98 Fun Facts About Horse

Every Northern Hemisphere Thoroughbred shares which official birthday?

New Year's Day: every Thoroughbred born north of the equator ages a year on January 1, so breeders want foals born early in the year, when extra months of growth are an edge over rivals of the same official age.

Which tissue is absent from a horse's legs below the knee?

Muscle is packed into the upper leg; below the knee a horse has bone, tendon, ligament and cartilage but no muscle, and the tendons and ligaments stretch and recoil like elastic to drive each stride.

What is a young female horse, typically under four years old, called?

Filly is the word for a female horse under four; racing draws the line a year later, so a Thoroughbred stays a filly until she turns five and only then becomes a mare.

What is a castrated male horse called?

A gelding is a castrated male; most male riding horses are gelded because it leaves them calmer and easier to handle, a practice the Scythians are thought to have been among the first to adopt.

Which stage of sleep can a horse reach only by lying down?

REM sleep leaves the whole body limp, so a horse must lie down for it; an hour or two every few days is enough, but a horse never able to lie down may eventually collapse into REM on its feet.

Which of a horse's sense organs is among the largest of its kind in any land mammal?

Eyes: set on the sides of the head, they let a horse see almost all the way around itself, with only small blind spots straight ahead and directly behind.

What colors are horses generally thought to see best?

Blue and Yellow match the two kinds of colour-sensing cone in a horse's eye; with no cone tuned to red, red objects look like a shade of green, much as they do to a red-green colour-blind person.

Which term describes horses by the way their gut digests grass?

Hindgut fermenters break down fibre in the cecum and colon, after the stomach rather than before it; the stomach itself is small, which is why a horse grazes little and often instead of eating big meals.

Judging a horse's age is said to have given English which phrase for 'old'?

Long in the tooth: as a horse ages its gums draw back and its front teeth slant further forward, so they look longer every year, which is how buyers have long judged a horse's age.

Which teeth do most male horses have but most mares lack?

Canines, also called tushes, come through at four to five years in most male horses but are often missing in mares, which is why a male usually has 40 or more teeth and a mare 36 to 40.

In which season are most horse foals born?

Spring: mares come into season only as the days lengthen and carry a foal for about 11 months, so a spring mating delivers the next foal a year later, clear of the harshest months of winter.

What is the tuft of mane that falls between a horse's ears and over its face called?

The forelock is the part of the mane that falls forward between the ears; people once saluted their social betters by tugging their own, hence 'tugging the forelock' for showing deference.

Which part of a horse's leg is equivalent to the human ankle?

The hock is the horse's tarsal joint, the equivalent of the human ankle; the fetlock lower down, often miscalled the ankle, actually matches the ball of the human foot.

Which horse breed is known for its distinctive spotted coat pattern?

The Appaloosa was bred by the Nez Perce people of the Pacific Northwest; settlers called it the 'Palouse horse', possibly after a river in Nez Perce country, and the name is thought to have grown from that.

The horse lineage behind every modern breed spread across Eurasia about 4,000 years ago alongside which invention?

The chariot: a 2021 ancient-DNA study traced all modern domestic horses to the Volga-Don steppes and found they swept across Eurasia together with spoke-wheeled chariots, replacing nearly every other bloodline.

In which equestrian sport do horse and rider perform a memorised test of set movements for judges?

Dressage is French for 'training'; until 1952 its Olympic riders had to be military officers or 'gentlemen', and that year Denmark's Lis Hartel, partly paralysed by polio, became the first woman to win a medal in it.

On a horse, what are the withers?

The withers are the ridge between the shoulder blades at the base of the neck; a horse's height is measured there because, unlike the head, the spot does not move up and down.

In Greek myth, the winged horse Pegasus was born from which monster?

Medusa: when Perseus cut off the Gorgon's head, Pegasus sprang out with his brother Chrysaor, both fathered by Poseidon; the hero Bellerophon later rode him to kill the Chimera.

What is a small family group of wild horses called?

A band is the basic family unit: what looks like one big herd of wild horses is usually several small bands sharing the same territory.

Which horse breed is renowned for its endurance racing ability and distinctive dished face?

Arabians were bred by the Bedouin of the Arabian desert, who prized their war mares so highly that the horses sometimes shared the family tent for shelter and safety from thieves.

How many toes does a modern horse have on each foot?

One toe per foot: the modern horse stands on a single enlarged middle digit sheathed in the hoof, whereas its small ancestor Eohippus had four toes on each front foot and three on each hind foot.

Which of these is a horse physically unable to do?

Vomit: the gullet joins the stomach at a sharp angle behind a powerful sphincter that works as a one-way valve, so a horse that overeats or swallows something harmful cannot bring it back up.

Which of these famous horse races is known as 'The Run for the Roses'?

Kentucky Derby winners are draped in a blanket of red roses; New York sportswriter Bill Corum coined 'Run for the Roses' in 1925 and went on to become president of the track that stages the race.

Which American breed descends entirely from one stallion owned by a Vermont schoolteacher?

Morgan horses all trace to Figure, a stallion that Justin Morgan, a Vermont singing teacher, took in payment of a debt in 1792; the breed ended up carrying the owner's name rather than the horse's.

Which strap passes under a horse's belly to hold the saddle in place?

The girth, called a cinch in Western riding from the Spanish cincha, buckles under the belly to hold the saddle on; the same word, for a firm hold, gave English 'a cinch', a sure thing.

Sampson, the tallest and heaviest horse on record, belonged to which draft breed?

Shire: Sampson, foaled in 1846, stood about 2.19 m tall by 1850 and weighed an estimated 1,500 kg, a bulk that saw him renamed Mammoth.

What is the toothless area of a horse's mouth between the incisors and molars called?

Bar is the name for the toothless stretch of gum between a horse's incisors and cheek teeth; the mouthpiece of a bit rests there, on bare gum, which is how a pull on the reins reaches the horse.

In a pedigree, what is a horse's father called?

Sire is a horse's father and dam its mother; Thoroughbred rules bar artificial insemination, so a champion sire has to cover every one of his mares in person.

Which of these is a common base coat color for horses?

Bay, a reddish-brown body with black mane, tail and lower legs, is one of the commonest horse colours; genetically it is a black coat that a second gene confines to those 'points'.

Which race is the middle leg of the American Triple Crown?

The Preakness Stakes is the second and shortest leg; by tradition, the moment its result is official a painter climbs to a weather vane and repaints its model horse and jockey in the winning owner's colours.

Capturing the man-eating mares of which Thracian king was one of the labours of Heracles?

Diomedes, king of the Thracian Bistones, kept mares that ate human flesh; in one telling Heracles fed the king to his own horses, and in every version he drove them off as his eighth labour.

Huaso, who set the equestrian high-jump world record of 2.47 m in 1949, jumped for which country?

Chile: Captain Alberto Larraguibel rode Huaso, a failed racehorse first named Faithful, over 2.47 m at Viña del Mar; the horse was already 16, and 75 years later nobody had jumped higher.

Cribbing and weaving in a stabled horse are traditionally known as stable what?

Vices is the old stable word for habits such as cribbing and weaving; vets now class them as stereotypies and trace them to confinement, boredom and stress, not to bad character.

What does a horse typically communicate by pinning its ears flat back against its head?

Anger or pain is what ears pinned flat back signal; it is the clearest warning a horse gives and often comes just before a bite or kick.

Which pony is the smallest of Britain's native breeds?

Shetland ponies stand no more than 42 inches (107 cm), the smallest of Britain's native breeds; after an 1842 law barred women and young children from the pits, thousands were sent underground to haul coal.

Which of the following is a natural four-beat gait of a horse?

Walk is the slow four-beat gait in which each hoof lands separately, so a walking horse always has two or three feet on the ground; the trot and pace are two-beat gaits and the canter three-beat.

Which horse event was held at the Olympics only once, in Paris in 1900?

Long jump for horses was won by Belgium's Constant van Langhendonck on Extra-Dry with 6.10 m, more than a metre short of the 7.185 m that won the men's long jump at the same Games.

What are the slender vestigial bones on either side of a horse's cannon bone called?

Splint bones are shrunken relics of the horse's evolutionary past; strain on the ligament tying them to the cannon bone causes the bony swelling known as 'splints'.

What is the curled-upper-lip grimace a horse makes to analyse a scent called?

The flehmen response is the curled-upper-lip grimace that draws scent to the vomeronasal organ in the roof of the mouth; stallions use it to judge a mare's readiness to breed.

Which painful hoof condition, often triggered by grain overload or lush pasture, causes severe lameness?

Laminitis inflames the laminae that hold the hoof wall to the bone inside; in bad cases that bone rotates or sinks, and the damage led to the deaths of the champions Secretariat and Barbaro.

Which mythical horse-like creature is the national animal of Scotland?

The unicorn, usually shown in chains, has long supported Scotland's royal arms; when James VI inherited the English throne in 1603, one unicorn gave way to England's lion, and the pair still flank the British arms.

Heavy draft horses, bred to be calm and patient, are known by which nickname?

Cold bloods are the heavy draft breeds and 'hot bloods' the spirited racing and desert breeds; the labels describe temperament, not body heat, and crossing the two types produced the 'warmbloods' of modern sport.

What does it indicate if a horse has one ear forward and one ear turned back?

Their attention is divided: each ear swivels toward what that side's eye is watching, so one ear forward and one back means the horse is monitoring two things at once.

Which coat pattern evenly mixes white and colored body hairs but leaves the head solid?

Roan mixes white hairs evenly through the body coat while the head, mane, tail and lower legs stay solid; unlike a grey, which starts out looking similar, a roan does not turn whiter with age.

What reflective structure behind the retina helps horses see in low light?

The tapetum lucidum bounces light back through the retina for a second pass, which causes the eyeshine seen in torchlight and helps horses see better than people at dusk.

Which grey breed runs semi-wild in the marshes of the Rhône delta?

Camargue horses, born dark and turning grey with age, live semi-feral in the Camargue wetlands of the Rhône delta, where mounted gardians use them to herd black bulls.

What is the primary function of a horse's vibrissae, or whiskers?

Touch is the job of the vibrissae: a horse cannot see directly in front of its nose, so these sensitive muzzle whiskers feel out food and objects in that blind spot.

Which famous horse from literature was owned by Don Quixote?

Rocinante is the bony old nag Don Quixote takes for a warhorse; Cervantes has him spend four days choosing the name, built on rocín, a workhorse, to mark a hack promoted to knightly steed.

What is the term for a horse's coat pattern that features irregular patches of white and any other color?

Pinto comes from the Spanish for 'painted' or 'spotted'; it names the colour alone and turns up in many breeds, whereas the American Paint Horse is a registered breed with stock-horse bloodlines.

What unit, equal to four inches, is used to measure a horse's height at the withers?

A hand is four inches, so a height of 15.2 means 15 hands plus two inches; because the subdivision is base four, a reading like 15.5 is impossible.

Which Roman emperor was said to have planned to make his horse Incitatus a consul?

Caligula, says Suetonius, gave Incitatus a marble stall, an ivory manger and purple blankets and was said to plan a consulship for him, though no ancient writer claims the horse ever took office.

In Norse mythology, the eight-legged horse Sleipnir is the steed of which god?

Odin rides Sleipnir, whose mother was Loki: the trickster took the shape of a mare to lure away a giant builder's stallion, Svadilfari, and later gave birth to the eight-legged foal.

Which engineer adopted 'horsepower' as a unit to compare his steam engines with draft horses?

James Watt charged a royalty on the coal his engine saved over older ones; buyers who still used horses had no coal bill to compare, so he rated his engines in horses, at 33,000 foot-pounds a minute.

Anheuser-Busch tours matched hitch teams of which draught breed for publicity?

Clydesdales joined the brewery in April 1933, when August Busch Jr. gave his father a hitch to mark the end of Prohibition; a team then hauled a case of beer down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

Mustangs of the American West descend from horses brought over by whom?

Spanish conquistadors and colonists brought the horses; some escaped or were turned loose, so mustangs are strictly feral rather than wild, on a continent whose native horses had died out about 10,000 years before.

What is a specialist who trims hooves and fits horseshoes called?

A farrier trims hooves and fits horseshoes, part blacksmith and part specialist in the lower leg; the name comes from the Latin ferrum, iron, the metal of the shoes.

Who wrote the 1877 novel Black Beauty, told from the horse's point of view?

Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty, her only book, as an invalid and died five months after it appeared; its picture of the bearing rein, a strap forcing a carriage horse's head up, is credited with helping to end the fashion.

Which Louisville track hosts the first leg of the US Triple Crown each May?

Churchill Downs is named for John and Henry Churchill, who leased the land to their nephew Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., grandson of the explorer William Clark; he opened the track in 1875.

Which dun breed has a dark-striped mane clipped short to stand upright?

The Fjord horse of western Norway is almost always dun; its mane is black down the middle and pale at the edges, and owners clip it into an upright crescent that shows off the stripe.

The Friesian, famed for its all-black coat, originates in which country?

The Netherlands: the Friesian takes its name from the northern province of Friesland, where farmers founded a studbook in 1879; even so, the breed has come close to dying out more than once.

A brumby is a free-roaming feral horse of which country?

Australia's brumbies descend from horses that escaped or were lost by early settlers; Banjo Paterson's 1890 poem 'The Man from Snowy River' is the chase after a prized colt that had joined them.

According to legend, Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets of which English city?

Coventry is where Lady Godiva, wife of Earl Leofric, is said to have ridden naked to win relief from his taxes; 'Peeping Tom' comes from later versions in which a tailor who looked was struck blind.

Whose war horse Marengo has its skeleton on display at London's National Army Museum?

Napoleon's grey Marengo is said to have been captured at Waterloo and to have lived to 38; the skeleton at the National Army Museum is missing two hooves, one of which was made into a snuff box.

Which horse carried the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo?

Copenhagen carried Wellington for some 17 hours at Waterloo and, when the Duke at last dismounted, lashed out with a kick that just missed his head; he was later buried with military honours at Stratfield Saye.

Which Triple Crown race did Secretariat win by a record 31 lengths in 1973?

Belmont Stakes: Secretariat ran the mile and a half in 2:24, still the American dirt record fifty years on, and thousands of winning tickets were never cashed, presumably kept as souvenirs.

Which horse won the Grand National in 1973, 1974 and 1977?

Red Rum, trained by Ginger McCain on the sands at Southport, also finished second in 1975 and 1976; in 1973 he caught Crisp, who had led by up to 30 lengths, in the last strides of the run-in.

Which race is known as 'the race that stops the nation'?

The Melbourne Cup, run at Flemington since 1861, stops the nation almost literally: race day is a public holiday in Melbourne; the first winner, Archer, took home a gold watch as the trophy.

Where do Lipizzaner horses famously perform the 'airs above the ground'?

The Spanish Riding School in Vienna takes its name from the Spanish horses that founded the Lipizzaner breed; the stallions are born dark and turn white only as they mature.

Icelandic horses that leave Iceland face what restriction?

They can never come back: Iceland bars the import of any horse, including returning Icelandic ones, which keeps the island's herd almost free of equine disease.

The metallic-sheened Akhal-Teke, the 'Golden Horse', comes from which country?

Turkmenistan puts the Akhal-Teke at the centre of its state emblem, in a portrait of Yanardag, the first president's own horse, and on its banknotes; the name joins the Akhal oases and the Teke tribe who bred it.

The Marwari horse of Rajasthan is instantly recognisable by what feature?

Inward-curving ears whose tips can touch or cross are the Marwari's hallmark, shared with the closely related Kathiawari of Gujarat; the breed was first developed by the Rathore rulers of Marwar.

What is the V-shaped structure on the underside of a horse's hoof called?

The frog is the V-shaped rubbery pad on the hoof's underside; it absorbs shock and helps pump blood back up the leg.

Which mildly alcoholic drink of the Central Asian steppes is made by fermenting mare's milk?

Kumis starts with mare's milk, which is richer in sugar than cow's and so ferments into a mildly alcoholic drink; nomads made it in horsehide bags, sometimes strapped to the saddle to be churned by a day's riding.

Sergeant Reckless, a horse who held official US Marine Corps rank, served in which war?

Korean War: during the Battle for Outpost Vegas in March 1953 Reckless made 51 solo trips in a single day carrying ammunition to the front line, and was promoted to staff sergeant in 1959.

In Scottish folklore, what is the shape-shifting water horse said to haunt lochs?

The kelpie is a shape-shifting water spirit that usually appears as a horse and drowns those who mount it; the legend gave its name to the Kelpies, two 30-metre steel horse heads completed near Falkirk in 2013.

Traveller, a grey horse, was the famous wartime mount of which Civil War general?

Robert E. Lee rode Traveller, originally named Jeff Davis, through the war; the horse outlived him by less than a year, dying of tetanus in 1871 after stepping on a nail.

What is the leading cause of premature death among domesticated horses?

Colic, the leading cause of early death in domestic horses, is a sign rather than a diagnosis: the word simply means abdominal pain, which can come from many causes, from trapped gas to a twisted gut.

Polo descends from chovgan, a game first played by the nobility of which ancient land?

Persia is the home of chovgan, a pastime of kings and nobles from at least the Sasanian era; English tea planters who learned the game from Manipuri players founded the first European polo club at Silchar, India, in 1859.

Which horse beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral in a famous 1938 match race at Pimlico?

Seabiscuit beat War Admiral, the faster starter, at his own game, leading early and winning by four lengths; the two were close kin, War Admiral a son of Man o' War and Seabiscuit a grandson.

Which wild equine, reintroduced to Mongolia, has 33 chromosome pairs rather than 32?

Przewalski's horse, the takhi of Mongolia, has 66 chromosomes to the domestic horse's 64; extinct in the wild by the 1960s, it was reintroduced from zoo stock to Mongolia's Hustai National Park in the 1990s.

The name of Alexander the Great's horse Bucephalus literally means what?

Ox-head, from the Greek bous and kephale, perhaps for a brand shaped like an ox's head; when the horse died after the battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC, Alexander founded the city of Bucephala in his honour.

A mule's 63 chromosomes almost always leave it what?

Sterile: a mule gets 32 chromosomes from its horse mother and 31 from its donkey father, and the unmatched set cannot divide evenly into eggs or sperm, though a few female mules have foaled.

Which unbeaten 18th-century racehorse gave us the phrase '... first, the rest nowhere'?

Eclipse, foaled during the solar eclipse of 1764, won all 18 of his races; the gambler Dennis O'Kelly is said to have forecast one result before the start with the words 'Eclipse first, the rest nowhere'.

The champion racehorse Phar Lap's name comes from a Thai word meaning what?

Lightning: a medical student suggested 'Farlap', from a Thai and Zhuang word for it, and trainer Harry Telford respelled it with a PH and split it in two, to match a naming pattern among winners of the country's most famous race.

Which Merseyside racecourse near Liverpool hosts the Grand National?

Aintree's most famous fence, Becher's Brook, recalls Captain Martin Becher, who was thrown into it in the first Grand National in 1839 and lay in the water while the rest of the field jumped over him.

Which colt retired unbeaten in 2012 after 14 races, rated 147 by Timeform?

Frankel, trained by Sir Henry Cecil and ridden in every race by Tom Queally, was named in tribute to the American trainer Bobby Frankel, who had died the year before the colt first ran.

What is the small horny growth at the back of a horse's fetlock called?

The ergot is the small horny growth hidden in the hair at the back of the fetlock; like the chestnut higher up the leg, it is thought to be a leftover foot pad from the horse's many-toed ancestors.

Horses, rhinoceroses and tapirs together make up which order of mammals?

Perissodactyla comes from the Greek for 'odd-toed'; at its peak the order ranged over most of the globe, but it has dwindled to about 17 living species in three families.

Which screen cowboy rode Trigger, a horse first named Golden Cloud?

Roy Rogers chose the horse from five rented mounts for his first starring film and gave him the name Trigger; as Golden Cloud he had already carried Olivia de Havilland's Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Which coat colour is created by a single cream-gene allele acting on a chestnut base?

Palomino is one cream allele on a chestnut base, giving a gold coat with a pale mane and tail; a second copy of the gene bleaches the coat further, to the pale, blue-eyed cremello.

An English barge horse who died in 1822 holds which record?

The oldest horse on record, Old Billy died in 1822 at a verified 62, more than twice a normal span, and his skull went on display at the Manchester Museum.

Who commissioned Eadweard Muybridge's 1878 photo sequence of a galloping horse?

Leland Stanford, railroad baron and racehorse owner, wanted to know whether a galloping horse ever has all four hooves off the ground; the photos proved it does, with the legs tucked under the body, not stretched out as painters showed.

American Pharoah's 2015 'Grand Slam' added which race to the Triple Crown?

Breeders' Cup Classic: American Pharoah won it at Keeneland in October 2015 after becoming the 12th Triple Crown winner; his oddly spelled name stems from a fan-contest submission.

Legend says the Epsom Derby's name was settled by a coin toss between Lord Derby and whom?

Sir Charles Bunbury lost the toss but took the prize: his colt won the first Derby in 1780, and Newmarket's Bunbury Cup was later named in his honour.

The last known races in Rome's Circus Maximus were staged by Totila, king of which people?

Ostrogoths: Totila staged the races after retaking Rome from the emperor Justinian's garrison; racing lived on in Constantinople, where Blue and Green fans had joined forces against Justinian in the Nika riots of 532.

Comanche, a US cavalry horse, became famous as a survivor of which battle?

Little Bighorn: Comanche, Captain Myles Keogh's mount, was found badly wounded two days after the 1876 battle; he is often called its sole survivor, though other horses lived and were taken by the victors.

The Byerley Turk, a founding stallion of the Thoroughbred, saw action at which battle of the Williamite War in Ireland?

Battle of the Boyne, 1690: Captain Robert Byerley rode his Turk there and, by early accounts, escaped capture while scouting the enemy only thanks to the horse's superior speed.

Strangles, a contagious respiratory infection of horses, is caused by which bacterium?

Streptococcus equi causes strangles; abscessed lymph nodes can squeeze the throat and windpipe until the horse struggles to breathe, which is how the disease got its name.