Talk:Rainbow Dash/@comment-81.158.71.50-20130303200257/@comment-99.246.113.236-20130321170746

In an interview, Lauren Faust was asked exactly this question. To paraphrase None of the ponies' ages have been decided upon. They have various maturity levels instead. Also, ponies do not mature at the same pace as humans. Lauren Faust said that Rainbow Dash could be 3 or 4 in human years, but more mature than a 4 year old human. That's as far as Lauren Faust went.

I was unable to resist further research. I Wolfram Alpha 'd the horse-years to human-years conversion factor. There are about 2 and a half horse years in a human year. This figure appears to have been based exclusively on the ratio of life expectancies. Development phases could not be taken into consideration, as wolfram is based on reality, hence does not have sentient horses going through Piaget Stages to work with. I would treat this as being a rough approximation.

If we take Lauren Faust's statement of 3 or 4 years as not being hypothetical (Lauren could have, but did not necessarily, mean it hypothetically), then Rainbow could be anywhere from about 7 years old to about 12 years old. Roughly speaking. This surprised me. I was of the impression that Rainbow lives alone in her cloudhouse, not as a prepubescent dependant of somepony else. She's clearly employed. She was much higher on the list of options the Cakes considered for foalsitting than Pinkie, suggesting that she is trusted with that sort of thing. I had, before any of this research, been like Dashgirl126 and Ana.Phantom and the other commentor here in believing that she was around 18 in pegasus years. However, after my investigations, I find it difficult not to admit that I was wrong. Overwhelming evidence supports her being pre-adolescent. Some signs of this can be seen in the show once you look for them.

This makes it a little awkward how many adult Bronies have fallen in love with her.