Fun Facts About Horses

The average horse weighs about a half a ton, its brain is the size of a baked potato.

A horse's hoof is analogous to the human fingernail. Horses stand on their middle fingers!

Some of the equine family's closest relatives are tapirs and the rhinoceros.

A horse can poop up to 14 times a day!

Horses cannot vomit.

Most of the time, a horse's ear points where the horse is looking.

Horses can lock the muscles in their legs so they can go to sleep standing up and not fall over.

One of the first horses was called a Hyracotherium. It lived about 50 million years ago and was as tall as a fox. It had toes!

Camargue horses are completely white as adults. Their babies are pure black when they are born.

There is a breed of horse from Russia called Akhal-Teke. It can go for days without food or water.

You measure a horse's height in hands. Each hand equals four inches. If you say a horse is 16.2 hands high, the 2 stands for 2 fingers.

You can tell how old a horse is by how many teeth it has. A horse gets all of its teeth by the time it is five years old. After that, they just get longer.

A female horse is called a mare. In the wild it is the mare that decides when the herd moves on to another spot to find food.

A male horse is called a stallion. Usually only one stallion will stay with a herd.

Any marking on a horse's forehead is called a star, even if it is not shaped like a star.

Horses and ponies feel safer when they are in a herd.

Mustangs are one of the few breeds of horses that live wild in North America. They are related to the horses that the Spanish explorers brought to North America 400 years ago.

Horses can communicate how they are feeling by their facial expressions. They use their ears, nostrils, and eyes to show their moods. Beware of a horse that has flared nostrils and their ears back. That means it might attack!

A hoof is like a fingernail. It is always growing and needs to be clipped so that it won't be uncomfortable for the horse.

A farrier is a person who makes horse shoes and fits them on your horse. They also clip hooves to keep them from getting overgrown.

A horse can move in four ways: walk, trot, canter, and gallop. A gallop is the fastest gait.