Copulation and Population

According to today's Indy, the shire horse is set to disappear from Britain: Shortage of mares means Shire horses will become a dying breed. The current decline is blamed on the reduction in numbers of small farms and small breweries. The French are doing better at conserving their native equine stock, by for instance encouraging driving competitions. Sport is, after all, evidently the solution to population decline, as testified in the Torygraph piece on last February's baby boom in England: When Beckham scores, our hormones go wild. Apparently during the 2002 Football World Cup, until hopes were dashed when "Ronaldinho left David Seaman all over the pitch" (we're relying on the published information here, since we studiously avoided any coverage at the time), the elation caused much carefree (and careless) copulation resulting in 16,000 extra babies arriving in February 2003. What worries us about this blip is that it's composed of the offspring of football supporters (shudders), which doesn't bode well for more noble sports (unless there's another surge in the birth rate nine months after the England win in the 2003 Rugby World Cup too).