pony breed.

In 2015, Librado, et al, published "Tracking the origins of Yakutian horses and the genetic basis for their fast adaptation to subartic environments." The mtdna research showed that Yakutians are related to Arabians, American Quarter horses, Monglians, Morgans, Norwegian Fjords, Standardbreds, Franches-Montagnes, and Icelandics.

But what was really interesting was the unique physiological adaptations that the breed made due to an extreme cold environment in a relatively short amount of time. Turkish speaking herders and riders brought their horses and cattle into Yakutia between the 13th and 15th centuries because of

pressure from the Mongol expansion.

Some of the adaptations documented in the Yakut breed--short and compact build, sensory perception of smell, fat accumulation, extreme hair density--are related to minimizing heat loss. Others are related to the endocrine/hormonal system for cold adaptation. Here is my best interpretation--adaptations to the liver that produce anti-freezing compounds, more adaptive regulation of the vasoconstriction/vasodilatation reflex following cold exposure, reduction of the volume of circulating blood, etc.

This research also helps explain why Siberian ponies (and some Icelandics and even Himalayan mules) were so valued during the early Polar expeditions. Some explorers thought the ponies were more useful than the dogs (although this did not prove out as a general conclusion) and became very attached to them. The attached pictures illustrate the Siberian "pony circus" of the Ziegler polar expedition, commanded by Anthony Fiala, from 1903 to 1904.

What is interesting is that some of these same changes were found among the Yakut human population and the wooly mamouth--great examples of convergent evolution. I wonder if I could blame my fat accumulation on a fictional Yakut ancestor. ;-)

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/E6889.full.pdf

New Study on MCOA in Silver Dapples--Icelandic Horses

"The refractive state of the eye in Icelandic horses with the Silver mutation," a research study by Maria K. Johansson, Kim Jäderkvist Fegraeus, Gabriella Lindgren, and Björn Ekesten was published on June 2, 2017.  In light of recent research showing that Comtois horses with the silver dapple mutation had "significantly deeper anterior chambers of the eye compared to wild-type horses" that could potentially result in refractive errors, the researchers decided to look at Icelandic horses with the same mutation to see if they have refractive issues.

The researchers examines 152 Icelandics horses--71 horses that were heterozygous (CT) for the mutation and 5 that were homozygous (TT).
 

Results and Conclusion:


"The interaction between age and genotype had a significant impact on the refractive state (P = 0.0001). CT horses older than 16 years were on average more myopic than wild-type horses of the same age. No difference in the refractive state could be observed between genotypes (CT and CC) in horses younger than 16 years. TT horses were myopic (−2 D or more) in one or both eyes regardless of age.

Our results indicate that an elderly Icelandic horse (older than 16 years) carrying the Silver mutation is more likely to be myopic than a wild-type horse of the same age."

You can read the entire study at:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12917-017-1059-7

You can read my more in-depth research article on MCOA in Icelandics at:
https://blessiblog.blogspot.com/p/mcoa.html

Blessi and Me Arcimboldo Style

I am experimenting with some new art software. Attached is a painting of me and Blessi in the style
of Giuseppe Arcimboldo,16th century Italian Renaissance painter. Blessi thinks there aren't enough apples in the mix and his mane should have been rendered using peanuts in the shell rather than garlic. What do you think?

The other painting is Arcimboldo's portrait of Rudolf II painted as Vertumnus, the Roman God

of the seasons. Source: Wikipedia.

Blessi and the Blueberry Pie

Blessi had a great afternoon. I so wish I had had a camera. The goats usually accompany Sue as she does the rounds at Lone Eagle. She and Bruce provide great care for the horses. Having been chased by horses before, the goats are reluctant to approach horses. Today one came within four feet of Blessi so he continued in his quest to convince the goats that he is their friend.

He also got to try blueberry pie for the first time. Needless to say, it was a big hit. After checking that he liked the pie, I thought to engage him with a puzzle. I closed and locked the styrofoam container before giving it back to Blessi. Now Blessi has seen me open these types of containers to eat burgers. Or perhaps he just lucked out in his exploratory process. But he opened that container in under a second by applying pressure at the joint section to pop open the container. He then proceeded to consume each and every berry. 

Meanwhile the goats had wandered into the hay room. Looking just adorable, Blessi peaked around the door to view them chowing down on some alfalfa. He then proceeded to push the door closed by about a foot. Don't know if he was jealous because the goats almost got his pie earlier in the day or because of their access to alfalfa.

Then Sue fed him some alfalfa cubes so Blessi was a happy boy.

Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures

Who remembers as a child chanting the tongue twister "She sells seashells on the seashore" until you
and your friends collapsed into giggling nonsense? The phrase was part of a children's poem written about Mary Anning (1799 -1847). Currently I am reading Tracy Chevalier's "Remarkable Creatures," a novel based on the lives of Anning and her friend Elizabeth Philpott and their passion for fossil collecting along the beaches of Dorsett, England.

Mary Anning was the daughter of a carpenter in Lyme Regis, a seaside town in southwest England. Mary and other family members gained additional income by gathering recently exposed fossils on the beach and selling them to visitors at the popular seaside resort. Mary herself was the first to find and reassemble an entire skeleton of--what was later to be called--an ichthyosaur. (Her first ichthyosaur skeleton ended up in a curiosities exhibition dressed in monocle and waistcoat.) People of the time usually called these types of odd fossils "crocodiles" of which no living examples had yet been observed in the wild. The theory of extinction of species had not been formulated, let alone accepted. In the popular belief of the time to claim that a species went extinct was to claim that God did not create perfect animals. She also discovered that the strange, conical shaped "bezoar stones" commonly found on the beach were fossilized ichthyosaur and plesiosaur feces.

Mary went on to make a number of findings and observations to the burgeoning science of paleontology. Because of her class and sex, she was shut out of any scientific discussion of her finds so she did not often receive credit. However the British Society for the Advancement of Science did award her a civil list pension of 25 pounds per year for her contributions to geology. In 2010, the Royal Society named her as one of the top ten most influential women in the history of British science. Her friend Miss Philpott also made more minor, but important, discoveries.

And this is why I love reading novels like "Remarkable Creatures" that exhume from the buried facts of history little known women who made major contributions to the arts and sciences. The painting, by an unspecified artist, depicts Mary Anning and her dog Tray before the Golden Cap in Dorset, which exposes a 185 million year continual stratum of Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous rock. Her dog Tray was killed by a landslide when the two were collecting fossils in this area. Mary herself was buried in another slide but survived. She also survived being hit by lightning as a child.

As Tracy Chevalier starts her novel, "I feel an echo of the lightning each time I find a fossil, a little jolt that says, 'Yes, Mary Anning, you are different from all the rocks on the beach.' That is why I am a hunter: to feel that bolt of lightning, and that difference, every day."

Citations: Remarkable Creatures and Wikipedia
Painting: Wikipedia

Running with Icelandic Horses in the Snow

Here's a stunning video "Chase the Journey" from Sniffr Media of Icelandic horses in the snow in front of spectacular mountains in Iceland.  Enjoy!

Whales Under Northern Lights

How awesome is this? Whales under the Northern Lights in Norway.

Shedding Shedding Shedding

For all of you owners of non-Icelandic horses, please don't complain about the amount of shedding your horses go through this time of year. You won't receive any sympathy from us owners of the hairy breeds--Shetlands, Icelandics, Gypsy Vanners, etc. I didn't go to visit Blessi for a few days. Here is the amount of hair that came off today. It filled one third of the muck bucket. He is now going through his second shedding cycle; he has one more to go.

Iceland Under a Full Moon

Titled Iceland Under the Full Moon by Ozzo photography is described by Unilad as the "most beautiful video you will ever see." Kayaking under the Northern lights and night surfing and the Artic Henge......

Horses Ask People for Help

Horses ask us for help if only we can interpret their requests.  Scientists in Japan tested horses under
two conditions:

- they observed a person seeing food hidden (carrots in a bucket) that they couldn't get to

- they observed a person come on the scene and not be aware of where the food was hidden
In both cases, the horses adapted their behavior to try and signal the person about the hidden food by using visual signals and touch. In the second scenario, the horse tried using more signals and persisted for a longer period of time to try to communicate with the person.

"These two experiments revealed some behaviors used by horses to communicate demands to humans. They also suggest that horses possess high cognitive skills that enable them to flexibly alter their behavior towards humans according to humans' knowledge state. This high social cognitive ability may have been acquired during the domestication process."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161215080846.htm#.WFYNimxIIy0.facebook

CIA, encryption, and sculpture

The CIA, encryption, and sculpture. Which one of these three words does not belong? If you guessed sculpture, you would be incorrect since this is a trick question. David Hagburg's spy thriller End Game involves betrayal, rogue agents, WMDs in Iran, grotesque murders, and the the decryption of the Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters to solve a national crisis.

Jim Sanborn, the artist, called the assembly "Kryptos" which is Greek for "hidden." In a feature with flowing water, petrified wood, quartz, and granite sits a S-shaped copper scroll with excised letters. The theme is Intelligence Gathering. The sculpture contains four panels of text--each of which is encrypted using a different method--and was designed with the help of retired CIA cryptographer Edward M. Scheidt. All four codes need to be broken before the ultimate riddle can be solved. After its dedication in 1990, the CIA challenged the public to solve the codes. Jim Sanborn provided a few clues and, perhaps, has left the ultimate solution with a CIA representative. Some misspellings were included deliberately, and some unintentionally, which added to the complexity of the challenge.

In 1999, Jim Gillogly, a computer scientist, used a computer to break the first three codes. A year earlier, a CIA agent David Stein used pencil and paper to solve the same three panels but the information was kept within the intelligence community to not discourage the public.
Passage 1:
BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION
Passage 2:
IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY WW THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO
Passage 3:
SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ?
This is a paraphrased version of Howard Carter's observations during the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922
Passage 4:
Has yet to be solved by the public. The artist has provided the clue that letters 64 to 74 are BERLIN CLOCK. There is a piece of art in Berlin called Mengenlehreuhr or "Set Theory Clock" which uses rows of panels that light up to tell the time.
"They will be able to read what I wrote, but what I wrote is a mystery itself." James Sanborn

Here's a link to the Web site if you want to attempt to solve the final panel.
Source: Wikipedia, CIA Web site
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/headquarters-tour/kryptos/

Princesses, plackets, paper, and pleats

Princesses, plackets, paper, and pleats. Oh shirr, let's not forget the godets. While reviewing examples this type of collar so I can learn how to cobble together my own chemissete with shirred neckline for under a Regency riding habit, I came across this painting of Queen Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz by Wilhelm Ternite, 1810 (Source: Wikipedia).

 Many Regency habits were inspired by the military uniforms of the time. I love the shirred collar on this chemisette (which is made like a dickie to fill in the neckline of the dress). I was lucky to find a modern pattern that

includes a shirred neck.

The Sewing Workshop Collection has a pattern "Chopin Bouse" which incorporates a shirred collar and cuffs. I love SWC patterns because they offer stylish patterns with explicit directions for advanced tailoring techniques. For example, if you need to pin up a lot of hems, make a cardboard template in the shape of a ruler that is 1 inch wide. Then you can fold up the material over this template, press, and pin --which saves time.

Here's a SWC tip for easily making a shirred collar. Use a paper template for the final shape. Pin material to paper, adjust gathers, and pin to fabric backing for collar. This is such as easy way to evenly distribute the gathers and keep them in place when you stitch. When done, you rip the paper from the material. I used regular paper for a normal weight cotton but you might want to use thinner paper for finer material or even a dissolvable stabilizer so you don't rip out stitches when removing the paper.

Conan O'Brian's Twin is an Icelandic Mare

Kat Dennings likes to look for "horse twins" for her friends and family. She went looking for a red-headed horse twin for Conan O'Brien to match "his intensity and raw sexuality."

In reality, the horse is an Icelandic..short and also a mare. They both have great red manes.

Clydesdales vs Icelandics

Some Clydesdale horses were being ridden 420 miles from Skye to Cumbria. For part of the journey, they were joined by some riders on their Icelandic horses. This is an excellent illustration of why the rich and nobles rode hobby horses (ambling palfreys) during the Middle Ages. Knights did not ride their destriers on long trips. Also the war horses during the Middle Ages would have been smaller than the large draft breeds of today.

The Lady in Blue--A Norse Burial in Iceland

Bláklædda Konan, Ný Rannsókn á Fornu Kumli (Bundled up in Blue, the re-investigation of a
Viking grave) at the National Museum of Iceland in May 2015 is about the grave of a Norse woman dated around 900 AD found during road building in northeastern Iceland.  Her face rested on one of the turtle brooches, used to hold up an apron like garment or smokkr and the copper in the piece of jewelry helped preserve the organic matter in the grave. The woman was dressed in blue linen and probably came to Iceland as a child.

"Within this enclosure was the grave of a female, resting on her left side in a flexed position. Her knees and hips were bent and the left side of her face touched one the two oval brooches that would originally have been located on her breasts. Other grave goods included a trefoil brooch, 42 beads, textile fragments, two whetstones, bone fragments of either a comb or knife handle, a spindle whorl, and a stone of unusual shape which proved to be a fragment of chalcedony."

You can read more about the analysis and dating of this burial at the following link:

https://northernwomen.org/project-2/