Horse madness (hippomania) and hippophobia.

This research article examines the classical tales of anthropophagic (human-eating) horses and seeks to connect these mythological stories to current behavioral science and disease understanding, specifically looking at the extreme aggression displayed by these horses and its potential causes, as well as human fear of horses (hippophobia).

Anthropophagic Horses in Classical Mythology

• The study begins with an exploration of anthropophagic horses from classical mythology. Two specific instances, Glaucus of Potniae, King of Efyra, and Diomedes, King of Thrace, who were both devoured by their own horses, are analyzed.
• The article emphasizes that in both these instances, the horses’ violent and aggressive behavior, including anthropophagy, was due to their madness (hippomania), which the authors suggest was induced by the peculiar feeding practices of giving them human flesh.
• This comparison serves as a precursor to connect these ancient stories with current scientific practices and understanding, particularly in relation to the ‘mad cow disease’ phenomenon.

Comparison to Mad Cow Disease

• The authors draw a parallel between the feeding customs described in the mythological stories and the scattered feeding practices in recent times that led to the outbreak of mad cow disease, a neurodegenerative illness in bovines caused by feeding them contaminated meat-and-bone mixtures.
• The comparison intends to highlight the potential threats associated with unnatural feeding practices and how it could cause irreversible mental and physical conditions in animals, propensity to display extreme aggression being one of them.

Causes of Aggressive Behaviour in Horses

• The paper further discusses that in general, a horse’s aggressive behavior can be initiated by both biological and psychological factors.
• However, in the cases of the anthropophagic horses, the authors rule out biological factors as the potential cause, considering the specific conditions of these stories.
• They propose that multiple abuses suffered by the horses, coupled with the unconscious fears (hippophobia) and fantasies of people, might be the driving factors behind these aggressive behaviors and horrifying mythological descriptions of ‘horse-monsters’.

The Role of Human Fear: Hippophobia

• The concept of hippophobia comes to play in the final part of the research, where the writers hypothesize that human fear of horses, rooted in realistic or illogical anxieties, may have contributed to the creation of these storylines.
• The article suggests that people’s subconscious fears may have amplified the portrayal of these horses as violent creatures, which in turn reflects on human understanding and relationship with equines throughout history.