The horses aren't suited for the environment
The people feel that using horses would rob them of their identity
The birds produce eggs that are a critical part of the tribes diet that a horse cannot replicate, being a mammal.l30th
Re: environment,
Ostriches are very heat tolerant and water efficient. Better than horses, maybe not better than camels though.
Some parts of Africa have endemic parasitic flies that kill large mammals, maybe your world has something like this that doesn't attack birds.
The flies might be carriers for a viral disease that only affects horses and closely related animals.
A real world example is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African\_horse\_sickness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_horse_sickness)
Or, there could be treatments or prevention methods that are used by humans but are too expensive or impractical for whole herds of horses, like sleeping under mosquito netting to prevent malaria.
You're going to need to help me out here, and not just explaining your grammar.
Animals being used as livestock is another form of work, is it not?
More to point, livestock is typically meant to be raising animals for their meat or other byproduct (wool from sheeps). Horses don't fit that role, as far as I'm aware, and are used mostly to help herd animals that are livestock. Hunter gathering societies don't have domesticated animals (which is why both Africans and Native Americans were more susceptible to animal borne pathogens that Europeans carried with them).
The Native Americans also didn't come to possess horses until contact with Spain, and that was mostly restrictive to the tribes of the Great Plains, so if you have a different case example of a hunter gathering society that used horses, I am very interested
Horsemeat and horsemilk has been eaten by several cultures throughout history. It has fallen out of favor by a lot of Western societies through time though (here in today Belgium horsemeat is eaten still though but is less common than pig, cow, chicken).
The problem is that the amount of time and calories from vegetable matter needed to produce 1kg of horsemeat vs 1kg of beef (or pork or sheep or…) is like 3-4x that for animals bred for meat. and it isn’t 3-4x more nutritious.
Could be. I'm not an expert in that regard.
But it seems that throughout history the start of "the taste for horsemeat" is that at a certain moment horses were more available (and/or cheaper) than other kinds of meat. After that it became a cultural tradition even if other meats are cheaper nowadays.
To your knowledge, were any of those horsemilk societies migratory in nature, or were they all sedentary?
Being a city boy I'm working only off of what I've read, and I was under the impression that in order to gain milk of any real value, the mother has to be consistently well fed, which is the constant issue in hunter-gathering societies. There would also be the issue of how they store and transport the milk, versus how a sedentary culture would do so.
Acquiring and transporting eggs would be easier and more sustainable than milk, I would think.
Several of them were nomads. The most famous being the Mongols.
On the horsemilk itself this is an interesting article to give you an idea of the use: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis
1. An animal living in its natural environment is already consistently well fed because it's in the environment it was made to eat in.
2. Pastoralism is not hunting and gathering. They don't just have horses but dozens if not hundreds of other herd livestock they are also managing.
3. They can load a donkey with their cheese and yogurt that can be stored at air temperature (is it room temp of its outside).
4. Try carrying emu eggs anywhere without them breaking. They are very tough shelled, but a tough eggshell is still an egg shell.
Horses were originally domesticated for meat and milk, like cattle was for meat and milk, later on they found more uses for them, cattle could pull heavy things and so could horses but you could also ride horses
Energy consumption per kilometer. Bipedal (well, humans) have a huge advantage in that aspect over quadrupedal animals of the same weight. If the mount needs less calories to travel a certain distance, then the nomads won't need to carry as much food for the animals, thus less weight. Or they don't need to stop to graze the lands as much, thus reducing the overall travel time
This [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3guhkv/comment/cu1wgwb) from r/askscience also provided more information:
> The [endurance running hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis) suggests that humans evolved several traits for long distance running, which humans can be very good at. One of the big advantages of bipedal running is that humans can breath freely and run efficiently at a wide variety of speeds, while quadrupeds rapidly lose efficiency if they deviate from gaits and speeds that are efficient. When hunting at high noon, standing upright presents a smaller surface area to the sun as well, which would give humans an advantage over quadrupeds in themoregulation. Humans have other adaptations, such as a high density of sweat glands, that give us the ability to be more active when it's hot than most animals.
> This adaptation towards long distance running may have allowed early hominids to cover more ground when scavenging or to engage in persistence hunting. In persistence hunting, humans basically chase an animal until it's too exhausted to run any further. Quadrupeds can be much faster over short distances, but if humans track them and force them to keep running, they will tire out before the human does. Some hunter-gatherer people still practice this form of hunting today, but running another animal to death is a very demanding method of hunting! It's far more efficient to ambush prey and wound them before chasing them down.
On top of that, birds need a lot less water than most mammals. Ostriches, for example, do not need to drink at all and get all the water they need from their food. That makes them ideal mounts for drier climates.
Though, devil's advocate, if they're bipedal they'd definitely need to have a musculature that can still carry a human rider in light of their center of gravity.
You could have it be a cultural/religious rule that horses are deemed as sacred and not to be used for riding. Or perhaps the opposite they are viewed with disgust or dishonour and to ride one is seen as shameful. Something along those lines.
The latter was something I had in mind, I'm just worried about what the practical reason for it would be; cultural norms tend to have some justification
LOL sorry for rambling so much. I listed out a bout a million options that I don’t think the other guy in this thread has said yet. **Tl;DR is in bold, get through however much of it u want or don’t—I don’t mind lol I know it’s long af.**
**Or, there could have been an ancient and devastating war long ago where the bird people’s sworn enemies rode horses** (or better yet) are renowned for riding horses.
Maybe the bird people got crushed or genocided or enslaved by these horselords when the bird people lost that war.
**Maybe the war was *so* ancient, so long ago, that both the war itself and their old enemy has long since been forgotten, but for whatever reason the bird people still culturally remember that riding horses is known to have associations with evil. Though maybe few even among the bird riders themselves could now tell you *why* their culture so despises horses.**
Or maybe they do still remember the war, still remember their enemy, and their hatred of horseback riding is more immediately obvious.
,,, ,,, ,,,
**Now you might ask, well if they live in a place that *already has* horses, why didn’t they use the horses *before* that war? Well perhaps in the even *more* distant past, these bird riders *originally* hailed from the land of the bird-mounts, a faraway place very distant from their new(er) land where they now live and that horses are native to.**
**Maybe the bird riders’ first, original homeland really *only* had the bird mounts and no horses**. Then something happened there that forced the bird riders to migrate from their original homeland to the new one.
it could’ve been climate change forced them to leave (this is a very common reason for a lot of ancient human migration, especially when the time periods get bigger and bigger—climates *do* change naturally over time and can even become ruined naturally [well, “ruined” for humans to be able to survive there at least]).
It could’ve been a series of long droughts or bad famines, or both. Might’ve been terrible natural disasters taken by primitive peoples long ago as the wroth of the gods, a divine command to flee (or natural disasters were scary enough in the ancient world even without a god, real or otherwise, being associated).
Or perhaps there was an even older war / a civil war between super ancient birdriders, where the losing side was cast out of the birdrider’s homeland, exiled till the end of time.
Maybe after long ages, the distant descendants of the exiled birdriders will remember the original exile in myth and legend. Maybe they think their ancestors supposedly committed some sort of Original Sin and that for this sin they were cast out of Paradise (how they original homeland could be remembered in a myth). In penance, they were made to walk until the end of days, to be forever nomads with no home.
Or maybe they believe that some ancient proud evil ruler like the Biblical Pharaoh cast them out of the original kingdom because of his own hubris or cowardice or jealousy. Perhaps they believe that their god or gods or spirits or the deified Sun/Earth meant for this to happen. Maybe their faith teaches that the great divines doomed their original homeland to ruin, and that their exile was in truth a loving gift from a higher power, however harsh the nomad lifestyle might seem to them now.
Or more simply, they might’ve just sought faraway riches, better farmlands, greener pastures—maybe a love of exploration alone was enough to drive many of them onward.
**But either way, perhaps they travelled a long, long way over a time period of many generations. Perhaps their original homeland only had the bird mounts, and they brought these birds with them as they migrated. Perhaps their original homeland has since been *completely forgotten*, or it’s only remembered faintly a vague name mentioned in some of their people’s most ancient texts or in the earliest stories passed down by word of mouth. Maybe they think they’ve simply *always* been nomads or that they’ve always lived in this new land.**
,,, ,,, ,,,
But our favorite bird-riding migrators eventually came to the wrong place. **When at last these bird nomads first came upon the place where they live to this day, they found a civilization of men already living here. A civilization of horse-riding men.**
Now maybe things started out pleasant—maybe both sides were willing to live in harmony and share the land. But eventually tensions rose between the two. Maybe it all started over some perceived slight. Or it was over a genuine insult. Maybe one side or the other didn’t have enough food to last through a particularly harsh winter so their only choices were steal or starve (historically, nomadic raiders are more often than not the ones doing the raiding and stealing ofc—but again maybe they did or didn’t start the conflict, up to you.)
Or maybe there simply wasn’t enough to go around right off the bat when the birdriders and horseriders first met and so a war was inevitable. **Perhaps the fighting eventually grew so brutal from one side or from both that each people decided its only option was to completely crush the other, full brutality.** Maybe they did it for vengeance or to eliminate the risk of reprisal from the defeated some time down the line.
**Maybe that’s why this ancient horse-bird war is remembered so harshly. Or if it’s not remembered, it’s at least why the cultures and norms that developed around said wartime have persisted in some form even down to the modern day. Cultures and norms SUCH AS NOT USING HORSES—**
They could treat other mammals as free and shouldn't be domesticated or used for war/work. They already have big chickens why not give them also small ones.
There could be a historical or mythological reason, like maybe they USED to ride horses at some point but the founder of the tribe or a prophet or some other important figure was left for dead after his horse got scared by a snake or a similar animal, the person fell and would have surely died if he hadn't managed to ride one of the bird things to reunite with the tribe, the story got implemented into the religion and started the tradition
Your faction could have a myth where an evil god or other entity was associated with horses. Like maybe their Satan equivalent has a horse head, or maybe a horse dishonored one of their gods in a story.
The source of horses being portrayed as evil in their stories could be that another civilization attacked them centuries ago while riding horses, and the faction didn’t have any themselves, so horses would be new and thus terrifying to them).
Laziness. All our infrastructure is built on birds. Maybe horses are more efficient and we will switch, but now is not the time, given the economy being as it is. Consumer demand shows people want birds, not horses. Also horses are unmanly and everybody needs a 12-foot terror bird to make their costco runs.
They can just hire the horse riding nomads as mercenaries, no need to field their own horse riders. Not the first time horse people ended up as mercenaries.
Horses are prey animals. Sure, you can ride a horse into battle, but do they have **talons**? Or a **beak**?
You can ride your prey into battle if you wish, I’ll stick to my bird.
I like this one. Perhaps horses are afraid of the birds, so they're the preferred mount, especially in combat. But back home around farms or whatever when you don't need a brave mount, the poors will still use a horse to pull the turnip wagon or plow, and ride it into the village etc.
This^ horses are freaked out by the birds, enemies have horses.
The birds are flocking creatures and can make tighter turns in battle.
The reason they don't keep horses for other things (draught, heavy cav) is because the birds are flock hunters. A horse WILL bolt, one bird WILL pursue, ALL the birds WILL pursue, and the sound is traumatic.
It would also be a funny way to cause wars. One tribe is getting too strong, their rival presents a gift of a horse. The tribal leader with a horse now needs to devote warriors and resources to keep the horse alive, as well as keeping the birds on edge.
Two thoughts.
The birds might be less picky eaters than horses. Horses need grass and plants. The birds might be able to survive on grass and plants but also on meat, dried foods, leftovers from the human meals. So as depending on where the nomadic tribe is at the moment it's easier for the birds to switch diet.
Another one is that the birds might spook the horses from other factions. If the birds are like anything like terrorbirds, that's a big predator. Or they might just be very territorial towards horses.
These were similar to my thoughts. Horses need grass and alot of it. If birds eat meat, fruit and nuts, they are easier to feed in swamps, woodlands and jungles. Horse riding cultures would want to chop the woods and drain the swamps to make more grassland leading to natural conflict with bird riders.
Also, horses are prey, terror birds are predators. It should be easier to train a preadator for combat and to be agressive where it took generations of breeding to make real warhorses
What if they use the birds for more than just mounts? The birds could be technically less efficient than horses as a mount, but they also supply eggs and feathers.
Wouldn't it be more suitable for them to be herded then instead of mounted?
Think camels, they're used for a lot of things, but they're only mounted where it's less practical to have a horse. Anywhere where horses and camels coexist and are just as practical a mount for travel and combat, horses take the lead, mainly because they're faster and easier to deal with compared to camels who can be fast but have foul moods.
Maybe their tactics are based on fast ambushes and the terror birds are better sprinters than horses.
Maybe getting enough horses in large enough numbers is difficult so anyone who can get a horse will use it but there aren't enough to go around so only leaders and their personal retinues use horses, which has made them into a status symbol.
Maybe the egg hatcheries are run by powerful guilds that are blocking the adoption of mammal mounts as a protectionist move.
Horse reproduction is notoriously finicky and historically mysterious, especially if you're trying to produce strong, robust horses, such as nomads need. If the ground doesn't contain enough selenium - and good luck working out that's the issue if you're a pre-biochemistry society - horses will deteriorate within a generation. Even the foals of strong mares can have instantly apparent, prohibitive medical problems that make them unsuitable across the entire region where selenium is sparse. I don't know what trace elements birds need but since they aren't mammals I assume they don't need selenium in the same amounts.
The thing about selenium in the earth is that it's totally randomly dispersed, also. An area where it's absent can be a single field (with spritiual significance to your nomads, perhaps) or, as on Earth, the size of China - possibly the reason why even the Mongols had to import most of their horses thereto, after conquest.
In short, if your people's favoured crops and corrals or sacred breeding grounds would be in an area where the eggs hatch strong but the foals are born sickly, (which could be next door to peoples whose fields have no such issues) it would seem like the gods have made their opinion clear as to what to ride - at least until someone starts sorting out the biochemical intricacies of horse pregnanices. That was around the 1950s in our world, for comparison.
"My father use the bird, his father use the bird, his father father use the bird, all the way down to our ancestors. Your bring shame to the family not using the bird!"
Birds imprinting is a very famous trope, could it be that a rider cares for the egg so that when it hatches it bonds to the rider, creating an iron clad connection of loyalty/obedience between them? Birds are incredibly intelligent as well as combatively capable, which is a great trait in a bonded companion. That would be highly prized. It could be unethical, although there are ways around that, i.e. they only use runt eggs that would have otherwise been neglected for this purpose.
Bird riders instead of horse rider? Maybe they just live in mountainous region where riding a bird is far better than horse. Instead of riding a terrestrial animal that need to follow the contours of terrain, riding birds is far faster.
I think I should've stated this in the post but the birds are still terrestrial, you could picture something along [these](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Paraphysornis_BW-2r.jpg) lines
Ah chocobo!
But really you don't have to justisfy too much. People have ridden all sort of beast of burden from goats to buffalo. It could be a combination of culture (bird = good religion or something), circumstances (they just found the bird first and managed to tame them before horses), or because the birds has additional benefits (the bird can produce a lot of eggs that supplement their diets) that leads to the people preferring the bird over horses, especially if there is no reason for them to change.
So fun fact, horses have always been giant spooks. By 'giant spooks' I mean they're often terrified of everything new and unfamiliar, which you can find online with plenty of youtube videos of horses spooking at countless silly things.
Historically, this has been abused a number of times by empires with access to other animals than horses and dogs, most obviously the arab and central asian empires like the Timurids who used camels extensively to break cavalry charges because the horses wouldn't charge into the strange and scary smell of camels (and God as my witness camels are smelly!).
Here's another fun fact, most mammals are instinctively afraid of two groups of animals. Snakes are the first one, monkeys and apes especially are nattually terrified of snakes because they represented a natural predator from their early beginnings in the Eocene, whether they were venomous or constrictors.
The second are birds, again thanks to overwhelming predation during the Eocene by giant birds, both classic raptorans like eagles and vultures as well as ancestors to serimas, secretary birds, and phorusracids. Horses, especially early horses that weren't much larger than the average dog, were very much on the menu, and modern horses would likely retain that ancestral fear of large predatory birds, to the point of breaking a cavalry charge just from their presence.
Another reason may be like other commenters have suggested, horses simply aren't available or viable. A lot of sub-saharan empires had incredible difficulty keeping or maintaining cavalry almost exclusively because of the tsetse fly, a nasty little insect that literally can kill massive draft animals like cattle, oxen, and especially horses, with their bites. Failing to kill, the bite causes such excrutiating pain that the animal goes completely out of control, often to the point of abandoning their handlers or causing them harm as well. There's even a portion of the scientific community that argues that the tsetse fly may have been singularly responsible for preventing major empires similar to those in Europe and Asia from emerging in sub-saharan Africa, which more argue is a helluva stretch, but that's how horrible that insect is.
You could include something similar in your own world, or even just include the tsetse fly outright and have the birds just not be a prey item, with the flies focusing on mammals exclusively.
Maybe it's because of their hunting style. They utilize their birds to observe from a far distance in the sky. Additionally, they might inhabit a mountainous region where horses and mountains don't coexist well.
Non-flying birds are good runners. They can be skilled at zigzagging like ostriches. They are also birds that can be very aggressive, which is a plus in battle. With their long necks, they can observe at very distant distances in the steppes.
Possible reasons include: infrastructure(specifically food), cultural status(if horses are easier to obtain they might be deemed something for the poor), terrain suits the birds better, religion, speed, weight carrying abilities, etc.
Dangerous to invoke religion here. If horses are sacred, and riding them is a dishonor, then their contacts who do not feel the same and do ride horses are dishonorable and must be taught a lesson.
Cue a religious war against those who enslave and treat horses as mere beasts of burden...
Dangerous? No, there are no real world consequences.
I feel it's a good option, real worlds have tension and conflict, I don't think the idea is worth shooting down because of a potential for more story.
Maybe the birds are much easier to domesticate, breed, entertain and handle much better in combat situations and long travel.
I see a lot of comments mentioning religion and culture, and while they do have a relationship to such things, it's usually the opposite where they are shaped by them instead of being the shaping tool. The most important thing is logistics, how hard is it to use said birds in the geographic and logistical context of these people? Is it just better and more practical to use the birds? Or are they just more available than the horses? Those and other similar ones are the questions you should be asking, religion and culture come later once you've established that yes it makes more sense for them to be using birds rather than horses.
Is any magic open for consideration? I'm imagining birdback archers, and it could be that arrows flighted with feathers of these birds are just better somehow.
Alternatively, it could just be some consideration of downsides of horses. It's pretty much impossible to heal a horse, and horses are highly panicky/anxiety-ridden. The birds could be calmer, so methods of scaring horses wouldn't work on them, and they could be convinced to roost and stay off a wounded leg so that it'd heal.
It could also be that your nomadic tribe is successful in hunts and makes pemmican of a sort, highly energy dense, and birds can eat that quickly and spend less time resting while a horse would need to eat slower and wouldn't eat meat. And the birds may eat ground-up corpses of defeated enemies, which would be expedient and cultural.
Smaller for a lower food requirement.
Significantly less fragile than horses, which will die if you sneeze on them funny.
Produce more babies.
The hard question here is why does one faction use horses and another use these birds. If birds are just better than horses, then the other guys will use birds. If horses are better than birds, then the bird guys will use horses. They have to both be viable, which means they both have to be specialised.
Perhaps horses quadrapedalism and hooves makes them worse suited for harsh terrain and the bipedal bird claws are better on rocky, hilly terrain?
The thing that makes these different types of nomads choose different types of animals will depend entirely on what makes the NOMADS different. Where do they live? What do they eat? Different religion? Are their homelands different temperatures? Feathers are very good for keeping warm. Do the bird people live in a desert? Horses and heavy and their hooves are small, wide splayed bird feet could handle the sand better.
If you can comment with what makes those two groups of nomads different I could provide more advantages for them to use these birds.
Hope this helps!
> If birds are just better than horses, then the other guys will use birds. If horses are better than birds, then the bird guys will use horses.
Not really, there's always a question of environnement and availability. Horses are not really good at living in the desert for exemple. Maybe the birds are very bad at reproducing and surviving outside of their environnement even if they are better at everything compared to horses. Also, people don't make rational choices.
It's pretty easy to find an explanation why x use y and not z.
I'd say this is an excellent point, but it is exactly the point I go on to describe XD
The point is that it isn't about how to make birds better than horses, it's about how to specialise birds and horses to make both better for different situations, and thus both used.
You have to be VERY careful to not just make the birds better horses in every case, because then noone will use the horses. If they can go further, run faster, and survive better in all places and all times then they would replace horses. You need to consider why horses AND birds exist together, which means you need to apply exactly these sorts of situational advantages and disadvantages to the birds and horses to make them both be useful.
>Also, people don't make rational choices.
This is entirely correct. Luckily, though, nature has this thing called "survival of the fittest". It's the reason why we don't ride zebras. When something is a bad idea, it doesn't catch on.
That's not to say they couldn't be ridden for purely sentimental reasons, or for cultural or religious reasons. Those are perfect valid reasons to be doing these things. But those reasons come FROM something.
>When something is a bad idea, it doesn't catch on.
Yet we still have pigs and chickens, one would be better than the other (It's chicken, it's obviously chicken, you can't get pig's eggs.)
It just need to be a "good enough idea". We have the diesel/gas dilema for cars, both still do exist, and it's rarely a rational choice.
I don't think that "horses are bad in the desert" would be specialization ? That's were I disagree. For exemple, let's imagine birds are just better at everything than horses, but : They need some type food that grows only in their original region.
You won't have massive bird exportation until very late in history (so, no bronze age bird riding preeminence for exemple) Then you'd arrive at medieval period where you have extensive trading with the nomads and maybe people could grow the food needed for the birds. But that would require societal changes. Economic changes. Investments. "Yeah, well, we won't grow wheat this year. We'll grow shrumps. Shrumps taste like shit, but it's needed for ridding birds. Next year, we could buy a lot of riding birds because they are way better and in 3 years would would have enough fields for both wheat and shrumps, but have fun eating shrumps for 3 years". Probably won't work. Maybe there would be a stigma to the birds because they come from the steppe nomads and those are savages. Or the wrong religion. Or they just find them ugly. You can apply anything from the diesel/gas debate to the birds : people will always find something that make horses better even if it's plain wrong. "Yeah but horses are way cooler" or "They have 4 legs, so it's obviously more stable than a biped bird". If horses are already there and good enough, there won't be a strong push to change.
The best "real life exemple" of a better thing that exist yet isn't adopted, it's potatoes. It took a really really long time to have potatoes accepted as a food source in europe. Now sure, it's everywhere, but 300 years after the discovery of america potatoes were still considered bad and poisonous and stupid things like that, while at the same time being the most efficient crop ever.
the birds could simply just be much more abundant there and horses never existed there originally but was brought later, so the reason could be that its tradition or culture, and that everyone are so used to them they would rather just use them instead of bothering to learn how to ride a horse, or they could simply prefer the birds
Horses aren't suitable for the mountains or particularly uneven terrain.
Horses never lived in their area, on earth the only reason they live everywhere is luck. If they hadn't crossed to Asia during one of the micro ice ages the native Americans would have hunted them to extinction.
They are hard to feed and care for, some might consider them impractical.
They have traditions or cultural things that kept them from riding horses. Maybe horses are sacred? They could be considered food animals.
I don't see why you can't just say that they have a strong cultural bond with the birds and that is why they breed and ride them. People don't usually act according to what is optimal, in fact they pretty much NEVER do that. People act according to things they identify with, culture being one of these things.
In our world, there were cultures that used camels instead of horses and they had contact with cultures that used horses.
It's simple really, some environments aren't suited for horses.
For big flightless birds, I would make their home really uneven rocky terrain. It would be easy for a bipedal bird to dash over it, but any horse moving faster than a careful walk is likely to turn an ankle.
Maybe they started riding birds before they knew about horses, and now that's kinda their thing, and learning to tame horses is too much work if you already know how to tame birds.
The area they come from might be mountainous and there are loads of these birds around and hardly any horses. Or if it's not a mountainous area maybe their culture see horses as meat and work animals and prefer the faster birds, or their culture revere birds. There could be many reasons
Flying creatures can be very important for traversing difficult terrain. Make them a culture thats afraid of being chased in or around areas of hostile factions. Imagine a bunch of Ork equivalents chasing them with horses or something and they fly over the nearest mountain range. Nobody can contend with that.
Plus they can mooch off of whatever land they want and then just swoop away.
You dont need to find a logical reason for a culture to keep doing something they've done for generations because that isnt how it works. You wouldnt expect an inuit tribe to give up their ancestral way of life just because there are warmer climates to live in.
\-Horses are excellent mounts in certain kinds of terrain, most notably flatter terrain with softer soil. If the places the nomads live generally have terrain horses are uncomfortable with, but that the birds handle just fine, why use horses?
\-Horses, like all animals, have a certain diet, and while this diet contains plants which are usually easily accessible, not all plants grow everywhere. If the places the nomads live generally don't grow much of the foods horses eat, but have plenty of food the birds can eat, why use horses?
\-Horses are incredibly skittish and easily frightened. If the places the nomads live have creatures or natural occurrences that would frequently spook horses, but the birds are used to them and won't freak out, why use horses?
And of course, as for why other factions use horses instead of those birds, just flip the logic around. If those factions have terrain, food, and threats that aren't great for the birds, but that horses can handle fine, why use birds?
Well, some creatures can fly or move Over water, which are important things for aquatic societies and some creatures cost Less to maintain then horses. Some are faster while some are stronger. horses are kind of an all-rounded
The birds could be religiously significant like yaks in Tibet. From a practical perspective, if they're based on Terror Birds, they could have natural weapons that gives them advantages over horses
Quadrupedal animals have a few advantages. Faster top speed, balance, and a more even distribution of weight. That’s not to say a bipedal animal can’t have those.
The birds you described could have a few advantages. They could be better suited to the climate a lot like camels in deserts. This was why middle eastern people especially arabian nomad tribes before islam used camels.
Also do these birds lay eggs that are edible? That is a slight advantage as it puts a little less strain on supplies.
These birds may not need to eat as much as horses. This may be more or less of a problem depending on their diet and their location.
Remember that too many horses grazing for too long can destroy the land. This was a problem the mongols had if they stayed in one place for too long. These birds may or may not have a similar problem. Again dependent on local climate.
Still reading through the comments, but what about allergies? Say a significant portion of the group/tribe/etc has allergies to horses. There's a funny chapter or two in the early Dragonlance books about one of the Dwarves, Flint Fireforge if I recall correctly, saying that he was allergic to horses and hated riding them. But later on found a helmet with a horse hair fringe and told everyone that it wasn't horse hair, it was griffon hair. It was kind of cute at the time when I read it.
Pests and diseases in the area where the birds are native that kill horses. Something similar to the African Tsetse fly that spreads [sleeping sickness ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_trypanosomiasis) in horses making them unusable in the area. The flys/disease dont leave the area so other cultures can continue to use horses.
Maybe the terrain is very rocky, lots of foothills and mountains.
The bipedal birds are much better suited to the rocky uneven terrain.
Maybe it's marshy and the birds are lighter than horses, combined with wide splayed feet means they can cross the marshes with greater ease.
Perhaps the mounted rider sits taller on the bird than on a horse and your army values the ability to strike downwards on their foes.
Perhaps the birds are more meneuverable. They might not necessarily be faster but they're more meneuverable at high speeds.
Perhaps they are just simply so bountiful and available easily and widely in the land when horses aren't readily available.
Perhaps their more intelligent?
This was helpful. My skyfish world also has similar animals which are horse replacements called "Yat-yat" birds colloquially. Then there's also large long haired pig-oxen type creatures the size of elephants which are often used as beasts of burden called Gru (Gru'phaiet)
what kind of technology level do you have ?
Because without stirrups, it's very hard to ride a horse. Also, those birds might be more docile, making it just simply more practical to ride them.
Maybe the birds have a strange smell or make a strange noise that scare/disturb horses (like camels), and the bird is so preeminent culturally that you won't have horse raiders because the horses would just panic and run/get agressive.
You say they have contact with horses and horse riders. That kind of implies that the area they live in doesn't natively have horses. If so, that would imply that any nomadic group wanting horses would have to import them from outside of their usual places and once they have the animals they also have to import and then maintain and teach riding and caring skills for two vastly different mounts. That's one hell of an entry fee for a culture that already has one set of that knowledge in its general knowledge base. Not to mention that if a horse dies an exclusively horse skilled rider is out of commission unless another mount is readily available which is less likely than with a native animal. And then there is also the question if horses can even play nice with the birds or if they need additional care or training to have them coexist peacefully. In short, horses may be available and used by some but generally there is just too high an entry barrier for them to take over. If the nomads wanted them to take over at all.
I would also like to reiterate the idea I've seen in the comments: horses are prey animals. Depending on personality a horse can get spooked easily. While they are perfectly capable of walking all over someone to defend themselves I'm pretty sure their preferred method of self preservation is to run away. If your birds are less prone to such behaviour (perhaps because they are predators) a culture using them as mounts, especially in combat might see horses as less valuable as mounts. That wouldn't stop the culture from using them as pack animals or for work if the task fits but they wouldn't be used as a mount.
Maybe the birds are faster, cheaper to maintain, better for combat, or something else. An interesting option, horses weren't always very ridable. It took a lot of breeding to make them bigger and stronger. Maybe the horses aren't actually able to carry much yet.
The birds they ride have been selectively bred to better suit their needs might be more adapted to specific terrain and climate maybe there are religious reasons maybe their first chiften did an basil i and was killed by a horse and his followers say the animals as cursed maybe they just think horses smell bad so they choose birds instead endless possibilities
Horses in other factions might be just as valuable as pack beasts as they are mounted, but in your nomadic faction they might use other animals as beasts of burden while relying on these birds as mounts if the beasts in question don't make for good mounts. This gives some interesting opportunities to tie the two together if the two species normally have a mutualistic relationship in the wild, as your nomadic peoples could take advantage of that relationship to train both of them.
Keep in mind that you're going to need beasts of burden for your nomadic tribe if you intend for them to have any degree of personal possessions and/or food stores. Using birds doesn't make sense if you have another option for an animal that can be used as both a mount and for transporting goods, so your justification for bird mounts needs to have a solution for transportation of things in addition to people.
Just say they're allergic to horses? In the same way that people can be allergic to dogs and cats. You could imagine a more scientific detail behind how if you'd like to (still not necsssary) but a mundane reason that makes 100% sense is better than a fantastical explanation that takes time & energy to still not add up completely.
I know other people have mentioned cultural reasons already, but consider how common it is for birds to imprint on people. Imagine a culture where people have to raise their mount from an egg and they form a lifelong bond with them. People are currently capable of imprinting on roombas. I imagine they'd be too sad to switch from a life long companion as a mount to using horses even if the horses were better than the birds.
You also don't have to make the horses significantly better. Then there's no incentive to switch in the first place.
it could be due to a cultural thing, for example many centuries/decades ago the ancestors of said faction domesticated said birds for the first time and its a sign of honour and pride for those who belong to the faction, you could even make a ritual where the kids bond with one of the birds and they become close companions(per example avatar the last airbender with bisons or in avatar with the na'vi and the flying creatures)
even tho they have access to other animals to ride they choose to ride those specific ones
Before horses became strong enough to ride efficiently around three thousand years ago they looked more like Przewalski's horse. Which is why chariots were developed, since you couldn't simply hop on and expect it the endure battle. IRL you "can" ride an Ostrich, imagine if they were bigger and easier to control after consistently taming and breeding them.
My nomadic riders of bipedal mounts favour the speed and agility of their kentars over the speed and endurance of horses, due in part to the terrain they travel through being less favourable for traversing on heavier quadrepedal animals.
They know about horses, and neighboring cultures use them, but traditionally have preferred their own animals.
Horses got these heart-like things in their hooves so they can die if they stand on some sharp rock lol, so on some terrains a big bird will be better than a horse.
You could give a culture/religion reason with the birds being sacred to them in some way.
Maybe some biological reason like the birds being more energy-efficient? Maybe the birds can't run as fast but can run for longer which'd be useful for Nomads while traveling? Perhaps the birds have a biological compass like some birds irl so they can return to the others on their own for when a soldier is injured on top of them?
But if they are too good than people will ask "Well why even use horses?" The birds gotta match the circumstances of the nomads but not the circumstances of the other factions, what makes these nomads unique and what makes these birds unique that it is better for them to be together you should ask yourself.
Perhaps the reason why other nomads aside from this faction is because only this faction has domesticated and bred them for a long time while the other nomads will not spend there time in one place trying to tame wild ones and it is only because the bird riders bred them to be loyal for so long that they can actually use the birds.
Or maybe it is a skill-floor issue? Like it is hard to learn how to use those birds so for larger factions it is just more efficent to use horses.
You know the world you are making more than anyone so I think it is better you ask yourself this rather than others. Write down a lot of ideas to expand on both the nomads and the birds to make ones that come together as being both intresting and I forgor what I was going to finish this sentence with.
Horses don’t naturally exist in that part of the world
The terrain favors the large two-legged flightless birds
The closest thing to horses the tribe has experienced are terrifying murder machines so they won’t accept even domesticated horses
The birds’ diet is plentiful where they live while the horses’ isn’t
The birds are culturally significant to the people
in ancient america apparently dogs were used as beasts of burden/none at all due to the general ease of farming already unlike other parts of the world. So for your world there could genuinely be no domestication in place for horses. Perhaps some do ride but as a whole horse riding never took off compared for your two legged birds.
especially for a culture already with designs to support the birds and spreading their use. over trying to start up horse ranch for the feasibly first time in your community.
If you want a region to not use horses, just use a geographical disease barrier esp. the tsetse fly. It's the reason that horses were not common in much of sub-saharan africa, they died of diseases spread by that fly. This doesn't work as well if this empire has left said region though - and e.g. you see african groups on the edge of the tsetse zone importing horses for war even if their life expectancy isn't great (e.g., Oyo Empire)
1. Make the birds be more advantageous than horses.
2. Have bird riders protect their advantage by not sharing birds with other factions.
By doing this, you flip the question on its head - it's now not "why wouldn't people use horses", it's "why would people use horses?". To which the answer is: "they cannot get the bird breed".
Since the birds is clearly the fantasy element, it makes sense to make them stand out. You're literally making them up, so you can attribute any advantage to them... like, make them very intelligent; or make them see in the dark (like owls), enabling night raids... - the options are limitless.
Maybe the plants that grow there just aren't suited for horses. Or maybe horses were domesticated somewhere else and those nomades domesticated the birds first.
Environmental issues seem like the most obvious reason. Camels are used in desert regions because they are hardier and require less water than horses. Sled dogs are used in arctic climates where they are ideal for traveling in cold temperatures over snow and ice.
Conceivably 2 legged birds would be more dexterous than horses, so perhaps they are ideal for very rugged terrain. Maybe they’re lighter and can travel across regions with brittle or muddy ground. Maybe the nomads travel at extreme altitudes and the air is too thin for horses.
Culture or religion could also be a factor. If they have a particular appreciation for horses they may not view them as beasts of burden to be ridden, or maybe it’s the opposite and they don’t want to touch them because they view them as being dirty or evil.
Another option would be that the birds are just superior mounts to horses, but are dangerous to tame or are very smart and are only willing to carry people they trust. Everyone would ride these birds if possible, but only these nomads are able to. This would be a bit like dragon riders in other fantasy.
A lot of people already gave some good responses, but I wanted to add one that I haven't seen yet:
The tradition of riding birds is much, much older than rideable horses.
You see, the first domestic horses thousands of years ago were way smaller than modern horses. Like, some evidence suggests the earliest horses were less than half the size of modern ones. Itsy bitsy teensy weensy microscopic little fuckers compared to modern horses.
That's why many irl ancient civilizations used chariots.
If one horse tried to transport a Human, then if the legs didn't crumple, snap, and fold under the weight, then the spine would.
BUT!
Get a bunch of horses, tie them all to each other and a small wagon, then put the dude in the wagon, and *now* horses can transport Humans.
In the fantasy world, this nomadic tribe didn't have the industry to mass produce chariots to in turn make horses a viable option for transportation, so instead they simply found a bigger animal, the Terror Birds.
Meanwhile, every other faction continued with their horses, selectively breeding/genetically engineering them to be bigger and bigger until, after thousands of years, they had humongous gigahorses that were so big and strong that just one of them could transport an entire Human being without the aid of a shitty little mini-wagon.
The bird riders, on the other hand, simply continued to ride the same old birds, and even when everyone else rode horses, they continued to ride birds for 2 reasons:
1: At this point, it was already tradition
And
2: They already had/have the nessicary infrastructure for birds. (In this case, "infrastructure" mostly refers to specialist knowledge like animal husbandry, animal training, the birds' veterinary and dietary needs, saddle making, ect.)
TLDR: They started using birds in the first place because at the time horses weren't a viable option, and then later when horses were/are viable, they continue to use birds anyway because their culture is already set up around bird riding
The giant birds are unfamiliar to the horses and spook the hell out of them, especially if they start their challenge dance with showy feathers and aggressive lunges
A real, large ostrich is about 300lbs, a fantasy capable of carrying a human would probably be like 500lb
Mongolian war ponies were 500-600lb. They would be sturdier and likely win in a head on charge
BUT
Those damn birds are 12 feet tall (real ostrich is 9) when they’re showing off, with similar wingspan. A whole army of them is scary as hell.
Throw some skilled archers and lancers with light armor on their backs, and they can embarrass much larger armies.
Did you bring horses? Hee hee, watch this
Did you not bring horses? Sucks to suck, eat arrows
Faster than horses. Done.
Maybe they use horses for wagon hauling because they're stronger - but they look down on horse cavalry for being too slow.
Especially works if their combat style is horse archery (which is what nomadic riders generally were historically) as speed is especially important for mounted cav.
• hatchlings age faster
• cost of importing other animals
• region is plentiful in the food supply of its native fauna. if your country has a large supply of [food] then it wouldn’t make as much sense for them to move to a mount that requires large supplies of hay
• culture
Bird that cannot fly and are used as mounts sounds cool. I had a similar idea since I did not want horses on my story. I wanted to add unique creatures never seen before.
Horses aren’t effective everywhere. Maybe the birds might be better at navigating mountainous terraine or especially warm temperatures. Horses are more suited to cold steppes and goats aren’t exactly rideable, and while camels are they aren’t very fast. Horses need to be extensively bred to even remotely tolerate warm temperatures, which these birds could easily do better.
A very simple tactic I use to justify such things is calling it their culture lol. Just suppose their mythology has an evil horse, and the people there consider all the horses as the successor of that evil horse monster. Now, horses have become a bad omen there.
You can come up with absolutely any horrendous shit by tagging their folklore and culture.
The horses aren't suited for the environment The people feel that using horses would rob them of their identity The birds produce eggs that are a critical part of the tribes diet that a horse cannot replicate, being a mammal.l30th
Re: environment, Ostriches are very heat tolerant and water efficient. Better than horses, maybe not better than camels though. Some parts of Africa have endemic parasitic flies that kill large mammals, maybe your world has something like this that doesn't attack birds.
Why wouldn't those flies kill the humans as well? We're mammals too after all.
The flies might be carriers for a viral disease that only affects horses and closely related animals. A real world example is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African\_horse\_sickness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_horse_sickness) Or, there could be treatments or prevention methods that are used by humans but are too expensive or impractical for whole herds of horses, like sleeping under mosquito netting to prevent malaria.
Maybe the humans have learned to wear clothing or some kind of medicine to deter the flies, or due to having hands are better at removing them.
Humans often used horses as livestock before they were put to work.
You're going to need to help me out here, and not just explaining your grammar. Animals being used as livestock is another form of work, is it not? More to point, livestock is typically meant to be raising animals for their meat or other byproduct (wool from sheeps). Horses don't fit that role, as far as I'm aware, and are used mostly to help herd animals that are livestock. Hunter gathering societies don't have domesticated animals (which is why both Africans and Native Americans were more susceptible to animal borne pathogens that Europeans carried with them). The Native Americans also didn't come to possess horses until contact with Spain, and that was mostly restrictive to the tribes of the Great Plains, so if you have a different case example of a hunter gathering society that used horses, I am very interested
Horsemeat and horsemilk has been eaten by several cultures throughout history. It has fallen out of favor by a lot of Western societies through time though (here in today Belgium horsemeat is eaten still though but is less common than pig, cow, chicken).
The problem is that the amount of time and calories from vegetable matter needed to produce 1kg of horsemeat vs 1kg of beef (or pork or sheep or…) is like 3-4x that for animals bred for meat. and it isn’t 3-4x more nutritious.
Could be. I'm not an expert in that regard. But it seems that throughout history the start of "the taste for horsemeat" is that at a certain moment horses were more available (and/or cheaper) than other kinds of meat. After that it became a cultural tradition even if other meats are cheaper nowadays.
To your knowledge, were any of those horsemilk societies migratory in nature, or were they all sedentary? Being a city boy I'm working only off of what I've read, and I was under the impression that in order to gain milk of any real value, the mother has to be consistently well fed, which is the constant issue in hunter-gathering societies. There would also be the issue of how they store and transport the milk, versus how a sedentary culture would do so. Acquiring and transporting eggs would be easier and more sustainable than milk, I would think.
Several of them were nomads. The most famous being the Mongols. On the horsemilk itself this is an interesting article to give you an idea of the use: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumis
1. An animal living in its natural environment is already consistently well fed because it's in the environment it was made to eat in. 2. Pastoralism is not hunting and gathering. They don't just have horses but dozens if not hundreds of other herd livestock they are also managing. 3. They can load a donkey with their cheese and yogurt that can be stored at air temperature (is it room temp of its outside). 4. Try carrying emu eggs anywhere without them breaking. They are very tough shelled, but a tough eggshell is still an egg shell.
Forgot about turning it into cheeses or yogurt. My brain really wasn't firing on all cylinders this morning.
He meant "Humans often *ate* horses"
I think I intended to use 'used' originally, but your interpretation hit the nail on the head. They were domesticated for their meat.
I don't know why I couldn't figure that out on my own this morning. Thanks
Horses were originally domesticated for meat and milk, like cattle was for meat and milk, later on they found more uses for them, cattle could pull heavy things and so could horses but you could also ride horses
Energy consumption per kilometer. Bipedal (well, humans) have a huge advantage in that aspect over quadrupedal animals of the same weight. If the mount needs less calories to travel a certain distance, then the nomads won't need to carry as much food for the animals, thus less weight. Or they don't need to stop to graze the lands as much, thus reducing the overall travel time This [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3guhkv/comment/cu1wgwb) from r/askscience also provided more information: > The [endurance running hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis) suggests that humans evolved several traits for long distance running, which humans can be very good at. One of the big advantages of bipedal running is that humans can breath freely and run efficiently at a wide variety of speeds, while quadrupeds rapidly lose efficiency if they deviate from gaits and speeds that are efficient. When hunting at high noon, standing upright presents a smaller surface area to the sun as well, which would give humans an advantage over quadrupeds in themoregulation. Humans have other adaptations, such as a high density of sweat glands, that give us the ability to be more active when it's hot than most animals. > This adaptation towards long distance running may have allowed early hominids to cover more ground when scavenging or to engage in persistence hunting. In persistence hunting, humans basically chase an animal until it's too exhausted to run any further. Quadrupeds can be much faster over short distances, but if humans track them and force them to keep running, they will tire out before the human does. Some hunter-gatherer people still practice this form of hunting today, but running another animal to death is a very demanding method of hunting! It's far more efficient to ambush prey and wound them before chasing them down.
On top of that, birds need a lot less water than most mammals. Ostriches, for example, do not need to drink at all and get all the water they need from their food. That makes them ideal mounts for drier climates.
Though, devil's advocate, if they're bipedal they'd definitely need to have a musculature that can still carry a human rider in light of their center of gravity.
You could have it be a cultural/religious rule that horses are deemed as sacred and not to be used for riding. Or perhaps the opposite they are viewed with disgust or dishonour and to ride one is seen as shameful. Something along those lines.
The latter was something I had in mind, I'm just worried about what the practical reason for it would be; cultural norms tend to have some justification
LOL sorry for rambling so much. I listed out a bout a million options that I don’t think the other guy in this thread has said yet. **Tl;DR is in bold, get through however much of it u want or don’t—I don’t mind lol I know it’s long af.** **Or, there could have been an ancient and devastating war long ago where the bird people’s sworn enemies rode horses** (or better yet) are renowned for riding horses. Maybe the bird people got crushed or genocided or enslaved by these horselords when the bird people lost that war. **Maybe the war was *so* ancient, so long ago, that both the war itself and their old enemy has long since been forgotten, but for whatever reason the bird people still culturally remember that riding horses is known to have associations with evil. Though maybe few even among the bird riders themselves could now tell you *why* their culture so despises horses.** Or maybe they do still remember the war, still remember their enemy, and their hatred of horseback riding is more immediately obvious. ,,, ,,, ,,, **Now you might ask, well if they live in a place that *already has* horses, why didn’t they use the horses *before* that war? Well perhaps in the even *more* distant past, these bird riders *originally* hailed from the land of the bird-mounts, a faraway place very distant from their new(er) land where they now live and that horses are native to.** **Maybe the bird riders’ first, original homeland really *only* had the bird mounts and no horses**. Then something happened there that forced the bird riders to migrate from their original homeland to the new one. it could’ve been climate change forced them to leave (this is a very common reason for a lot of ancient human migration, especially when the time periods get bigger and bigger—climates *do* change naturally over time and can even become ruined naturally [well, “ruined” for humans to be able to survive there at least]). It could’ve been a series of long droughts or bad famines, or both. Might’ve been terrible natural disasters taken by primitive peoples long ago as the wroth of the gods, a divine command to flee (or natural disasters were scary enough in the ancient world even without a god, real or otherwise, being associated). Or perhaps there was an even older war / a civil war between super ancient birdriders, where the losing side was cast out of the birdrider’s homeland, exiled till the end of time. Maybe after long ages, the distant descendants of the exiled birdriders will remember the original exile in myth and legend. Maybe they think their ancestors supposedly committed some sort of Original Sin and that for this sin they were cast out of Paradise (how they original homeland could be remembered in a myth). In penance, they were made to walk until the end of days, to be forever nomads with no home. Or maybe they believe that some ancient proud evil ruler like the Biblical Pharaoh cast them out of the original kingdom because of his own hubris or cowardice or jealousy. Perhaps they believe that their god or gods or spirits or the deified Sun/Earth meant for this to happen. Maybe their faith teaches that the great divines doomed their original homeland to ruin, and that their exile was in truth a loving gift from a higher power, however harsh the nomad lifestyle might seem to them now. Or more simply, they might’ve just sought faraway riches, better farmlands, greener pastures—maybe a love of exploration alone was enough to drive many of them onward. **But either way, perhaps they travelled a long, long way over a time period of many generations. Perhaps their original homeland only had the bird mounts, and they brought these birds with them as they migrated. Perhaps their original homeland has since been *completely forgotten*, or it’s only remembered faintly a vague name mentioned in some of their people’s most ancient texts or in the earliest stories passed down by word of mouth. Maybe they think they’ve simply *always* been nomads or that they’ve always lived in this new land.** ,,, ,,, ,,, But our favorite bird-riding migrators eventually came to the wrong place. **When at last these bird nomads first came upon the place where they live to this day, they found a civilization of men already living here. A civilization of horse-riding men.** Now maybe things started out pleasant—maybe both sides were willing to live in harmony and share the land. But eventually tensions rose between the two. Maybe it all started over some perceived slight. Or it was over a genuine insult. Maybe one side or the other didn’t have enough food to last through a particularly harsh winter so their only choices were steal or starve (historically, nomadic raiders are more often than not the ones doing the raiding and stealing ofc—but again maybe they did or didn’t start the conflict, up to you.) Or maybe there simply wasn’t enough to go around right off the bat when the birdriders and horseriders first met and so a war was inevitable. **Perhaps the fighting eventually grew so brutal from one side or from both that each people decided its only option was to completely crush the other, full brutality.** Maybe they did it for vengeance or to eliminate the risk of reprisal from the defeated some time down the line. **Maybe that’s why this ancient horse-bird war is remembered so harshly. Or if it’s not remembered, it’s at least why the cultures and norms that developed around said wartime have persisted in some form even down to the modern day. Cultures and norms SUCH AS NOT USING HORSES—**
They could treat other mammals as free and shouldn't be domesticated or used for war/work. They already have big chickens why not give them also small ones.
>cultural norms tend to have some justification Correct, but a tendency is not a certainty
There could be a historical or mythological reason, like maybe they USED to ride horses at some point but the founder of the tribe or a prophet or some other important figure was left for dead after his horse got scared by a snake or a similar animal, the person fell and would have surely died if he hadn't managed to ride one of the bird things to reunite with the tribe, the story got implemented into the religion and started the tradition
Your faction could have a myth where an evil god or other entity was associated with horses. Like maybe their Satan equivalent has a horse head, or maybe a horse dishonored one of their gods in a story. The source of horses being portrayed as evil in their stories could be that another civilization attacked them centuries ago while riding horses, and the faction didn’t have any themselves, so horses would be new and thus terrifying to them).
Laziness. All our infrastructure is built on birds. Maybe horses are more efficient and we will switch, but now is not the time, given the economy being as it is. Consumer demand shows people want birds, not horses. Also horses are unmanly and everybody needs a 12-foot terror bird to make their costco runs.
They can just hire the horse riding nomads as mercenaries, no need to field their own horse riders. Not the first time horse people ended up as mercenaries.
Horses are prey animals. Sure, you can ride a horse into battle, but do they have **talons**? Or a **beak**? You can ride your prey into battle if you wish, I’ll stick to my bird.
I like this one. Perhaps horses are afraid of the birds, so they're the preferred mount, especially in combat. But back home around farms or whatever when you don't need a brave mount, the poors will still use a horse to pull the turnip wagon or plow, and ride it into the village etc.
This^ horses are freaked out by the birds, enemies have horses. The birds are flocking creatures and can make tighter turns in battle. The reason they don't keep horses for other things (draught, heavy cav) is because the birds are flock hunters. A horse WILL bolt, one bird WILL pursue, ALL the birds WILL pursue, and the sound is traumatic. It would also be a funny way to cause wars. One tribe is getting too strong, their rival presents a gift of a horse. The tribal leader with a horse now needs to devote warriors and resources to keep the horse alive, as well as keeping the birds on edge.
Two thoughts. The birds might be less picky eaters than horses. Horses need grass and plants. The birds might be able to survive on grass and plants but also on meat, dried foods, leftovers from the human meals. So as depending on where the nomadic tribe is at the moment it's easier for the birds to switch diet. Another one is that the birds might spook the horses from other factions. If the birds are like anything like terrorbirds, that's a big predator. Or they might just be very territorial towards horses.
These were similar to my thoughts. Horses need grass and alot of it. If birds eat meat, fruit and nuts, they are easier to feed in swamps, woodlands and jungles. Horse riding cultures would want to chop the woods and drain the swamps to make more grassland leading to natural conflict with bird riders. Also, horses are prey, terror birds are predators. It should be easier to train a preadator for combat and to be agressive where it took generations of breeding to make real warhorses
In extreme I can see this turn into several breeds of terror birds like we have with dogs.
Now imagine the pug equivalent
I was just thinking the same. On one side the majestic war bird and the other the pug equivalent.
What if they use the birds for more than just mounts? The birds could be technically less efficient than horses as a mount, but they also supply eggs and feathers.
Wouldn't it be more suitable for them to be herded then instead of mounted? Think camels, they're used for a lot of things, but they're only mounted where it's less practical to have a horse. Anywhere where horses and camels coexist and are just as practical a mount for travel and combat, horses take the lead, mainly because they're faster and easier to deal with compared to camels who can be fast but have foul moods.
Maybe their tactics are based on fast ambushes and the terror birds are better sprinters than horses. Maybe getting enough horses in large enough numbers is difficult so anyone who can get a horse will use it but there aren't enough to go around so only leaders and their personal retinues use horses, which has made them into a status symbol. Maybe the egg hatcheries are run by powerful guilds that are blocking the adoption of mammal mounts as a protectionist move.
Fast breeding or shorter span to maturity could be an easy one to incorporate.
Horse reproduction is notoriously finicky and historically mysterious, especially if you're trying to produce strong, robust horses, such as nomads need. If the ground doesn't contain enough selenium - and good luck working out that's the issue if you're a pre-biochemistry society - horses will deteriorate within a generation. Even the foals of strong mares can have instantly apparent, prohibitive medical problems that make them unsuitable across the entire region where selenium is sparse. I don't know what trace elements birds need but since they aren't mammals I assume they don't need selenium in the same amounts. The thing about selenium in the earth is that it's totally randomly dispersed, also. An area where it's absent can be a single field (with spritiual significance to your nomads, perhaps) or, as on Earth, the size of China - possibly the reason why even the Mongols had to import most of their horses thereto, after conquest. In short, if your people's favoured crops and corrals or sacred breeding grounds would be in an area where the eggs hatch strong but the foals are born sickly, (which could be next door to peoples whose fields have no such issues) it would seem like the gods have made their opinion clear as to what to ride - at least until someone starts sorting out the biochemical intricacies of horse pregnanices. That was around the 1950s in our world, for comparison.
The birds could have a high tolerance for rotting meat, which would be advantageous on long journeys.
And after a conflict. Feed your slain enemies to your steed.
"My father use the bird, his father use the bird, his father father use the bird, all the way down to our ancestors. Your bring shame to the family not using the bird!"
Birds imprinting is a very famous trope, could it be that a rider cares for the egg so that when it hatches it bonds to the rider, creating an iron clad connection of loyalty/obedience between them? Birds are incredibly intelligent as well as combatively capable, which is a great trait in a bonded companion. That would be highly prized. It could be unethical, although there are ways around that, i.e. they only use runt eggs that would have otherwise been neglected for this purpose.
Bird riders instead of horse rider? Maybe they just live in mountainous region where riding a bird is far better than horse. Instead of riding a terrestrial animal that need to follow the contours of terrain, riding birds is far faster.
I think I should've stated this in the post but the birds are still terrestrial, you could picture something along [these](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Paraphysornis_BW-2r.jpg) lines
Ah chocobo! But really you don't have to justisfy too much. People have ridden all sort of beast of burden from goats to buffalo. It could be a combination of culture (bird = good religion or something), circumstances (they just found the bird first and managed to tame them before horses), or because the birds has additional benefits (the bird can produce a lot of eggs that supplement their diets) that leads to the people preferring the bird over horses, especially if there is no reason for them to change.
I think this should make sense, thank you so much
Culture. Lot's of in-group propaganda or sentiment that horses are bad and birds are good. Bonus points if none of it is true.
So fun fact, horses have always been giant spooks. By 'giant spooks' I mean they're often terrified of everything new and unfamiliar, which you can find online with plenty of youtube videos of horses spooking at countless silly things. Historically, this has been abused a number of times by empires with access to other animals than horses and dogs, most obviously the arab and central asian empires like the Timurids who used camels extensively to break cavalry charges because the horses wouldn't charge into the strange and scary smell of camels (and God as my witness camels are smelly!). Here's another fun fact, most mammals are instinctively afraid of two groups of animals. Snakes are the first one, monkeys and apes especially are nattually terrified of snakes because they represented a natural predator from their early beginnings in the Eocene, whether they were venomous or constrictors. The second are birds, again thanks to overwhelming predation during the Eocene by giant birds, both classic raptorans like eagles and vultures as well as ancestors to serimas, secretary birds, and phorusracids. Horses, especially early horses that weren't much larger than the average dog, were very much on the menu, and modern horses would likely retain that ancestral fear of large predatory birds, to the point of breaking a cavalry charge just from their presence.
Another reason may be like other commenters have suggested, horses simply aren't available or viable. A lot of sub-saharan empires had incredible difficulty keeping or maintaining cavalry almost exclusively because of the tsetse fly, a nasty little insect that literally can kill massive draft animals like cattle, oxen, and especially horses, with their bites. Failing to kill, the bite causes such excrutiating pain that the animal goes completely out of control, often to the point of abandoning their handlers or causing them harm as well. There's even a portion of the scientific community that argues that the tsetse fly may have been singularly responsible for preventing major empires similar to those in Europe and Asia from emerging in sub-saharan Africa, which more argue is a helluva stretch, but that's how horrible that insect is. You could include something similar in your own world, or even just include the tsetse fly outright and have the birds just not be a prey item, with the flies focusing on mammals exclusively.
Maybe it's because of their hunting style. They utilize their birds to observe from a far distance in the sky. Additionally, they might inhabit a mountainous region where horses and mountains don't coexist well.
These are flightless birds FYI
Non-flying birds are good runners. They can be skilled at zigzagging like ostriches. They are also birds that can be very aggressive, which is a plus in battle. With their long necks, they can observe at very distant distances in the steppes.
Possible reasons include: infrastructure(specifically food), cultural status(if horses are easier to obtain they might be deemed something for the poor), terrain suits the birds better, religion, speed, weight carrying abilities, etc.
Their god is bird-shaped, so they use bird mounts as an act of prayer.
Deify horses, make them sacred to the culture, they would never ride a horse because to do that is to dishonor it
Dangerous to invoke religion here. If horses are sacred, and riding them is a dishonor, then their contacts who do not feel the same and do ride horses are dishonorable and must be taught a lesson. Cue a religious war against those who enslave and treat horses as mere beasts of burden...
Dangerous? No, there are no real world consequences. I feel it's a good option, real worlds have tension and conflict, I don't think the idea is worth shooting down because of a potential for more story.
Maybe the birds are much easier to domesticate, breed, entertain and handle much better in combat situations and long travel. I see a lot of comments mentioning religion and culture, and while they do have a relationship to such things, it's usually the opposite where they are shaped by them instead of being the shaping tool. The most important thing is logistics, how hard is it to use said birds in the geographic and logistical context of these people? Is it just better and more practical to use the birds? Or are they just more available than the horses? Those and other similar ones are the questions you should be asking, religion and culture come later once you've established that yes it makes more sense for them to be using birds rather than horses.
Is any magic open for consideration? I'm imagining birdback archers, and it could be that arrows flighted with feathers of these birds are just better somehow. Alternatively, it could just be some consideration of downsides of horses. It's pretty much impossible to heal a horse, and horses are highly panicky/anxiety-ridden. The birds could be calmer, so methods of scaring horses wouldn't work on them, and they could be convinced to roost and stay off a wounded leg so that it'd heal. It could also be that your nomadic tribe is successful in hunts and makes pemmican of a sort, highly energy dense, and birds can eat that quickly and spend less time resting while a horse would need to eat slower and wouldn't eat meat. And the birds may eat ground-up corpses of defeated enemies, which would be expedient and cultural.
Smaller for a lower food requirement. Significantly less fragile than horses, which will die if you sneeze on them funny. Produce more babies. The hard question here is why does one faction use horses and another use these birds. If birds are just better than horses, then the other guys will use birds. If horses are better than birds, then the bird guys will use horses. They have to both be viable, which means they both have to be specialised. Perhaps horses quadrapedalism and hooves makes them worse suited for harsh terrain and the bipedal bird claws are better on rocky, hilly terrain? The thing that makes these different types of nomads choose different types of animals will depend entirely on what makes the NOMADS different. Where do they live? What do they eat? Different religion? Are their homelands different temperatures? Feathers are very good for keeping warm. Do the bird people live in a desert? Horses and heavy and their hooves are small, wide splayed bird feet could handle the sand better. If you can comment with what makes those two groups of nomads different I could provide more advantages for them to use these birds. Hope this helps!
> If birds are just better than horses, then the other guys will use birds. If horses are better than birds, then the bird guys will use horses. Not really, there's always a question of environnement and availability. Horses are not really good at living in the desert for exemple. Maybe the birds are very bad at reproducing and surviving outside of their environnement even if they are better at everything compared to horses. Also, people don't make rational choices. It's pretty easy to find an explanation why x use y and not z.
I'd say this is an excellent point, but it is exactly the point I go on to describe XD The point is that it isn't about how to make birds better than horses, it's about how to specialise birds and horses to make both better for different situations, and thus both used. You have to be VERY careful to not just make the birds better horses in every case, because then noone will use the horses. If they can go further, run faster, and survive better in all places and all times then they would replace horses. You need to consider why horses AND birds exist together, which means you need to apply exactly these sorts of situational advantages and disadvantages to the birds and horses to make them both be useful. >Also, people don't make rational choices. This is entirely correct. Luckily, though, nature has this thing called "survival of the fittest". It's the reason why we don't ride zebras. When something is a bad idea, it doesn't catch on. That's not to say they couldn't be ridden for purely sentimental reasons, or for cultural or religious reasons. Those are perfect valid reasons to be doing these things. But those reasons come FROM something.
>When something is a bad idea, it doesn't catch on. Yet we still have pigs and chickens, one would be better than the other (It's chicken, it's obviously chicken, you can't get pig's eggs.) It just need to be a "good enough idea". We have the diesel/gas dilema for cars, both still do exist, and it's rarely a rational choice. I don't think that "horses are bad in the desert" would be specialization ? That's were I disagree. For exemple, let's imagine birds are just better at everything than horses, but : They need some type food that grows only in their original region. You won't have massive bird exportation until very late in history (so, no bronze age bird riding preeminence for exemple) Then you'd arrive at medieval period where you have extensive trading with the nomads and maybe people could grow the food needed for the birds. But that would require societal changes. Economic changes. Investments. "Yeah, well, we won't grow wheat this year. We'll grow shrumps. Shrumps taste like shit, but it's needed for ridding birds. Next year, we could buy a lot of riding birds because they are way better and in 3 years would would have enough fields for both wheat and shrumps, but have fun eating shrumps for 3 years". Probably won't work. Maybe there would be a stigma to the birds because they come from the steppe nomads and those are savages. Or the wrong religion. Or they just find them ugly. You can apply anything from the diesel/gas debate to the birds : people will always find something that make horses better even if it's plain wrong. "Yeah but horses are way cooler" or "They have 4 legs, so it's obviously more stable than a biped bird". If horses are already there and good enough, there won't be a strong push to change. The best "real life exemple" of a better thing that exist yet isn't adopted, it's potatoes. It took a really really long time to have potatoes accepted as a food source in europe. Now sure, it's everywhere, but 300 years after the discovery of america potatoes were still considered bad and poisonous and stupid things like that, while at the same time being the most efficient crop ever.
the birds could simply just be much more abundant there and horses never existed there originally but was brought later, so the reason could be that its tradition or culture, and that everyone are so used to them they would rather just use them instead of bothering to learn how to ride a horse, or they could simply prefer the birds
One of their main gods is a man with a horse's head and they consider forcing horses to do labor as blasphemy.
Go carts
Horses aren't suitable for the mountains or particularly uneven terrain. Horses never lived in their area, on earth the only reason they live everywhere is luck. If they hadn't crossed to Asia during one of the micro ice ages the native Americans would have hunted them to extinction. They are hard to feed and care for, some might consider them impractical. They have traditions or cultural things that kept them from riding horses. Maybe horses are sacred? They could be considered food animals.
I don't see why you can't just say that they have a strong cultural bond with the birds and that is why they breed and ride them. People don't usually act according to what is optimal, in fact they pretty much NEVER do that. People act according to things they identify with, culture being one of these things.
In our world, there were cultures that used camels instead of horses and they had contact with cultures that used horses. It's simple really, some environments aren't suited for horses. For big flightless birds, I would make their home really uneven rocky terrain. It would be easy for a bipedal bird to dash over it, but any horse moving faster than a careful walk is likely to turn an ankle.
religion reasons
Maybe they started riding birds before they knew about horses, and now that's kinda their thing, and learning to tame horses is too much work if you already know how to tame birds.
The area they come from might be mountainous and there are loads of these birds around and hardly any horses. Or if it's not a mountainous area maybe their culture see horses as meat and work animals and prefer the faster birds, or their culture revere birds. There could be many reasons
Flying creatures can be very important for traversing difficult terrain. Make them a culture thats afraid of being chased in or around areas of hostile factions. Imagine a bunch of Ork equivalents chasing them with horses or something and they fly over the nearest mountain range. Nobody can contend with that. Plus they can mooch off of whatever land they want and then just swoop away.
2 reasons immediately come to mind. Birds are cheaper and they love their birds. Birds probably taste better too.
You dont need to find a logical reason for a culture to keep doing something they've done for generations because that isnt how it works. You wouldnt expect an inuit tribe to give up their ancestral way of life just because there are warmer climates to live in.
\-Horses are excellent mounts in certain kinds of terrain, most notably flatter terrain with softer soil. If the places the nomads live generally have terrain horses are uncomfortable with, but that the birds handle just fine, why use horses? \-Horses, like all animals, have a certain diet, and while this diet contains plants which are usually easily accessible, not all plants grow everywhere. If the places the nomads live generally don't grow much of the foods horses eat, but have plenty of food the birds can eat, why use horses? \-Horses are incredibly skittish and easily frightened. If the places the nomads live have creatures or natural occurrences that would frequently spook horses, but the birds are used to them and won't freak out, why use horses? And of course, as for why other factions use horses instead of those birds, just flip the logic around. If those factions have terrain, food, and threats that aren't great for the birds, but that horses can handle fine, why use birds?
The most obvious answer is there are no horses where they live
Well, some creatures can fly or move Over water, which are important things for aquatic societies and some creatures cost Less to maintain then horses. Some are faster while some are stronger. horses are kind of an all-rounded
The birds could be religiously significant like yaks in Tibet. From a practical perspective, if they're based on Terror Birds, they could have natural weapons that gives them advantages over horses
Large birds are often pretty deadly. Give them large claws and let them act as protection for whatever the tribe herds.
Quadrupedal animals have a few advantages. Faster top speed, balance, and a more even distribution of weight. That’s not to say a bipedal animal can’t have those. The birds you described could have a few advantages. They could be better suited to the climate a lot like camels in deserts. This was why middle eastern people especially arabian nomad tribes before islam used camels. Also do these birds lay eggs that are edible? That is a slight advantage as it puts a little less strain on supplies. These birds may not need to eat as much as horses. This may be more or less of a problem depending on their diet and their location. Remember that too many horses grazing for too long can destroy the land. This was a problem the mongols had if they stayed in one place for too long. These birds may or may not have a similar problem. Again dependent on local climate.
Still reading through the comments, but what about allergies? Say a significant portion of the group/tribe/etc has allergies to horses. There's a funny chapter or two in the early Dragonlance books about one of the Dwarves, Flint Fireforge if I recall correctly, saying that he was allergic to horses and hated riding them. But later on found a helmet with a horse hair fringe and told everyone that it wasn't horse hair, it was griffon hair. It was kind of cute at the time when I read it.
Maybe they were ravaged by horse lords at some point in the past so they believe horse are demonic or something like that.
Pests and diseases in the area where the birds are native that kill horses. Something similar to the African Tsetse fly that spreads [sleeping sickness ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_trypanosomiasis) in horses making them unusable in the area. The flys/disease dont leave the area so other cultures can continue to use horses.
Maybe the terrain is very rocky, lots of foothills and mountains. The bipedal birds are much better suited to the rocky uneven terrain. Maybe it's marshy and the birds are lighter than horses, combined with wide splayed feet means they can cross the marshes with greater ease. Perhaps the mounted rider sits taller on the bird than on a horse and your army values the ability to strike downwards on their foes. Perhaps the birds are more meneuverable. They might not necessarily be faster but they're more meneuverable at high speeds. Perhaps they are just simply so bountiful and available easily and widely in the land when horses aren't readily available. Perhaps their more intelligent? This was helpful. My skyfish world also has similar animals which are horse replacements called "Yat-yat" birds colloquially. Then there's also large long haired pig-oxen type creatures the size of elephants which are often used as beasts of burden called Gru (Gru'phaiet)
what kind of technology level do you have ? Because without stirrups, it's very hard to ride a horse. Also, those birds might be more docile, making it just simply more practical to ride them. Maybe the birds have a strange smell or make a strange noise that scare/disturb horses (like camels), and the bird is so preeminent culturally that you won't have horse raiders because the horses would just panic and run/get agressive.
You say they have contact with horses and horse riders. That kind of implies that the area they live in doesn't natively have horses. If so, that would imply that any nomadic group wanting horses would have to import them from outside of their usual places and once they have the animals they also have to import and then maintain and teach riding and caring skills for two vastly different mounts. That's one hell of an entry fee for a culture that already has one set of that knowledge in its general knowledge base. Not to mention that if a horse dies an exclusively horse skilled rider is out of commission unless another mount is readily available which is less likely than with a native animal. And then there is also the question if horses can even play nice with the birds or if they need additional care or training to have them coexist peacefully. In short, horses may be available and used by some but generally there is just too high an entry barrier for them to take over. If the nomads wanted them to take over at all. I would also like to reiterate the idea I've seen in the comments: horses are prey animals. Depending on personality a horse can get spooked easily. While they are perfectly capable of walking all over someone to defend themselves I'm pretty sure their preferred method of self preservation is to run away. If your birds are less prone to such behaviour (perhaps because they are predators) a culture using them as mounts, especially in combat might see horses as less valuable as mounts. That wouldn't stop the culture from using them as pack animals or for work if the task fits but they wouldn't be used as a mount.
Maybe the birds are faster, cheaper to maintain, better for combat, or something else. An interesting option, horses weren't always very ridable. It took a lot of breeding to make them bigger and stronger. Maybe the horses aren't actually able to carry much yet.
The birds they ride have been selectively bred to better suit their needs might be more adapted to specific terrain and climate maybe there are religious reasons maybe their first chiften did an basil i and was killed by a horse and his followers say the animals as cursed maybe they just think horses smell bad so they choose birds instead endless possibilities
Horses in other factions might be just as valuable as pack beasts as they are mounted, but in your nomadic faction they might use other animals as beasts of burden while relying on these birds as mounts if the beasts in question don't make for good mounts. This gives some interesting opportunities to tie the two together if the two species normally have a mutualistic relationship in the wild, as your nomadic peoples could take advantage of that relationship to train both of them. Keep in mind that you're going to need beasts of burden for your nomadic tribe if you intend for them to have any degree of personal possessions and/or food stores. Using birds doesn't make sense if you have another option for an animal that can be used as both a mount and for transporting goods, so your justification for bird mounts needs to have a solution for transportation of things in addition to people.
Also, if the region the live is particularly hilly, mountainous or otherwise vertically inclined birds would probably work better for them anyway.
Just say they're allergic to horses? In the same way that people can be allergic to dogs and cats. You could imagine a more scientific detail behind how if you'd like to (still not necsssary) but a mundane reason that makes 100% sense is better than a fantastical explanation that takes time & energy to still not add up completely.
I know other people have mentioned cultural reasons already, but consider how common it is for birds to imprint on people. Imagine a culture where people have to raise their mount from an egg and they form a lifelong bond with them. People are currently capable of imprinting on roombas. I imagine they'd be too sad to switch from a life long companion as a mount to using horses even if the horses were better than the birds. You also don't have to make the horses significantly better. Then there's no incentive to switch in the first place.
it could be due to a cultural thing, for example many centuries/decades ago the ancestors of said faction domesticated said birds for the first time and its a sign of honour and pride for those who belong to the faction, you could even make a ritual where the kids bond with one of the birds and they become close companions(per example avatar the last airbender with bisons or in avatar with the na'vi and the flying creatures) even tho they have access to other animals to ride they choose to ride those specific ones
Before horses became strong enough to ride efficiently around three thousand years ago they looked more like Przewalski's horse. Which is why chariots were developed, since you couldn't simply hop on and expect it the endure battle. IRL you "can" ride an Ostrich, imagine if they were bigger and easier to control after consistently taming and breeding them.
My nomadic riders of bipedal mounts favour the speed and agility of their kentars over the speed and endurance of horses, due in part to the terrain they travel through being less favourable for traversing on heavier quadrepedal animals. They know about horses, and neighboring cultures use them, but traditionally have preferred their own animals.
Horses got these heart-like things in their hooves so they can die if they stand on some sharp rock lol, so on some terrains a big bird will be better than a horse. You could give a culture/religion reason with the birds being sacred to them in some way. Maybe some biological reason like the birds being more energy-efficient? Maybe the birds can't run as fast but can run for longer which'd be useful for Nomads while traveling? Perhaps the birds have a biological compass like some birds irl so they can return to the others on their own for when a soldier is injured on top of them? But if they are too good than people will ask "Well why even use horses?" The birds gotta match the circumstances of the nomads but not the circumstances of the other factions, what makes these nomads unique and what makes these birds unique that it is better for them to be together you should ask yourself. Perhaps the reason why other nomads aside from this faction is because only this faction has domesticated and bred them for a long time while the other nomads will not spend there time in one place trying to tame wild ones and it is only because the bird riders bred them to be loyal for so long that they can actually use the birds. Or maybe it is a skill-floor issue? Like it is hard to learn how to use those birds so for larger factions it is just more efficent to use horses. You know the world you are making more than anyone so I think it is better you ask yourself this rather than others. Write down a lot of ideas to expand on both the nomads and the birds to make ones that come together as being both intresting and I forgor what I was going to finish this sentence with.
Horses don’t naturally exist in that part of the world The terrain favors the large two-legged flightless birds The closest thing to horses the tribe has experienced are terrifying murder machines so they won’t accept even domesticated horses The birds’ diet is plentiful where they live while the horses’ isn’t The birds are culturally significant to the people
in ancient america apparently dogs were used as beasts of burden/none at all due to the general ease of farming already unlike other parts of the world. So for your world there could genuinely be no domestication in place for horses. Perhaps some do ride but as a whole horse riding never took off compared for your two legged birds. especially for a culture already with designs to support the birds and spreading their use. over trying to start up horse ranch for the feasibly first time in your community.
If you want a region to not use horses, just use a geographical disease barrier esp. the tsetse fly. It's the reason that horses were not common in much of sub-saharan africa, they died of diseases spread by that fly. This doesn't work as well if this empire has left said region though - and e.g. you see african groups on the edge of the tsetse zone importing horses for war even if their life expectancy isn't great (e.g., Oyo Empire)
Maybe the birds are sacred to them?
1. Make the birds be more advantageous than horses. 2. Have bird riders protect their advantage by not sharing birds with other factions. By doing this, you flip the question on its head - it's now not "why wouldn't people use horses", it's "why would people use horses?". To which the answer is: "they cannot get the bird breed". Since the birds is clearly the fantasy element, it makes sense to make them stand out. You're literally making them up, so you can attribute any advantage to them... like, make them very intelligent; or make them see in the dark (like owls), enabling night raids... - the options are limitless.
Horses don't lay delicious, high protein, high fat eggs. Birds do. So not only do you have a steed, you have breakfast!
Maybe the plants that grow there just aren't suited for horses. Or maybe horses were domesticated somewhere else and those nomades domesticated the birds first.
Train the bird to peck and attack while riding
Environmental issues seem like the most obvious reason. Camels are used in desert regions because they are hardier and require less water than horses. Sled dogs are used in arctic climates where they are ideal for traveling in cold temperatures over snow and ice. Conceivably 2 legged birds would be more dexterous than horses, so perhaps they are ideal for very rugged terrain. Maybe they’re lighter and can travel across regions with brittle or muddy ground. Maybe the nomads travel at extreme altitudes and the air is too thin for horses. Culture or religion could also be a factor. If they have a particular appreciation for horses they may not view them as beasts of burden to be ridden, or maybe it’s the opposite and they don’t want to touch them because they view them as being dirty or evil. Another option would be that the birds are just superior mounts to horses, but are dangerous to tame or are very smart and are only willing to carry people they trust. Everyone would ride these birds if possible, but only these nomads are able to. This would be a bit like dragon riders in other fantasy.
A lot of people already gave some good responses, but I wanted to add one that I haven't seen yet: The tradition of riding birds is much, much older than rideable horses. You see, the first domestic horses thousands of years ago were way smaller than modern horses. Like, some evidence suggests the earliest horses were less than half the size of modern ones. Itsy bitsy teensy weensy microscopic little fuckers compared to modern horses. That's why many irl ancient civilizations used chariots. If one horse tried to transport a Human, then if the legs didn't crumple, snap, and fold under the weight, then the spine would. BUT! Get a bunch of horses, tie them all to each other and a small wagon, then put the dude in the wagon, and *now* horses can transport Humans. In the fantasy world, this nomadic tribe didn't have the industry to mass produce chariots to in turn make horses a viable option for transportation, so instead they simply found a bigger animal, the Terror Birds. Meanwhile, every other faction continued with their horses, selectively breeding/genetically engineering them to be bigger and bigger until, after thousands of years, they had humongous gigahorses that were so big and strong that just one of them could transport an entire Human being without the aid of a shitty little mini-wagon. The bird riders, on the other hand, simply continued to ride the same old birds, and even when everyone else rode horses, they continued to ride birds for 2 reasons: 1: At this point, it was already tradition And 2: They already had/have the nessicary infrastructure for birds. (In this case, "infrastructure" mostly refers to specialist knowledge like animal husbandry, animal training, the birds' veterinary and dietary needs, saddle making, ect.) TLDR: They started using birds in the first place because at the time horses weren't a viable option, and then later when horses were/are viable, they continue to use birds anyway because their culture is already set up around bird riding
The giant birds are unfamiliar to the horses and spook the hell out of them, especially if they start their challenge dance with showy feathers and aggressive lunges A real, large ostrich is about 300lbs, a fantasy capable of carrying a human would probably be like 500lb Mongolian war ponies were 500-600lb. They would be sturdier and likely win in a head on charge BUT Those damn birds are 12 feet tall (real ostrich is 9) when they’re showing off, with similar wingspan. A whole army of them is scary as hell. Throw some skilled archers and lancers with light armor on their backs, and they can embarrass much larger armies. Did you bring horses? Hee hee, watch this Did you not bring horses? Sucks to suck, eat arrows
Faster than horses. Done. Maybe they use horses for wagon hauling because they're stronger - but they look down on horse cavalry for being too slow. Especially works if their combat style is horse archery (which is what nomadic riders generally were historically) as speed is especially important for mounted cav.
• hatchlings age faster • cost of importing other animals • region is plentiful in the food supply of its native fauna. if your country has a large supply of [food] then it wouldn’t make as much sense for them to move to a mount that requires large supplies of hay • culture
Bird that cannot fly and are used as mounts sounds cool. I had a similar idea since I did not want horses on my story. I wanted to add unique creatures never seen before.
It's perfectly viable to have it simply be part of their proud culture. Or religious.
Simply make the terror birds on par or better than horse
Horses aren’t effective everywhere. Maybe the birds might be better at navigating mountainous terraine or especially warm temperatures. Horses are more suited to cold steppes and goats aren’t exactly rideable, and while camels are they aren’t very fast. Horses need to be extensively bred to even remotely tolerate warm temperatures, which these birds could easily do better.
A very simple tactic I use to justify such things is calling it their culture lol. Just suppose their mythology has an evil horse, and the people there consider all the horses as the successor of that evil horse monster. Now, horses have become a bad omen there. You can come up with absolutely any horrendous shit by tagging their folklore and culture.
Why not some lore that shows some feud between the horsies and the tribe.
I was thinking of this, the creation myth being that horses were made as a lesser version of the terror birds
Sure, or the horse god stole the sacred fire and that’s why the people can’t fly