Did you know that the first wild horse was from America? That’s right, about 4 million years ago the wild horse flourished all over the Americas and crossed the Pacific Ocean on a land mass between Asia (currently Russia) and Alaska called the Bering Strait. It was said that billions of wild horses populated the earth, and outnumbered most other mammals! Today, the wild horse that is most similar to the first wild horses is the Przewalski, a stocky, fuzzy horse with a mo-hawk, no I’m serious…they have a mo-hawk. Did you know the Przewalski has 66 chromosomes? That’s 2 more than the domesticated horse! It gets you thinking doesn’t it?
Secondly, I learned about the size of a horse’s brain. A horse’s brain is about 1.5 – 2 pounds, but yet it’s similar to ours. Unlike a human, a horse’s brain is designed to analyze information received from the environment, whereas as human’s is focused on fine motor skills. The cerebellum of the horse’s brain in much larger than a human’s, this means that their sensory perception, coordination, and motor skills is far much more advanced than ours. Because, as prey animals they need to be able to get up and run after an hour of being born; all their gross motor skills have to be stored and remembered within less than an hour. That’s why after you teach a horse a motor skill it’s never forgotten! In addition to their brain, their sensory skills far surpass ours by thousands of times! For example a horse’s sense of smell is thousands of times better than a human’s. So what smells subtle to us may be over powering to a horse. A horse’s sight is different than ours. To us a mouse is small, but to a horse a mouse is magnified and can look 3 – 4 times bigger. And they can see all around them except from an inch from their face and right behind their tail. For their sense of hearing, a horse can move its ears in any direction and can move about 90 degrees, so they could have one ear “looking” forward and one “looking” back. Truly neat huh!
