science

Grass Mud Horse

Grass Mud Horse is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Grass Mud Horse rather than just read about it. In short: The Grass Mud Horse is a Chinese Internet meme and kuso parody based on a word play of the Mandarin profanity cào nǐ mā (肏你妈), which means "fuck your mother". Homophonic puns are commonly used in Chinese language as silly humor to amuse people, and have become an important component of jokes and standup comedy in Chinese culture.

Key takeaways

Grass Mud Horse belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Grass Mud Horse to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Grass Mud Horse from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Grass Mud Horse is a Chinese Internet meme and kuso parody based on a word play of the Mandarin profanity cào nǐ mā (肏你妈), which means "fuck your mother". Homophonic puns are commonly used in Chinese language as silly humor to amuse people, and have become an important component of jokes and standup comedy in Chinese culture. Grass Mud Horse is one of the made-up "Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures" created in a hoax article on Baidu Baike in early 2009, whose names all come from obscene puns. It has become an Internet chat forum cult phenomenon in China and has garnered worldwide press attention, with videos, cartoons and merchandise of the animal (which is said to resemble the alpaca) having appeared. In the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, Shanghai residents led "Grass Mud Horse" to protest on the streets.

Etymology and species

The Caonima, literally "Grass Mud Horse", is supposedly a species of alpaca. The name is similar to a profanity (Chinese: 肏你妈/操你媽; pinyin: cào nǐ mā), "fuck your mother". The comparison with the "animal" name is not an actual homophone: the two terms have the same consonants and vowels with different tones, and are represented by different characters. According to the original, anonymous article from Baidu Baike, Grass Mud Horses originate from an area known as the "Mahler Gobi" Desert (马勒戈壁; Mǎlè Gēbì, which resembles 妈了个屄; māle ge bī; "your mother's fucking cunt"). Some variants of the animal are known as "Fertile Grass Mud Horses" (沃草泥马; Wò Cǎonímǎ, which resembles 我肏你妈; Wǒ cào nǐ mā; "I fuck your mother"). The Grass Mud Horse can only eat fertile grass (沃草; wò cǎo, which resembles 我肏; Wǒ cào; "I fuck" or simply "Fuck!"). Other subspecies are known as "Crazy/Violent/Insane Grass Mud Horses" (狂草泥马; Kuáng Cǎonímǎ), which are considered the "kings" of the Caonima. The initial image found in the original Baidu Baike article was a zebra, but it was replaced with an alpaca in subsequent revisions.

Habitat

Because the Grass Mud Horse is said to be the dominant species which lives within the Mahler Gobi Desert, the region is also called the "Grass Mud Horse Gobi" (草泥马戈壁; Cǎonímǎ Gēbì), which is close in pronunciation to 肏你妈个屄; cào nǐ mā ge bī; "fuck your mother's cunt"). The animal is characterised as "lively, intelligent and tenacious". However, their existence is said to be threatened by "river crabs" which are invading their habitat. The river crab (河蟹; héxiè) symbolises internet censorship in China. Its pronunciation resembles the word for "harmony" (和谐; héxié), in reference to the "harmonious society", to which the Chinese leadership professes to aspire, and which Chinese internet censors use to justify internet censorship. As a result, when a post on a microblog is deleted, the censorship notice says that the post has been "harmonized" (和谐; héxié), so the netizens say that the post has been eaten by the "river crab". The term "crab" itself is rural slang, meaning "a bully who uses power through force", and the "river crab" has become a symbol of crude censorship backed with the threat of force. The river crab is often depicted wearing three wristwatches, since 带三个表 (dài sān ge biǎo; "wears three watches") can be rearranged and altered to 三个代表; Sāngè Dàibiǎo, the ideology of the "Three Represents", an interpretation of communism promoted by former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.

Formats Music videos and cartoons about the Grass Mud Horse started appearing on the internet in 2009. The original Grass Mud Horse music video's musical arrangement of a children's choir has been compared to It's a Small World, and it scored 1.4 million hits in its first three months. A cartoon about the Grass Mud Horse attracted a quarter million views, and a nature documentary on its habits received 180,000 more hits in the same amount of time. Even though some Grass Mud Horse videos were not technically blocked by Chinese censors, some had their sound blocked, with a message saying "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG." Yazhou Zhoukan (亞洲周刊) reported that Zhan Bin, a teacher at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, created a new Chinese character by fusing the three Chinese character radicals for "grass", "mud", and "horse". The word has no official pronunciation. Official "cleanup" of the internet, which threatens the Caonima, has led Chinese internet users to create other "Mud Horse" variants, such as the 滾泥马; Gǔnnímǎ; "Rolling Mud Horse" and the "幹泥马; Gànnímǎ; "Working Mud Horse". "Gunnima" and "Gannima" are puns for "fuck off" and "fuck your mother" respectively. The "Grass Mud Horse" became widely known on the English-language web following the publication of a New York Times article on the phenomenon on 11 March 2009, which sparked widespread discussion on blogs. In March 2011, "Grass Mud Horse" themed merchandise, such as plush dolls, began being sold over the Internet. One Guangzhou toy manufacturer reportedly produced its first batch of 150 Grass Mud Horse cuddly toys with official birth certificates issued by Mahler Gebi Mystical Creatures Bureau. The animals come in brown and white, named "Ma Le" (马勒) and "Ge Bi" (歌碧) respectively, and sell for 40 yuan each. To accompany these, a user's and feeding manual have been created. Whereas they were called 'Caonima' before the crackdown, Internet sellers now list them using the correct Chinese term, '羊驼' (Alpaca). In 2009, renowned artist Ai Weiwei published an image of himself nude with only a 'Caonima' hiding his genitals, with a caption "草泥马挡中央" (cǎonímǎ dǎng zhōngyāng; 'a Grass Mud Horse covering the center'. One interpretation of the caption is: "fuck your mother, Communist Party Central Committee"). Political observers speculated that the photo may have contributed to Ai's arrest in 2011 by angering Chinese Communist Party hardliners. According to a study by NordPass, caonima was the 43rd most common password in China in 2021.

Grass Mud Horse Day In 2012, Chinese netizens started to designate the date 1 July as the "Grass Mud Horse Day". The date coincides with the "Party Day" in China which celebrates the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Grass Mud Horse: "" Chinese character invented by Netizens for "Grass Mud Horse" — "" Chinese character invented by Netizens for "Grass Mud Horse"

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Grass Mud Horse

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Grass Mud Horse claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Grass Mud Horse before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Grass Mud Horse ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Grass Mud Horse

In research: Grass Mud Horse appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Grass Mud Horse in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Grass Mud Horse is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2009 in China, Chinese Internet slang, Homonymy in Chinese, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Grass Mud Horse outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Grass Mud Horse in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Grass Mud Horse means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Grass Mud Horse out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Grass Mud Horse in simple terms?

Why does Grass Mud Horse matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Grass Mud Horse?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Grass Mud Horse.