Ponies



The My Little Pony brand describes its characters as ponies. The brand's toys, as the name suggests, usually consist of small colorful plastic ponies. The characters on the various My Little Pony television shows and movies are depicted with varying degrees of fantasy elements, like the ability to speak, fly, and use magic.

Different kinds of ponies
The My Little Pony Friendship is Magic franchise usually divides ponies into three main "types": Earth ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns. These are called the "three pony tribes" in the episode Hearth's Warming Eve.

This trinity is actually not accurate in regards of the higher number of pony kinds featured in the media. However, it is used as the structural basis of many aspects of the show, such as the main characters, the CMC, the distinctions in Equestrian population, as well as the princesses themselves.

Earth ponies
Earth ponies have no wings or unicorn horn, and therefore most closely resemble real ponies. They are the kind first introduced by the My Little Pony brand.

Pegasi
Pegasi, or "Pegasus ponies", are ponies with bird wings – in the fashion of the legendary Pegasus. The term "Pegasi" is used in the episodes Sonic Rainboom and The Return of Harmony Part 1, and "Pegasus ponies" is used in the episodes Sonic Rainboom and Look Before You Sleep. When referring to a single pony, "Pegasus" is always used, with the exception of one "Pegasus pony" in Friendship is Magic, part 1. Pegasi can usually fly and interact with clouds.

Unicorns
Unicorns feature a magical horn on their forehead, and usually have magical abilities. Unicorns are always referred to by this term in the show, but the wiki also uses the term "Unicorn ponies" for consistency with "Pegasus ponies" and "Earth ponies", since unicorns are also called ponies.

Princesses
The princesses Celestia, Luna, and Cadance are referred to as unicorns in the season one episode Friendship is Magic, part 1 and the season two episode A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1 despite having both a unicorn horn and wings. Celestia, Luna, and Cadance are also called "Pony Princesses" in Hasbro's merchandise. Between the original airings of seasons two and three, Meghan McCarthy stated at the October 2012 New York Comic Con that she had used the term "pegacorn" in the show's scripts, and mentioned switching to the term "alicorn". In the season three episode Magical Mystery Cure, Twilight Sparkle is described as an Alicorn once she gains wings. Some winged unicorns, or Alicorns, are not princesses.

Crystal Ponies
Crystal Ponies were introduced in Season 3, and just like Earth ponies, do not have horns or wings. However, they possess the unique ability to become more edgy, translucent, and glittery – all at once – when free of doubt. An exception to this is shown in the episode The Crystal Empire, Part 2, where Princess Cadance, Shining Armor, and the main characters, including Spike – who is a dragon – all temporarily take on the "coloration" of Crystal Ponies.

Bat ponies
Akin to Pegasi, bat ponies, although not officially named, appear in Luna Eclipsed. They differ from other pegasi in their tufted ears and wing design, more like bats' than birds'.

Seaponies and mermares
Seaponies appear in the storybook "Under the Sparkling Sea", where the main characters go to the underwater kingdom of Aquastria. This species, which has the look of a hippocampus or sea horse, is only present in the book and is never mentioned in other media.

Mermares, having fish fins, tail, and scales, also appear in the same book as a seaponies' competitor and complementary species in Aquastria. Mermares are described as more introvert, bigger, and faster than seaponies.

Neither of the two above submarine species bear a cutie mark, although seaponies are referred to as "cousins" of the earth-based ponies.

As of the season 3 finale, ponies are the sole creatures known to live in an organized country of their own in the show, or shown to possess cutie marks – an exception to this is Zecora, a zebra who has a cutie mark.

Designation
The term "My Little Pony" – and more often "My Little Ponies" – is used a few times in the show, always in conversations concerning at least one pony. Apart from the above terms, other are sometimes used in the media to refer to ponies.

Ponies are technically both "horses" and "equines". Trixie boasts in Boast Busters that she is destined to be "the greatest equine who has ever lived"; Sapphire Shores mentions "Clothes Horse magazine" in A Dog and Pony Show; and Braeburn refers to other ponies as "horses" in Over a Barrel.

However, in The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000, Flam states that "Any horse can make a claim and any pony can do the same", which would seem to suggest that horses and ponies are two different things.

Other kinds of equines are featured in the show.
 * Zecora is a zebra and explicitly stated not to be a pony – despite being the only other creature to feature a cutie mark.
 * Cranky Doodle Donkey is a donkey as his name implies; Matilda is another donkey.
 * A mule is used as a visual gag in Applebuck Season, Hurricane Fluttershy, and One Bad Apple; Mulia Mild is another mule. One of the Diamond Dogs refers to Rarity as a "mule" in A Dog and Pony Show, which she acts deeply upset about.
 * The draconequus Discord is introduced in The Return of Harmony and "has the head of a pony, and a body made up of all sorts of things", says Cheerilee in that episode.
 * The Changelings are another equine-like species introduced in A Canterlot Wedding.
 * The Saddle Arabian delegates are an unnamed foreign horse-like specie starred in Magic Duel. Although they resemble the princesses in body structure, they feature no cutie mark, horn nor wings, and are not referred to as ponies – nor the contrary.

Equestria Girls
Although being created under the brand My Little Pony, the Equestria Girls characters, featured in the movie of the same name are in fact humans with the following features of ponies :
 * distinct pastel skin and hair colorations
 * similar affinities to their Equestrian counterparts
 * the same eye and lineart styles as the show's ponies
 * pony ears instead of human ones
 * a cutie mark on the right cheek
 * a ponytail, which is here not a tail but longer hair

Age
The show introduces a strong visual distinction between different age groups of the pony population. Most importantly, in crescent age :
 * Babies are not sentient, with small black eyes and body, compared to their head. An example is Pound Cake.
 * Foals are usually school-age ponies, who don't have their cutie mark yet or just recently got theirs. An example is Apple Bloom.
 * Mature ponies are the most seen. An example is Rarity.
 * Advanced age ponies may have a few wrinkles or greyish hair. An example is Filthy Rich.
 * Elders, such as Granny Smith.

Princess Luna, Princess Cadance, and Princess Twilight Sparkle are also younger than Princess Celestia, and smaller in size.

Horse-like stylization
The show's developer, Lauren Faust, wanted the ponies to act in ways characteristic of horses and avoid human conventions that wouldn't fit with their stylization, like human poses and holding items in their hooves. Faust wanted the characters to "evoke the feeling of a natural horse". Faust specifies a few attributes in one of her interviews: the back of the ponies' heads streamlines down their neck and to their back; the manes fall to one side of the neck like a real horse; and they have authentic horse trots and gallops.

Use of instruments
Most of the time ponies hold objects with their mouths, with their "wrist", between their hooves, by using magic, or simply just with a single hoof: ponies hold shovels in their hooves in Winter Wrap Up, and Octavia Melody and the violin playing pony in Luna Eclipsed "hold" the instrument's bow with their hoof.

Applause
Ponies applaud in the series in two different ways. The first is by clapping their front hooves together, performed by Twilight Sparkle in Look Before You Sleep, by Hoity Toity in Suited for Success, and by Apple Bloom's classmates in Family Appreciation Day. The second way characters applaud is by stamping their front hooves on the ground, first done by the theater audience in The Show Stoppers; other examples are the applause by the fashion show audience and Rarity in Green Isn't Your Color, and by crowds in The Cutie Mark Chronicles, The Last Roundup, and Putting Your Hoof Down.

Hoof-bump
A hoof-bump, also known as high-hoof or brohoof, can imitate either a handshake, high-five, or even a fist bump. Ponies bump their hooves in several instances in the series:
 * Look Before You Sleep: Rarity declines a hoof-bump by Applejack since she spit on her own hoof before offering it. Later, the two of them do a hoof-bump after Twilight declares her slumber party a success.
 * Fall Weather Friends: Applejack and Rainbow Dash do a spit-soaked hoof-bump before competing against each other before the Iron Pony competition and before the Running of the Leaves.
 * A Bird in the Hoof: Rainbow Dash and Philomena hoof/wing-bump toward the end of the episode.
 * Sisterhooves Social: Applejack and Apple Bloom hoof-bump (referred to by Sweetie Belle as a "high-hoof") after corralling sheep.
 * A Friend in Deed: Pinkie Pie uses the term "hoof-bump" during the Smile Song.
 * Ponyville Confidential: The Cutie Mark Crusaders do a three-way hoof-bump several times throughout the episode.
 * They also perform this action, albeit, in a tired fashion, in One Bad Apple.
 * A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1, The Crystal Empire - Part 1, and Games Ponies Play: Twilight and Princess Cadance do a double hoof-bump in their "sunshine, sunshine" dance.
 * Wonderbolts Academy: The term "hoof-bump" is once again used, this time by Rainbow Dash.
 * Games Ponies Play: Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy hoof-bump during the "Equestria Games Inspector's" visit to the Crystal Empire.

Other gestures
In Keep Calm and Flutter On, Rainbow Dash moves her hooves to imitate air quotes, even though part of the point of air quotes is that the two fingers of each hand represent the two curved lines of the quotes.