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Horse: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Horse
The horse first appeared on Earth between 45 and 55 million years ago as a small, multi-toed creature known as Eohippus, which roamed the forests of North America. Over millions of years, this animal evolved into the large, single-toed Equus ferus caballus that humans know today, a transformation driven by the need to run across open plains and escape predators. The earliest known member of the horse family, Hyracotherium, lived during the Eocene period and possessed four toes on each front foot and three on each back foot. As the climate shifted and forests gave way to grasslands, the horse's legs lengthened and its side toes shrank until they vanished, leaving only vestigial splint bones below the knee. By 5 million years ago, the modern Equus had evolved and spread from North America to the Old World, adapting from leaf-eating forest dwellers to grass-eating inhabitants of the steppes of Eurasia and the Great Plains of North America. Yet, between 10,000 and 7,600 years ago, the horse became extinct in North America, likely due to climate change that replaced grassy steppes with unpalatable shrub tundra or perhaps due to the arrival of humans. The only truly wild horse subspecies to survive into recorded history is the Przewalski's horse, a rare Asian animal that was presumed extinct in the wild between 1969 and 1992 before conservation efforts reestablished a small population in Mongolia.
Domestication And History
Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE in Central Asia, with the earliest archaeological evidence of attempted domestication found in the lower Volga-Don region of the Western Eurasian Steppes. By 3000 BCE, the horse was completely domesticated, and by 2000 BCE, there was a sharp increase in the number of horse bones found in human settlements in northwestern Europe, indicating the rapid spread of domesticated horses throughout the continent. The most irrefutable evidence of domestication comes from sites where horse remains were interred with chariots in graves of the Indo-European Sintashta and Petrovka cultures around 2100 BCE. The genetic makeup of modern domesticated horses all carry the DOM2 gene, which first emerged in West Eurasia towards the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. This gene spread rapidly around 2200 BCE, coinciding with the development of spoke-wheeled chariots, demonstrating that certain adaptations were strongly selected due to riding. Genetic studies reveal that very few wild stallions contributed to the domestic horse, while many mares were part of early domesticated herds, creating a distinct difference in genetic variation between the paternal and maternal lines. Before the availability of DNA techniques, various hypotheses were proposed regarding the origin of horse breeds, but the lack of a detectable substructure in the horse has resulted in the rejection of both the four basic prototypes and the single wild species hypotheses.
Common questions
When did the horse first appear on Earth?
The horse first appeared on Earth between 45 and 55 million years ago as a small, multi-toed creature known as Eohippus. This animal roamed the forests of North America before evolving into the large, single-toed Equus ferus caballus that humans know today.
When did humans begin domesticating horses?
Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE in Central Asia. The earliest archaeological evidence of attempted domestication was found in the lower Volga-Don region of the Western Eurasian Steppes.
How many bones are in a horse skeleton?
The horse skeleton averages 205 bones and differs significantly from the human skeleton. The forelimbs are attached to the spinal column by a powerful set of muscles, tendons, and ligaments because the horse lacks a collarbone.
What is the life expectancy of a horse?
A horse's life expectancy ranges from 25 to 30 years, though uncommonly a few animals live into their 40s and occasionally beyond. The oldest verifiable record is Old Billy, a 19th-century horse that lived to the age of 62.
How many breeds of horse exist in the world today?
There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament. These categories include spirited hot bloods, cold bloods such as draft horses, and warmbloods developed from crosses between the other two types.
When was the first archaeological evidence of horses used in warfare?
The first archaeological evidence of horses used in warfare dates to between 4000 and 3000 BCE. The use of horses in warfare was widespread by the end of the Bronze Age.
The horse skeleton averages 205 bones and differs significantly from the human skeleton, most notably in the lack of a collarbone, which means the forelimbs are attached to the spinal column by a powerful set of muscles, tendons, and ligaments. The horse's four legs and hooves are unique structures, with the lower leg bones corresponding to the bones of the human hand or foot. The fetlock, often incorrectly called the ankle, is actually the proximal sesamoid bones between the cannon bones and the proximal phalanges, located where one finds the knuckles of a human. A horse has no muscles in its legs below the knees and hocks, only skin, hair, bone, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and the specialized tissues that make up the hoof. The horse's eye is one of the largest of any land mammal, positioned on the sides of the head to provide a range of vision of more than 350 degrees. This lateral-eyed vision allows horses to see almost everything around them, with approximately 65 degrees of binocular vision and the remaining 285 degrees of monocular vision. Horses have excellent day and night vision but possess two-color, or dichromatic, vision, meaning their color vision is somewhat like red-green color blindness in humans. Their sense of smell is much better than that of humans, playing a key role in social interactions and detecting scents, while their hearing is good enough that the pinna of each ear can rotate up to 180 degrees, giving the potential for 360-degree hearing without moving the head.
Life Stages And Behavior
A horse's life expectancy ranges from 25 to 30 years, though uncommonly, a few animals live into their 40s and occasionally beyond, with the oldest verifiable record being Old Billy, a 19th-century horse that lived to the age of 62. Foals are capable of standing and running within a short time following birth, a trait that allows them to escape predators quickly, and they are usually born in the spring after a gestation period of approximately 340 days. Horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, using a stay apparatus in their legs to doze without collapsing, but they must lie down to reach REM sleep, which they only need to do for an hour or two every few days. Unlike humans, horses do not sleep in a solid, unbroken period of time but take many short periods of rest, with total sleep time in a 24-hour period ranging from several minutes to a couple of hours. Horses are herd animals with a clear hierarchy of rank, led by a dominant individual, usually a mare, and they are social creatures that form companionship attachments to their own species and to other animals. They communicate through vocalizations such as nickering or whinnying, mutual grooming, and body language, and they tend to be curious, often hesitating an instant to ascertain the cause of their fright before fleeing. When confined with insufficient companionship, exercise, or stimulation, individuals may develop stable vices, which are bad habits of psychological origin that include wood chewing, wall kicking, and weaving.
Breeds And Temperament
There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited hot bloods with speed and endurance, cold bloods such as draft horses and some ponies suitable for slow, heavy work, and warmbloods developed from crosses between hot bloods and cold bloods. Hot blooded breeds, such as the Arabian, Thoroughbred, and Akhal-Teke, are bred for agility and speed, tend to be physically refined with thin skin and long legs, and exhibit more sensitivity and energy. Cold blooded breeds, including the Belgian, Clydesdale, and Shire, are muscular and heavy, bred not only for strength but also to have the calm, patient temperament needed to pull a plow or a heavy carriage. Warmblood breeds, such as the Trakehner and Hanoverian, were developed when European carriage and war horses were crossed with Arabians or Thoroughbreds, producing a riding horse with more refinement than a draft horse but greater size and milder temperament than a lighter breed. The concept of purebred bloodstock and a controlled, written breed registry has come to be particularly significant in modern times, with the General Stud Book for Thoroughbreds beginning in 1791 and tracing back to the foundation bloodstock for the breed. The largest horse in recorded history was probably a Shire horse named Mammoth, who was born in 1848 and stood 21 hands high, while the record holder for the smallest horse ever is Thumbelina, a fully mature miniature horse affected by dwarfism who was 17 inches tall and weighed 57 pounds.
Interaction And Warfare
Horses have been used in warfare for most of recorded history, with the first archaeological evidence of horses used in warfare dating to between 4000 and 3000 BCE, and the use of horses in warfare was widespread by the end of the Bronze Age. Although mechanization has largely replaced the horse as a weapon of war, horses are still seen today in limited military uses, mostly for ceremonial purposes, or for reconnaissance and transport activities in areas of rough terrain where motorized vehicles are ineffective. Horses are used for leisure activities, sports, and working purposes, with the Food and Agriculture Organization estimating that in 2008, there were almost 59 million horses in the world. The American Horse Council estimates that horse-related activities have a direct impact on the economy of the United States of over 39 billion dollars, supporting 1.4 billion jobs full time, and when indirect spending is considered, the impact is over 102 billion dollars. Horses are trained to be ridden or driven in a variety of sporting competitions, including show jumping, dressage, three-day eventing, and endurance riding, with many sports such as polo and jousting using the horse as a partner for human competitors. Mounted police horses are still effective for certain types of patrol duties and crowd control, and cattle ranches still require riders on horseback to round up cattle that are scattered across remote, rugged terrain.
Products And Care
Horses are raw material for many products made by humans throughout history, including byproducts from the slaughter of horses as well as materials collected from living horses. Mare's milk is used by people with large horse herds, such as the Mongols, who let it ferment to produce kumis, and horse blood was once used as food by the Mongols and other nomadic tribes, who found it a convenient source of nutrition when traveling. The drug Premarin is a mixture of estrogens extracted from the urine of pregnant mares, and the tail hair of horses can be used for making bows for string instruments such as the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Approximately 5 million horses are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide, and horsehide leather has been used for boots, gloves, jackets, baseballs, and baseball gloves. Horses require routine hoof care from a farrier, as well as vaccinations to protect against various diseases, and dental examinations from a veterinarian or a specialized equine dentist. A horse will eat 2 percent to 2.5 percent of its body weight in dry feed each day, and they require a plentiful supply of clean water, a minimum of 10 gallons per day. When turned outside, they require well-maintained, sturdy fences to be safely contained, and regular grooming is helpful to help the horse maintain good health of the hair coat and underlying skin.