Uncle John answers your questions about all things horse.
A horse’s height is measured from the ground to the withers (shoulders)—not the top of its head—because a horse will probably move its head up or down while it is being measured, making an accurate measurement to the head difficult.
Throughout history, human body parts have always provided units of measurement. (In the same way that the foot was used as a measure, the hand has also been used. Ancient Egyptian records, in particular, tend to specify heights in hands.) Over time, horse owners just adopted the hand-measurement technique, and today horses are still mostly measured in hands, although much of Europe (except for England) uses the metric system.
Like humans, horses have dietary preferences. But one menu option that is a bit odd is that some horses sometimes eat . . . er . . . poop. Foals regularly eat their mothers’ manure—it is a way for them to learn about their environment and about what is safe for them to eat. Plus, all animals have intestinal parasites that help them break down the food in their digestive tracts. Some of those parasites find their way into the animal’s droppings—which, when ingested, populate the eater’s own gut.
This is really just a matter of tradition. In the old days of horsemanship, many men wore swords when they went out on horseback. And because most men were right-handed, they wore their swords on their left side so they could draw them easily with their dominant right hand. With a sword hanging on the left side, it was far safer to mount their horses on the animal’s left so the sword didn’t get in the way.
Because horses are prey animals instead of predators, their eyes are situated on the sides of their heads rather than in front (like ours). This is because prey animals need to see what’s coming at them from all directions. But with eyes on both sides of their heads, horses’ visual fields function mostly independently, meaning that a horse does not understand images it receives from its left side the same way it does images from the right. For this reason, horses prefer that repeated activities occur on the same side of their body. But there’s no reason a horse couldn’t learn to be mounted from the right.
All are members of the Equidae (horse) family, but they represent several species. They can interbreed, but their offspring are usually sterile.
•Donkeys were probably domesticated around 3000 BC in Egypt.
•A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a mare. Mules can be used just like horses, though they have more stamina and leg strength. Mules’ reputation for stubbornness is, for the most part, undeserved. They’re actually very smart and are usually stubborn only when asked to do something they consider dangerous.
•A hinny is the opposite of a mule: the offspring of a stallion and a female donkey.
Newborn colts don’t eat grass because their long legs make it impossible for their mouths to reach the ground.