The Green Monkey Horse Pedigree
The colt's new owners gave him the name because of their connections with The Green Monkey golf course in Barbados, named after the island's green monkeys. The colt was also foaled in the Chinese year of the green/wooden monkey.[3]
The Green Monkey Horse Pedigree
Racehorses have been sold for enormous prices throughout history due to their pedigree, breeding ability, and race performance. While some have had incredible success stories, others have had disappointing journeys.
Some auctions include horses for purchase that have never been raced. For example, the foal auction at Tattersalls allows buyers to purchase horses that have never proved their worth on the course. These horses are only one year old but still go for millions in the auction. Buyers must guess how the horse will perform based on pedigree and physical quality alone. Buyers have won the lottery if the horse performs well when raced because their stud fee and auction price will skyrocket. If the horse performs poorly, the buyer usually loses money.
Shareef Dancer, a Thoroughbred, sold for $40 million in 1983, making it one of the most expensive horses ever sold. Factors like horse racing popularity, speed, and pedigree allowed the price for Shareef Dancer to skyrocket. In addition, Shareef Dancer descended from another incredible racehorse, Northern Dancer.
Recently we bought two yearlings, both with good pedigrees. However, the first was from a mare that won close to $200,000, and the second was from an unraced mare. We paid much more for the first one because of its breeding; however, there is really no surefire way to tell which will turn out to be the better horse.
The cost of racehorses varies greatly depending on their pedigree and conformation. The median sales price for a two-year-old thoroughbred in training is $94,247, with an average starting bid of just over $76k. The highest price for a two-year-old colt was for the Green Monkey, a descendant of Secretariat and Northern Dancer, who sold for $16 million in 2006.
The price mainly depends on the pedigree and conformation of the horse. A superior pedigree also guarantees a premium stud fee. For example, Northern Dancer, a Thoroughbred sire, earned his owners $160 million over 22 years thanks to his 174 offspring.
SIVagm infections of African green monkeys and SIVsmm infections of sooty mangabeys appear to be non-pathogenic (Silvestri 2008). Extrapolating from this, it has been generally assumed that all natural SIV infections, including that of chimpanzees, are harmless. If true, the origin of AIDS coincided with the origin of HIV. However, we have recently reported evidence that contradicts this (Keele et al. 2009). The SIV infection status of two habituated communities of chimpanzees at Gombe National Park in Tanzania has been studied since 2001 (Santiago et al. 2002). From more than 550 chimpanzee-years of observations, we found that SIV infection was associated with a 10- to 16-fold increase in age-corrected risk of death. It was also found that fertility was significantly reduced in SIV-positive females, both in terms of their birth rate and the survival of their offspring. The primary symptom of AIDS in humans is a reduction in the number of CD4+ T-cells; the depletion of these cells reduces host defences against secondary infections. It was possible to determine CD4+ T-cell counts for five deceased chimpanzees. Tissues from three SIV-positive chimpanzees had significantly lower counts than those from two SIV-negative individuals. Two of the three SIV-positive individuals had died of trauma-related causes, while the third had no obvious injuries but displayed weakness and lethargy; this third chimpanzee had the lowest CD4+ T-cell counts and tissue samples from this individual closely resembled the histopathology of human end-stage AIDS patients (Keele et al. 2009). While it has only so far been possible to assess the pathogenicity of SIVcpz at Gombe, where the apes are eastern chimpanzees (figure 1), there is no reason to believe that SIVcpz infection of central chimpanzees differs in any substantial way. These observations strongly suggest that SIVcpz infections in wild chimpanzees have a very similar effect to HIV-1 infections of humans.
Horses can make their owners a lot of money and besides these unique competitions, breeding them can prove to be a highly successful business venture for some people. And naturally, because of their pedigree and special skills, some horses will be a lot more expensive than others.