A horse is another one of those plant eating animals with his stomach able to hold up to eighteen quarts of food.
The unusually long intestines of a horse enables' him to store much food in its body.
The horse chews its food very slowly and very thoroughly.
Unlike the cow, it does not chew a cud.
The eyes of the horse are located on the sides of his head.
This permit's the horse to see forward, sideways and even a little bit backward.
The pupil of the horse's eye is not round but oval shaped.
The longest part runs crosswise or horizontally.
The shape of the pupil cuts down the amount a horse can see when it's looking straight ahead...
The horse cannot see above the level of its eyes.
The pupil of the eye can be opened up very wide and therefore the horse can see better at night...
and in a dim light.
Far better than us human beings can see! The horse's ears are very flexible and can be wiggled about in order to caught sounds.
The horse has a keen sense of sound and a keen sense of smell.
It can hear sounds or detect strange objects by its sense of smell before it can see them.
A horse may often be frightened by the appearance of a strange object if he doesn't know what it is.
If the horse is allowed to sniff at the object and examine it, then its fear may quickly disappear.
A wild horse is naturally very timid and afraid of man.
If it's grazing or resting and hears an unusual sound, it immediately throws its head up in alarm.
It looks in the direction from which the sound came and may quickly turn and run.
The urge to run may come from something the horse sees, hears or smells.
A horse has long legs which makes it a swift runner and the horses feet are called hoofs which are hard and don't wear down too easily.
The hoofs also lesson some of the shock when the horse moves around.
The hoofs allow the horse better footing.
The legs of a newborn horse are very long in proportion to its height.
They grow little as the horse develops, but not nearly as fast as the rest of his body.
Though a young horse has long legs it can still run very fast if need be.
He may need this speed if he's one that's allowed to run in the wild! Much like the...
wild mustang horses and burros, that's left to run free in the Western States of The United States.
Though horses are used less in the United States as far as work horses, if you research into third world countries you'll see many horses are still being used as work horses.
There's another entire breed of horses on the racing seen while others are more for riding and many are simply pets! As a result many horses are thought of as just another family member.
When that happens, it makes me feel the life of a horse is not much different than you or me!