@gallusrostromegalus I tried searching for the chincoteague horses and vernal ponds, but was unable to find anything useful. Will you enlighten me, please?
So Chincoteauge National Wildlife Refuge contains Assateague Island, which is basically a glorified sandbar of an island off the coast of Virginia, and a really nice park* to visit if you’re not deathly afraid of ticks. The thing the area’s really famous for (besides the Moneypit) is The Chincoteague Ponies, which are these very strange feral horses that are just cute as all get-out:
To keep the population stable and healthy, all couple hundred ponies are rounded up once a year and vaccinated/some of the animals are sold off to private persons/farms (they’re insanely popular as pets and work animals becuase they’re tough lil shits). It’s a whole party. Most of the animals are names and some have celebrity status.
The WEIRD thing about these horses is that they’re pretty much turning into kelpies, minus the hand-eating thing.
There aren’t any permanent sources of fresh water on Assateague island, only Vernal Pools that exist for maybe a couple months a year. The horses live there year-round, minus the three days in roundup. They drink oceanic water, eat super-salty plants grown in said water, consume salty dirt for minerals, and regularly swim around the island to get from graze to graze. Their kidneys and internal systems have undergone some really strange rearrangements to cope with the added salt, and even though most horses can swim, the ponies are extremely comfortable in the water, to the point where if startled, their FIRST inclination is to run into deep water to avoid pursuit.
The park ranger that explained all this to me says they also seem to supplement their diets with shellfish and crabs, which given that pasture horses already snack on bugs and the occasional lizard doesn’t’ really surprise me. There are other places with feral horses on similarly small islands but those have access to fresh water and haven’t developed the Chincoteague Pony’s affinity for ocean life.
Here’s another cute fucking pony:
*The park was actually established to protect THE BIGGEST, FATTEST FUCKING SQUIRRELS I’VE EVER SEEN. They’re called Delmarva Fox Squirrels. Fatass on the left, regular fox squirrel on the right.
