Editorial

Each day the world becomes a more crowded place, in which a host of species compete for reduced space and resources. Some are able to adapt with relative ease, neatly slotting into newly developed niches within the urban sprawl. Others are less fortunate in that not only are they large in size - but also in behavior. Enter the stallion.

Of all classes of horse it is the entire male that is most difficult to keep, most challenging to manage, and, arguably, most susceptible to psychological illness. Few are fortunate enough to own a stallion, and of those fewer still are able to offer an environment large enough to promote healthy behaviors.

It has taken us literally centuries of zoo keeping to arrive at the conclusion that some animals cannot ethically be kept in confined spaces and without adequate social interaction - the Elephant being an obvious example. In fact the Elephant is comparable in many respects to the stallion; kept in an inadequate or unsupportive environment both are subject to maladaptive behaviors that often pose a very real danger to their keepers.

But where the plight of domestically kept Elephants commands a high profile by virtue of their exotic status, the plight of the domestic stallion raises not even a small blip on society's radar.

Once again the northern hemisphere breeding season is upon us - shuttle stallions are ferried across the skies, and many a mare inseminated without courtesy of even the most brief of courtships. What better time could there be to consider a re-calibration our ethical radar ?

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