- Status: Safe
- Grasslands and pastures worldwide, raised by humans
Numbers
- Weight
- 1100 lbfrom 840 lb to over 2,200 lb depending on the breed
- Length
- 8 ftfrom 6.5 to 9 ft
- Height
- 5,2 ftfrom 4.5 to 6 ft
- Lifespan
- 27,5 yearsfrom 25 to 30 years, rarely over 40; value chosen at the midpoint of the range
- Record height
- 83 in at the shoulderBig Jake, the largest horse in recent times, also weighed 2,600 lb
- Record longevity
- 62 yearsOld Billy, who lived in the nineteenth century
- Gestation
- 11 monthsan average of eleven months and ten days, with a single foal
Ten fun facts
it rests its weight on a single toe, the middle one, while the other toes remain as tiny bony remnants called chestnuts.
its ancestor Eohippus was no taller than twelve inches at the shoulder and had four toes in front and three behind.
an adult male has forty teeth while a female has thirty-six, with the difference being the canine teeth, also called tushes.
the stomach holds only four gallons while the cecum alone reaches nine gallons, meaning food rarely stops moving along.
digestion in the stomach lasts about six hours, while digestion in the intestine can take up to three entire days.
the bay coat, with a brown body and black mane and tail, is the ancestral color of the horse and the most common.
hair from the tails of male horses is traditionally used to craft the fine bows used for playing violins.
some horses have a visible white sclera around the iris, which is called a human eye and is typical of the Appaloosa.
the horse became extinct in the Americas about ten thousand years ago and returned only with Christopher Columbus.
the tarpan, the wild European horse, became extinct in nineteen hundred nine when the last individual died in a Russian zoo.
The quiz answers
Five questions about this animal. Pick an answer and find out if it is the right one.
Question 1 of 5
How many toes does a horse walk on?
Question 2 of 5
How long is a mare's gestation?
Question 3 of 5
How many teeth does an adult male horse have?
Question 4 of 5
What is Przewalski's horse in reality?
Question 5 of 5
What is the average lifespan of a domestic horse?
Try it yourself
Fill a quart bottle with water and imagine fifteen lined up to match a horse's stomach capacity. Then imagine thirty-five to see how large its cecum is.
Mark twelve inches on a tape measure to see the shoulder height of Eohippus. Then measure nearly seven feet to see the record height of Big Jake.
Count your own teeth in front of a mirror and compare your total to the forty teeth of an adult male horse or thirty-six of a female.
Data from Wikidata (Q726) and Wikipedia (Horse).