Horses were once the critical step in much of our transportation industry. The automobile certainly replaced them, but horses are still amazing creatures. Here are some interesting tidbits about horses you may or may not know.

A broad splash of white that covers most parts of the forehead between the eyes and carries down the nose to the muzzle is called a Blaze.

Horses make 8 basic sounds - snort, squeal, greeting nicker, courtship nicker, maternal nicker, neigh, roar, blow.

Depending on maturity, breed and the tasks expected, young horses are usually put under saddle and trained to be ridden between the ages of two and four.

Most of the time, a horse has monocular vision. This means a different image is seen by each eye so that a horse is seeing two different pictures at the same time. A horse can also have binocular vision. Binocular vision is when both eyes work together to see one picture (humans have binocular vision). A horse only has binocular vision when it is looking down its nose.

Horses require approximately two and a half hours of sleep, on average, in a 24-hour period. Most of this sleep occurs in many short intervals of about 15 minutes each.

The horse has one stomach. In contrast, cattle, sheep, goats, bison, deer, elk, caribou, moose, and camels are ruminants which means they have four digestive chambers instead of just one stomach.

A horse’s age can usually be accurately determined by its teeth until the horse is about 9 years old. After that, a horse is known as smooth mouthed or aged and it becomes far more difficult or impossible to tell its age by its teeth.

A horse is a herbivore with a digestive system adapted to a forage diet of grasses and other plant material, consumed regularly throughout the day, and so they have a relatively small stomach but very long intestines to facilitate a steady flow of nutrients.

Pregnancy lasts for approximately 335-340 days and usually results in one foal. Twins are rare.

The average horse’s heart weighs approximately 9 or 10 pounds. The great American racehorse Secretariat had a heart estimated during his autopsy to weigh 21 pounds, though the heart was not weighed.

China not only has the most people in the world, but also has the most Horses with 10,000,000

All horses, regardless of when they were actually born, are considered to have a common birthday of January 1. This is one of the reasons most horsemen don’t like their foals to be born late in the year: Even if a foal is born on December 31st he or she will have their first birthday the very next day.

Tags: Horses