Dehumanizing Ponies, Part One - Social Dynamics · 4:57am Jan 20th, 2014
The intention of this blog series is to take the aspects of ponies that are nonhuman and construct a xenofictional context for them. MLP is obviously human-oriented, so what we come up with will not (always) be canonical (as I say, the authors of MLP are not writing xenofiction), but that's intentional. Not all fanfic is intended to follow the show's immediate goals and guidelines. Not everyone will agree with all interpretations, but I hope that it should provide some interesting meat for future fics.
I have two immediate thoughts on this. They're both tangentially related to dominance hierarchies.
Now, dominance hierarchies form from males fighting over access to reproduction. The best fighters reproduce, less good ones don't. It's simple and basic, but as culture and society are built from the biological building blocks of behavior, reproductive behavior will massively inform the social dynamics that emerge.
For carnivores with a presumable dominance hierarchy (gryphons), warnings are part of an escalation game. You throw insults and threats at each other, toss a few punches, and only when nobody backs down do you fight.
For herbivores without a dominance hierarchy, warnings are a single chance before they attack. You toss out a warning because it's cheap, but you can't afford to spend more time and effort than that since any threat is really a major threat. So ignore that warning and you get maximum force.
So, GhostOfHeraclitus addressed it pretty well here in how ponies and gryphons view war. Considering their differing psychologies, something like this would happen. Gryphons mount a raid into Equestrian territory, sack a village, kill some ponies, whatever. Species wide, it's just a thrown gauntlet. First stage of the escalation game.
They get a note from Equestria saying "Don't do that again or we'll declare war." Well, the gryphons laugh because Equestria escalated it all the way to maximum, which means they don't have the power or ability to actually do anything, they're just bluffing. If Equestria had any actual power they would have staged a counter-raid and so on and so forth. So they stage a second raid, and are subsequently surprised when war is immediately declared and Equestria tries to win as thoroughly as possible with as little resource investment as possible. And succeeds, almost certainly.
The other thing has to do with group dynamics in herds.
We can presume that ponies use herds. Horses do, and given the apparent gender disparity it's not unreasonable to assume that herds exist. And if they do, they're the default social grouping. Now, herds are not dominance hierarchies. It's not competition over reproductive access.
But they do have a hierarchy. There is an Alpha Female. But it has to be emphasized this doesn't work like a boss or a military commander. The alpha female is the most generally all-around competent individual, but not the best at everything or in charge of everything all the time. She doesn't command them like a human would at all. So, for the Mane Six Twilight would be the alpha female. This does not mean when she says jump they say how high, but she's ultimately the one they will turn to when they have a problem. And Twilight leads not by demanding respect, but by being proactive and competent at what she does.
Celestia is the alpha of the Equestrian herd entire. The concept of alpha female translates really well to how we understand alicorns work - they become alicorns because of understanding, deep understanding, of the way the world and ponies work. Automatically, they're stepping into that proactive-egalitarian slot of the herd alpha.
If reproductive groups are herd-based as well and not monogamous (which we won't see on the show for a wide variety of reasons), than I'd imagine a lot of a female pony's early life is about the dynamics of fitting into a herd that eventually trends toward intimacy and collaborative choosing of a male. Keep in mind that in herds the females choose the male. Females choose a male for maximal caregiving and competence, dominance doesn't enter the picture. So yes, harem fics, but in a completely different dynamic than most assume.
Given that intelligent races require neoteny and thus an incredibly long development time and concomitant investment of resources, it would be a better strategy to simply produce fewer males rather than invest resources into a male that won't reproduce (since in 'real' herd species most of the males end up dead before they get the chance).
In fact, how about I make a quick argument for why the gender disparity would be locked in.
As I mentioned, neoteny and resource investment means that, as a species rises to sapience, more and more resource investment is required to raise children.
So, starting with a 6:1 gender ratio, let's say that alpha females have sons, everyone else has daughters. It makes sense! The alpha female is presumably the most fit of the individuals in the herd, and if they've chosen a male well the son will be of high fitness. And, most importantly, gets to reproduce six times more than a daughter.
So alpha females, without needing a dominance hierarchy or anything else, have six times the evolutionary (and social) force of anyone else. On the other hand, given that males do not have guaranteed reproduction, they also gamble with not getting any. High risk, high reward.
So in a postindustrial capacity, certainly you might find monogamous pairings, but their sons will only have the expertise and resources of two parents to draw on, rather than seven, and has no guarantee of reproduction.
"Why Daetrin," you say. "That's silly. Species don't choose the gender of their offspring based on something ephemeral like group dynamics." I submit in reply the humble clownfish, a sequential hermaphrodite and surely a far more extreme example of group dynamics affecting genetics.
A male's early life would be about maximizing their value as interlocutor between herd groupings and their general social prowess, since unlike in most monogamous-pair-bonding societies, the male isn't the one that does the bulk of the high-risk work. They'd be about interfacing outside of the herd dynamic.
Equestrian society appears to be normally monogamous rather than polygynous with alpha male / alpha female and helper wives, though. There's a lot of canon supporting this, including the only marriages we have ever seen in-show.
However, Equestria is also highly civilized -- what you describe could easily be a primal tendency toward which the society or individuals might revert in time of crisis. Human cultures often revert to slight polygyny under extreme social stress. Incidentally, with actual horses the dominant stallion tends to be primary protector for the group.
The implication of the system you describe, assuming a 1:1 sex ratio, would be a lot of unattached males. What happens to them? In some real-life herd systems that works this way they try to sneak-mate with females who already belong to a mated herd, or detach them, or vie for dominance with the dominant male, depending on the circumstances.
You're definitely right about the dynamic of the Mane Six. Which, given their social importance and connection, might explain why none of them have found husbands -- few males feel sufficiently dominant to dare to aspire to such a role.
This would also go a long way toward explaining why Celestia rules alone, or with the help of Luna, too. What male would be sufficiently dominant to match her?
1737941
Well, counting noses we don't see a 1:1 sex ratio. If the ratio is, say, 6:1, that may simply be genetics. Given that sentient races require neoteny and thus absurdly long development times, it's a better strategy to produce fewer males than to invest all those resources into a male that won't reproduce.
As I said, we won't see anything other than monogamy in the show, obviously, but taking their biology at face value this is a reasonable guess at how it would shake out.
1737941
Also keep in mind in herd dynamics, males are not dominant. That's not going to be an issue with Celestia or with the Mane Six either. The issue is actually the reverse - they would prefer males be maximally caregiving.
1737955
I think Equestria is a matriarchy, not just in the obvious sense that it's ruled by Princesses, but in the larger sense that its culture considers mares more responsible natural leaders than stallions.
The reason why mammalian sex ratios tend to approach 1:1 is very simple. Suppose that the normal mating system is for 6 mares to mate with 1 stallion. If the sex ratio is 6:1 then on the average "every" mare and "every" stallion get to mate (it never actually works out this way due to random factors, most especially that some mares and some stallions never get to mate at all). For obvious reaons, though, it is much likely that a mare than a stallion will wind up unmated, because stallions being rarer would be more avidly sought in the marriage market. This is what overthrows the system.
Now suppose that in such a ratio system, some stallion (sex is determined by the male in mammals) has a tendency to produce, say, a 3:1 ratio between mares and stallions in his offspring. Since his skewed ratio does not much affect the overall ratio, stallions are strill sought after six times as avidly as mares, his genes will be favored in the next generations, all other things being equal.
Because of this, as the generations go on, the increased male ratio will be passed on. And this remains a competitive advantage until it reaches a roughly 1:1 sex ratio, which is what we see in most mammals.
Now the interesting question is what happens as the number of males increases.
Since females are the (literal) reproductive bottleneck in any mammalian reproductive system, some variant on polygyny is always more likely than some variant on polyandry. Basically, mammals will mate 1 male to 1 or more females, on the average. Faced with a tough environment, such that the creatures must be sure to reproduce only from the best stock, this means that there will be some sort of polygyny.
The more extreme the polygyny, the more extreme will be the sexual dimorphism, with males being larger than females. This is because if there is polygny, most females but not most males will be able to mate, so it is important for males to be large and healthy, if they are to have much chance of reproducing.
This creates a useful corollary. A rough way of judging the degree of polygyny in a species is simply to measure the extent to which males are larger than females in that species.
This may not be perfect for the Ponies, since being sapient they can compete in much more subtle ways than mere shoving matches or mating duels, but it does give us a point of reference. The Ponies appear to be as or a little more sexually-dimorphic than humans, meaning that they are about as polygynous as or a little more polygynous than humans. Humans are, as I've mentioned, weakly polygynous.
This means that in Pony culture we might see a system where high-status stallions can (either licitly or illicitly) mate with some number of mares, but I don't think it would approach the 6:1 ratio at least in formal wedlock. By way of comparison, note that rich Muslims are supposed to take no more than 4 wives (most Muslims, even rich ones, only marry 1-2 women), though this is in practice circumvented through concubinage (some pre-industrial Muslim heads of state took absurd numbers of wives and concubines, with harems ranging up into the hundreds).
It's hard to judge the ratio of stallions to mares in Equestria. I'd suspect that stallions tend to take dangerous and strength-based outdoor jobs more often than do mares, and that's why we see them less.
If we base it on actual families, we can see sex ratios in children, with the proviso that since these are the Mane Six with one exception, all such families must by definition include one female minimum. Twilight has one biological brother (1 male/1 female), Rarity one sister (2 females), Applejack one brother and one sister (1 male/2 females), Pinkie two sisters (3 females) , Rainbow appears to be an only child (1 female) as does Fluttershy (1 female). The Cakes have two children, one son and one daughter (1 male/1 female).
So including the Mane Six we'd get 11 females to 3 males, which would be 3.67:1; or excluding the Mane Six (since they are all females and are what skews the ratio) we'd get 5 females / 3 females (2.5:1). That's (some) evidence for a skew toward females (though it's not obvious if this is at birth or due to a differential death rate). It doesn't show a 6:1 ratio, though -- more like around 3:1.
1737963
Males are not dominant over females, however the alpha males are dominant over other males. The females dominate, as you point out, over males long-term in most herd species. Which is what we see in Equestria.
Shining Armor, incidentally, is about as alpha a male as you would see in Equestria. Even the fact that he's polite and soft-spoken would aid his alpha-ness, since he has the important social skill of impressing females -- who, in Equestria, would probably not be impressed by rough displays of brutality.
I am absolutely loving this.
I really like your take on "threat reaction". We see male herbivores engage in "strutting" behaviors; at worst knocking heads till one backs down. The idea that any threat, is a life threatening one would be deeply engrained in a prey species. I could see surrounding civilizations quickly becoming gun-shy of Equestria.
There's probably a pretty good story to be explored in that idea alone. Other races, that have a predatory evolution, considering ponies to be an unstable, violent race.
I'm curious how you'd imagine relations with other herbivores would go. We've seen bison in the show, but they are not shone as a large civilization.
If there was a Deer nation, How would you write their Equestrian relations?
A very logical and well thought-out discussion/digression/presentation, but what then of the undesirable males? Before the advent of civilization they are merely lost to nature taking it's tithe, but in an intelligent society selective breeding is less effective at removing unwanted genes from the pool . Collective behavioral mechanics are much too complicated for my limited understanding to reach a definitive conclusion, but I'd say that, even if ponies has a slanted gender ratio as late as the pre-industrial age, living in a prosperous society as peaceful and long-lasting as Equestria is slowly moving the gender balance back towards 1:1. Perhaps it isn't there yet. Perhaps it will only reach this state at mathematical infinity.
I've forgotten exactly where I was going with this. Sorry.
This is just my headcannon but the way royalty seems to work in equestria combined with what seem like elected mayors gives me the impression that Celestia declined the title of queen and chose princess instead as a way of saying she doesnt excercise full authoritarian control over equestria and is closer in role to a governor than a head of state with the title of queen being reserved for times when Equestria actually needs full out authoritarian martial law.
I know the real reason is Hasbro said no to her being a queen but this in my mind sorta reconciles how there can be so many princes and princesses in the top positions. Because they aren't really the 'top' positions, they are positions with limits inherent in them. Despite their royal titles its probably implied in their rule that the royals are in service to equestria rather than equestria being in service to the royals.
So to me equestria makes sense when viewed as a constitutional monarchy. Sure theres a royal class but theres probably written limits to their authority which would fit in with your thoughts on Herd dynamics. Celestia doesnt so much rule equestria in the normal fashion a monarch would with vassals and such, it feels more like equestrians allowing certain nobles to fill roles that need to be filled.
Thanks for writing this post. I've seen bits and pieces of these ideas in various stories, but when put together they really push home the point that many try to avoid: ponies are not humans.
Allow me to recommend Forever by D. G. D. Davidson. This fic creates the world, where ponies have equine biology and human psychology, and shows social problems that appear because of this clash. Though I'm not sure it was the author's intent
The fic universe where I've seen this best addressed is Xenophilia, particularly in its world-building companion piece The Xenophile's Guide to Equestria.
The latter makes the suggestion that the sex ratio imbalance is due to genetic issues which cause male embryos to be significantly less likely to be viable than female ones, for reasons involving ponies' being a hybrid of three kinda-sorta-separate species. (Actually, IIRC, the theory is presented as an in-world theory from some scientific journal, and at least part of it was said to be wrong by the actual "out-world" author. I don't think the "correct" explanation has been given though.)
It's certainly true in the real world that inter-species hybrid mammal females are significantly different than males--the big one is that they can be fertile, while males cannot. This is most common, I think, in big cats, where e.g. liger females are fertile, but IIRC it's a general principle.
Additionally, for other (possibly still unknown?) reasons, humans have noticeable (but small) differences in miscarriage rates in male and female embryos, so it's at least plausible that some other species could have drastic differences leading to a major sex ratio imbalance.
(Or, you know, it's a show for six-year-old girls, so of course it's not going to have a lot of boys in it....
)
1738263
There's actually an unpleasant but plausible explanation for that one.
General observations from the show:
-Stallions make up about 20% of the adult population in any representative crowd shots, both in Ponyville and Canterlot.
-Stallions make up 80% of the construction crews in Ponyville.
-Stallions make up 50% of the Wonderbolts
-Stallions make up effectively 100% of the Royal Guard (and Army?) rank and file
The farther away we go from the "skewed birth rate" explanation, the more "surplus" males we have to deal with. In-show, males are (extremely!) disproportionately employed in demanding and dangerous occupations. The "missing" stallions are either out at the back-end of beyond (the Equestrian equivalents of military bases, mines, lumber camps, oil fields, etc), or they died young.
I can imagine a story where some critter from another species comes in and does some Iron Will style seminars, but targets the stallions. To paraphrase Fight Club: "We plow your fields, we gather your resources, we defend your borders, we give you foals. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us." Depending on how cynical you are, it ends poorly for all.
1738038
1738263
You're still using human biological mechanics as your arguments, which is the opposite of the entire point of this discussion.
Females will never lack reproductive access. Males will not be sought more avidly than females. In tournament systems something like five percent of males reproduce. You can have far, far fewer males than females before the reproductive pressure is felt.
Yes, we see monogamy in the show. That's to be expected! There are, however, other and less human interpretations of their biology.
1738956
That's how human males are employed.
80% of workplace deaths are male.
4 out of 5 suicides are male.
Males have always been the ones that make up armies.
It's because males are more disposable, biologically, than females (as well as being generally built to do more, tougher labor).
But, I'm trying to avoid human dynamics here.
Intriguing. Like the discussion. Fics are more interesting when authors try to imagine how pony society might be different.
In fact, how about I make a quick argument for why the gender disparity would be locked in.
As I mentioned, neoteny and resource investment means that, as a species rises to sapience, more and more resource investment is required to raise children.
So, starting with a 6:1 gender ratio, let's say that alpha females have sons, everyone else has daughters. It makes sense! The alpha female is presumably the most fit of the individuals in the herd, and if they've chosen a male well the son will be of high fitness. And, most importantly, gets to reproduce six times more than a daughter.
So alpha females, without needing a dominance hierarchy or anything else, have six times the evolutionary (and social) force of anyone else. On the other hand, given that males do not have guaranteed reproduction, they also gamble with not getting any. High risk, high reward.
So in a postindustrial capacity, certainly you might find monogamous pairings, but their sons will only have the expertise and resources of two parents to draw on, rather than seven, and has no guarantee of reproduction.
"Why Daetrin," you say. "That's silly. Species don't choose the gender of their offspring based on something ephemeral like group dynamics." I submit in reply the humble clownfish, a sequential hermaphrodite and surely a far more extreme example of group dynamics affecting genetics.
1738959
Of this I am aware.
I, too, was trying to avoid the "human writers" excuse, and leave human social issues out of it. But I counted heads, and it broke down that way in-show. Human males make up roughly 45% of the population, so (given my examples) they'd be under-represented by a factor of 2.2 in group shots, and over-employed by 1.8, 1.1, and 2.2, respectively. Probably about right for many regions.
If we assume that the 80:20 birth ratio holds, they're over-employed by 4.0, 2.5, and 5 instead. The stallions, being more rare and therefore having more reproductive value, should be less exposed than human males, not more. If they don't have a bunch of surplus stallions, either the Cutie Mark Fairy is a right bastard, or social pressures on colts and stallions are even stronger there than here.
Edit: if we go with your 6:1 ratio (roughly 85:15), we get 5.3, 3.3, and 6.7. Even worse.
1738987
Oh sure, except they don't have more reproductive value. There are fewer of them, sure, but males don't bottleneck reproduction. If something happened and the number of males dropped precipitously, say from having one male per six females to one per eight (a war in which 25% of the male population died!)...that just means average herd size increases by two for a generation or so. If 25% of females died, so has 25% of the reproductive capacity of the nation..
1738056
I really am not sure. I suspect since the immediate psychology is defensive/cooperative (but with zero threat tolerance) for both nations, they'd get along fine, barring some existential threat that would force one or the other of them into trying to conquer other lands for resources or real estate. At which point all sorts of shit would hit all sorts of fans.
1739001
Well, unless (as Xenophilia did) we assume heats instead of human-style reproductive cycles, in which case you've only got a small window in which the stallion has a lot of work to do. And the social issues are serious either way.
If, as you say, "[f]emales choose a male for maximal caregiving and competence, dominance doesn't enter the picture", and yet the stallions are all out doing the dangerous jobs where "follow orders and do your job, or ponies are going to get hurt" is the rule, they've either got mental/emotional issues up the wazoo, or they're vastly different from (modern Western?) human males, mentally and emotionally. And socially, they'd be de facto second-class citizens.
1738986
Bene gesserit could chose their children's sex. So, I'm ok with a world where ponies can too.
1739022
Neoteny, large child-investment, and a lack of 'heat' type cycles go hand in hand. I tend to avoid that dynamic for sapient species, though yes if there were heat cycles it'd cause a lot of social issues. Especially with gender disparity.
And since making ponies not humanlike is the point of this exercise, I'd say that's a bonus!
1739110
OK, fair enough. But we now have a situation where the male population is biologically hard-wired to be subordinate to the female population. The mares have all the benefits of a gender-flipped version of the most radical feminists' criticisms of human society, but the stallions retain all of the human-style male disadvantages. They're on the level of disposable appliances, and everypony, stallions included, is fine with that.
As a SFnal world-building exercise, I have no problems with that. As a reader who values equity between the sexes, I'd have trouble identifying with the culture described above. It certainly doesn't seem consistent with the values promoted by the show, unless we append a silent "for mares" to most of the morals.
1738263
Think of Snips and Snails hunting the Ursas as nearly-completed evolution in action?
Actually, it horribly fits the pattern. Young adolescents, check. Doing something stupid and dangerous, check. In the hopes of impressing a female of breeding age, check.
On the primal plains, assuming that they survived this idiocy, they might well have been exiled from their herd (indeed, they might have been about the right age to be exiled anyway) for doing something this dumb.
Given that I have a certain interest in TwiLuna, and given that Apotheosis/Triptych is one of the fandom's flagship TwiLunas, I'm led down the inevitable path. Regarding Alpha females, you've presented some interesting questions for shipping Twilight x Luna / Celestia:
- Assuming a monogamous relationship, how would such a society view two alpha females taking themselves off the reproductive market?
- Assuming the relationship is or becomes public, would any negative views of their arrangement come primarily from removing the two highest-qualified and available females from the gene pool, from deviating from the accepted herd structure, or from another source?
- Conversely, would the relationship instead be accepted by society at large because they're Alphas, and it's up to them to decide what's best for their particular situation?
- Would Twilight then still be Alpha of the Mane6, Beta (or subordinate) to Celestia / Luna, or both? Would / could there be overlapping herd arrangements?
- If reproduction were not a concern, would the Princess take the place of the male in the relationship? Or would this instead be a consensual pairing of Alphas, who would not normally come together given that they'd normally spend all their time managing their own herds?
- If they had magical means to reproduce, would there be widespread demand for such by the unattached female populace? Would they instead keep it a secret and present it as the offspring of an anonymous male?
- Lacking magical reproductive assistance and desiring foals, would they employ an unattached male to assist? If not - assuming unattached males were lesser-qualified to reproduce anyway - how would any male meet their (pun inbound!) astronomically high standards?
1738956
Actually, I'm seeing good arguments here for both the "less common gender" and "more disposable gender." I do think it's possible that the implication is that there's some degree of polygyny operating here, I just don't think that the final ratio is anything like 6:1 female:male, based both on what I'm seeing from those characters whose family composition is known and Equestria's intensely romantic and sentimental mating system as displayed in-show.
You can get a "more disposable gender" effect without actually suicidal behavior on the part of the males or homicidal behavior on the part of the females. All it takes is (1) repeated mortal threats coupled with (2) a general sentiment for "mares and foals first."
Nice a society as Equestria is internally, it's obviously threatened from without by some pretty serious dangers, so I see "1." I've never seen them do "2" but that is skewed by the fact that the show focuses on what are essentially six somewhat metapony mares, who make it their business to get between Equestria and the really dangerous threats. It is suggestive here that (almost?) every Guards character we've seen, including among named characters, has been a stallion. (In the case of the Wonderbolts, speed and manueverability is so important that they transcend every other consideration, including those of sex).
1738959
You actually do get human-level sexual dimorphism in the character designs, or maybe a bit greater dimorphism, which is why I'd argue for weak polygyny, perhaps as little more so than among human but not at the level of a 6:1 ratio.
There are several possible variants of such a system. In particular, if internal peace is emphasized for each marriage, one often sees situations in which marriages with two sisters (of each other) are desirable (so that each wife is the aunt of the other's children); if external connections are emphasized, one avoids such a marriage. The ancient Hebrews did the first system sometimes; the second is probably far more common among modern Muslims when they are rich enough to take multiple wives.
You can have less licit variants, in which it is understood that a male will marry one or two females but keep either acknowledged concubines or semi-acknowledged mistresses. Most traditional Mideastern societies practiced acknowledged concubinage among the nobility. Continental Europe has frequently practiced a system of semi-acknowledged mistresses, to the outrage of the Anglosphere (which however often did the same thing, just with less acknowledgement).
1738540
Humans also have problems having anthropoid biology and human psychology. It's our high level of intelligence which creates dissonance, because we develop ideals beyond what is biologically necessary.
The Ponies, possessing a similar level of intelligence, would have similar problems, I'd imagine.
The usual effect of being highly intelligent is delayed but considerable genetic and memetic success. If you look at -- to take the obvious example -- Twilight Sparkle, I think you'll see this in operation. Asocial to the point that she's probably never mated or even courted anypony, check. Successful in her career to the point that she's become an incredibly desirable mare, check.
Good lord this discussion is getting long
1739257
If you wanted to take this and run with it and still have social gender equality, more or less, the best thing to do would be to emphasize herd dynamics further.
If males are who moderate cooperation between herds, rather than within, then they become a massively valuable socioeconomic node in the social graph. And because it is their area of expertise, regardless of in-herd dominance or lack thereof, they're going to be the final arbiter of any large scale efforts. So, not mayor, but first councillor or equivalent. You can't get rid of disposability entirely, but giving them a unique and valuable social slot and parental role (helping contextualize interactions external to in-herd dynamics) you go a long way toward giving them a non-second-class citizen fulfilling social dynamic.
1739308
Well, either reproductive behavior is monogamous (which mandates a 1:1 ratio or very close), or it's herd. If it's monogamous then it's not a big a deal overall - and Celestia and Luna aren't reproductively available anyway, I'd imagine. Otherwise they'd be the primary genetic influence in the population.
I'd expect that there'd be overlapping herd arrangements, regardless of whether they're reproductively oriented or not. Just as there are overlapping dominance hierarchies in human society. Frankly if you want to whole-hog on the herd thing, I'd imagine that all the princesses (Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Twilight) would form one herd, with Celestia as Alpha, and interpersonal dynamics within it would fall as they may.
Well again, remember that the females never lack access to sex. The only females who would want this, in the end, would be those who literally could not form herd attachments. Without support from the State (and accompanying deleterious economic effects) they wouldn't be able to economically handle a foal and the problem becomes moot (if rather unpleasant).
Not that I want to give any weight to TwiShining fics, but Shining Armor is probably a good male for a princess-herd. We've seen that he has a huge variety of qualities, among them being surprisingly (given his role as Captain of the Guard and whatnot) personable, kind, and even shy.
1739331
I was just using 6:1 because I'm assuming that A) Herds are the basic social structure (remember, it's not necessarily going to be a solely reproductive social structure) and B) The Mane Six are a herd. We do see a second herd - the CMC. Which is a herd of three.
As well, I know this discussion, generally, is not going to get us to where canon is. Because this is a show written by humans for children and to be acceptable in the mainstream, you're not going to see xenofiction. This exercise is more for xenofictional interpretations of ponies incorporating as much is as reasonable, though of course there's a significant range of interpretations.
1738957
I'm actually using mammalian mechanics in general, because they're mammals. If you take, for instance, elephant seals (about as sexually dimorphic as mammals ever get, the males mass 3+ times as much as the females) are very polygynous, but don't have strongly skewed sex ratios. What happens instead is that in a given mating season, most male elephant seals don't get to breed at all: they have to wait until they are in the thin margin between being old enough to be huge but not old enough to be enfeebled by age. They thus get a few really successful breeding seasons per lifetime if they are lucky, and suffer a lot of frustration most of the time (They also sneak-mate when they get the chance).
Now, elephant seals have a very different emotional outlook than do the Ponies. For one thing, male and female elephant seals dislike each other out of mating season, and group by sex during this time, apparently using homosexual affect as a bonding mechanism in such groups. They also seem to mate more or less randomly with whoever comes to or dominates the section of beach on which they have chosen to land. Rape is close to a normal mating tactic.
By contrast, the Ponies put considerable emotional investment into both courting and mating, and have a strong family structure, within which there is strong emotional affect. If they're polygynous, they would probably do so in a much less fluid fashion than do elephant seals.
This would actually support Daetrin's point that a sex ratio skewed toward males would work better for them. Sapient beings with strong emotional affect toward mating, but a system in which most males don't get to mate, would be a recipe for continued internal social violence. This is a Very Bad Thing for creatures who can craft weapons and set fires!
The problem is that the locus of genetic decision-making is the gene complex itself (rather than the species as a whole), and a skewed sex ratio system creates the "temptation" (gene complexes can't really think) to "cheat" by reducing the skew.
Yes, in tournament systems the percentage of males reproducing in any given season is low. The point is that given a better-than-average genetic complex, a male will likely reproduce in the right mating season (when he's old enough to be big and impressive but not so old as to be feeble), and then he will be very genetically successful.
Except ... and this supports your argument ...
Equestrians don't reproduce like that. Their "tournaments" would be highly symbolic (be polite, be understanding, be generous, demonstrate value as a potential husband) and the "prizes" would be long-lasting (stable marriages and families, with bonds often lasting till death do them part). So the reproductive disadvantage experienced by a below-average male might be so extreme as to outweigh the advantage of producing one. Which might create enough pressure for some sort of skew.
You're starting to convince me.
1739356
I wouldn't argue with this, though the story I linked is focused on a differently aspected dissonance: a completely skewed gender ratio combined with a strictly monogamous society.
The most fascinating idea there is that the whole ideology of Friendship was developed as a consolation prize by and for those mares, who could not find a stallion for themselves and had to spend the rest of their lives in a company of other such mares.
1739396
Just because I can.
Or Friendship could be viewed as the ideology for intraherd dynamics. A law of physics emphasizing and reinforcing the basic social unit.
1738986
That's actually possible! There are a number of mechanisms direct and indirect for skewing birth sex ratio, so many that it's a topic we've only just begun to understand.
Here's an obvious possibility. Perceived DANGER.
No matter what the Ponies might prefer, death does you part. In peaceful times, this is not much of an issue, because Pony couples are likely to stay together for years or decades, with widowing occurring maybe once or twice in the lifespan of a Pony who marries an older mate when he or she is still young.
But in dangerous times, widowing is much more likely, which means that there's going to be much more remarriage (in really chaotic times, possibly just by affirmation). This would mean that you'd want to reduce the sex skew down toward 1:1, because otherwise a whole group of wives might find themselves widowed with no new husband in sight.
In peacetime, though, you could increase the skew, because whatever arrangements are made are more likely to be persistent.
1738986
Oh, and you make a good point regarding neoteny. Sapience requires long childhoods and (while I could argue that young Ponies are demonstrably more independent on the average than are young Humans) this means that having surplus males is a higher-risk strategy than it would be for non-sapient herd beasts.
1739001
Males (among humans) slightly bottleneck reproduction, as the French demonstrated after World War One. This is, however, because human females expect and demand the undivided attention of human males, which in turn comes from our nearly 1:1 sexual birth ratio, so it might be less applicable to the Ponies. But yes, the "bottleneck" is far more literally true regarding females, as human women bear one child at a time and take three-quarters of a year to do it.
1738959
My personal opinion of Equestria is that it is a very externally harsh society, or at least has been through most of its history. Lots and lots and LOTS of ways for surplus or weaker or just plain unluckier Ponies to die young. I think the reason why they're all so darned nice to each other (internally-forgiving) is that this is a group-solidarity mechanism culturally-evolved to increase their overall chance of survival when facing external threats in an externally-unforgiving world.
We don't see this quite so much on the show because of (1) the genre constraints on explicitly showing death onscreen (2) the focus on the show's heroes who as meta-ponies are much more likely to survive dangerous situations than normal Ponies, and (3) the Industrial Revolution, which has made Equestria much more potent against its foes than would have been the case many centuries earlier.
1739402
That's a good point, but of course the issue is that generally, highly-dangerous wars don't last all that long. Highly dangerous being on the order of WWI/WWII (prior to those wars, fielding more than 5% of your total population was absurdly difficult). So you only have about one generation's worth of time to change your skew, at which point the danger is over and now your social dynamic is even worse off because you have all these surplus males that, even if we pair everyone off, means that you have smaller social groups and more total friction on the order of the square of change in herd size. It's a possible dynamic but with a long reproductive cycle possibly not a particularly influential one.
1739422
Well frankly that's true for any pre-industrial society. Economics and reproductive ability are your primary constraints, and before an industrial revolution that's basically "farm for sixteen hours a day or die" and "you marry who we tell you to, child, because otherwise social dynamics go to crap."
1739389
This would imply that herdless females were incapable of gainful employment sufficient to provide basic needs for themselves and at minimum one offspring. Considering that they can quite literally eat grass for sustenance, I'm not sure this follows when we're discussing a stable, generally safe, prosperous, semi-industrialized society. Equestria isn't the Krogan homeworld, where "eaten by predator" is still the leading cause of death.
1739022
Real horses have a 21-day estrus cycle. Sapient mares would probably be able to choose if and with whom they mated, possibly taking medications to suppress their heats and reduce the chance of inappropriate matings. I make this statement because real mares show decided mating preferences, and sapient mares who were consciously-aware of the connection between mating and childbearing would presumably be even more choosy.
Nevertheless, the cycle would still be there, and all sorts of mistakes would sometimes happen. Which might generate all sorts of drama ...
1739022
Actually, Equestrian males do seem to be second-class citizens, and yet without any legal disabilities causing them to be so. This implies that the causation is inherent to Equestrian biology.
1739434
You'd be surprised. Even in humans, single mothers don't usually have the resources to adequately provide for the full costs of raising a child without state support. And state support is of course a bad idea in general, for anything, since you don't want to incentivize poor economic decisions.
1739389
Would they be Great and Powerful? At least in their own minds? (Indeed, might they not use grandiosity as a defense mechanism to avoid facing the long-term implications of their own asociality?)
Or might they not instead benefit by studying the Magic of Friendship?
Alicorns may be outside the whole system. But to the extent that they are part of it, given that we haven't seen a single alicorn stallion so far, their only choice if they chose to mate would be non-alicorn stallions. This implies that they would be serially monogamous or polyandrous, depending entirely on the extent to which the alicorn involved is comfortable with polyandry (since, note, she's so dominant that she gets pretty much whatever she wants). "Serial," of course, for the most unpleasant of reasons (from the alicorn's point of view) ...
... her mates will die on her. Again and again and again. Of old age, if not from proximity to a being who is the target of supernatural enemies.
A fact which I for one would milk for tragedy. Why not?
(Indeed, I have this as one of the factors behind Luna's insanity: she couldn't take having everyone she loved or even befriended inevitably dying on her, and this led to her increasing alienation from Equestrian society in general).
Oh, and I do think that a lot of Equestria has Celestia or Luna as ancestress. Not that I see either of them as promiscious, it's just that given centuries and centuries of lifetime, even a fastidious and principled mare will fall in love repeatedly.
I'm guessing that (1) Alicorns normally don't have to share mates, given their ludicrously-high status, and (2) if Cadance is willing to share, Twilight would be the one Alicorn with whom he would not mate (incest taboo, formed long before he knew that she would become an Alicorn).
But yes, if any stallion could attract more than one Alicorn, it would be Shining.
You've actually convinced me that there is some skew to the sex ratio, which is good considering that I came into this assuming that there wasn't.
1739434
They can literally eat random clumps of grass, but they like it about as well as we would like a diet composed primarily of thin gruel.
Unfortunate mares in the situation you describe would rather find gainful employment with the Post Office.
1739423
Oh, I'm envisioning conditions worse and more long-lasting than the World Wars. Think "Age of Discord." Or simply the effects of persistent predation by sapient predators, before Equestria was well-organized and strong enough to fend them all off collectively.
1739433
This is one of the reasons why Luna (once she's no longer Nightmare Moon) is (in my fics) so happy about what Celestia's done with the country. She remembers quite well how things used to be, and likes that the Ponies are now so much healthier and happier.
1739401
Both? If one lives in an externally-dangerous world, the last thing one wishes to see is internal strife adding to the external dangers, or providing them with a means of entry though the society's guarded gates.
And remember, the one in the best position to form the societal ideology is immortal, and well over a thousand years old. She's probably seen the horrible consequences of internal strife, many times in her long lifetime.
1739396
Also, if you're going to have a polygynous marriage but still have female dominance, it works best if the mares in the marriage are already siblings or friends. Such mare herds could be viewed as a preparatory stage in polygynous courtship.
1739447
"Poor economic decisions" may not be the best or most appropriate way to describe unexpected pregnancies. There are always exceptions and (more than) occasionally extenuating circumstances. If the state can't or won't pick up the tab for this sort of thing, even in a temporary "bootstrap" fashion, then we'd hope that in a Friendship-based Equestrian society private charity would step in. It makes a good argument for the Benevolent Organization for Orphans, Herdless Individuals, Sufferers, and Such. Or even religious charities, for example, from the devoted nuns of the Order of the Golden Sun (which Celestia no doubt would officially and politely discourage but would privately underwrite).
1738956
Interesting note about the male construction crews and guards: where do they go when their shifts are over? Are they the same blunt snouts we see in crowd shots? Or are they the "missing" males from our otherwise gender-ratio skewed society? Meaning, do they at some point go home to their (quite possibly monogamous) spouses, leaving a comparatively few mares unattached?
Side note: the MLP Wikia counts ponies from EqG, comics, trading cards, and more, and altogether they count 542 mares / 92 fillies vs 380 stallions / 26 colts, plus another ~110 or so unidentifiable. There's a skew there, definitely, but not nearly what we've been discussing so far.
Also of note: they count the Earth / Pegasus / Unicorn ratio at an astonishing 51% / 18% / 20% respectively (remainder unidentifiable). Reminds me of the Worker / Warrior / Religious split on Babylon 5's Minbari Grey Council.
1739837
I am guessing that in modern Equestria most mares in this situation could either find some sort of support from their family or from their friends, with State support being an option for those lacking both. One possibility might be orphanages, with the possibility of eventual adoption.
There would probably be some sort of social stigma associated with being in such a position, because one is being a burden on others. Prouder mares might try as hard as possible to support the foals themselves, to avoid being scorned or (perhaps worse) pitied for their plight.
Oh yes -- Equestria would probably have a lot of private charities, some of which might endow orphanages etc. For a good example of just such a setup, read chapters 4-6 of Without A Hive by Phoenix_Dragon. Meadow Song was almost certainly not who the founders of the Rising Sun orphanage (note the religious connotations of that name) had in mind as an object of their charity, but it worked out well -- and not solely for Meadow Song.