When you tap your fingers around like a little prancing horse you are being scientifically accurate.
well they arent fingers. they are still anatomical legs.
they are ungulates. meaning they walk on a developed digit, yes, but the legs above that are still legs as a whole and are not without tendons and muscles.
and their abilty for running is more from directional of the torso to hip and shoulder girdle to how the legs are angled down. the digit is evolved for speed and less shock absorbtion from taking away from the speed to travel faster in a particular direction.
that person callig their whole leg digits needs to read up on quadrapedal anatomy
I would also argue against their reasoning for poor health outcomes after breaking a leg. The poster stated it was because the legs are evolved digits, but that really has nothing to do with it. I would argue they never needed to evolve anatomy that can handle a broken limb because wild horses who broke a limb very quickly became a meal.
#KillRacingNotHorses
California alone has already had 20+ horse deaths this year at only 3 tracks. No legitimate sport would accept the deaths of their athletes on a routine and consistent schedule, as just a fact of life.
‘athletes’ is pretty anthropromorphic here.
When horses are able to launch a protest about poor working conditions, then it might come up as a point on the agenda worldwide.
They were wildly disturbed by walking on finger tips (like pretty much every four legged creature), but skipped right over lungs bleeding???
Don’t forget that they can die of a tummy ache!
They have VERY precarious digestion and digestive anatomy. They can very easily colic (colic is a very generalized term here btw) and die. Almost saw a horse die this past spring because it had an empty stomach for just a little too long.
Colic is my biggest fear as a horse owner. My childhood horse died from it. We don’t know what exactly happened with her. We found her exhibiting all the symptoms and we did what we could but by the time the vet got there, she’d been deteriorating for almost 10 hours. She couldn’t stay standing at that point and had nearly crushed me and two other people trying to keep her on her feet. She was put down and the whole thing fucked me up real bad for a long time.
She put up one hell of a fight for being as old as she was. She was 33 and didn’t act it at all.
Only the bottom third or so of the leg is a finger. The rest is a leg.
Why didn’t nature ever learn to evolve fewer bones?
Like in 100 million years how much worse is the situation going to be?
Evolution is not an intentional process. It’s just statistics compounding over time. Simplified example: By random chance this bird grew a 5% longer beak than its peers, which means it can catch 5% more food and raise 5% more chicks than the others. If its descendants have similar success, over time it means that their long-beak trait will become more and more prevalent in the population, and projected over thousands of years, the whole species will end up having this long-beak trait, simply because those who had it, had more kids grow to reproductive age than those who didn’t.
I have several horse riding people in my social circle.
Several horses have just randomly died for them. It’s apparently a thing that sometimes happens.
Last time one had twisted intestines or something and had to be put down. Apparently that can happen if a horse moves wrong. It’s what the vet said.
I imagine this as when you take a sudden move and pinch a nerve in your neck. But instead of some time of slight pain and discomfort, you just die.
Twisted gut cuts off bloodflow, and since intestines are soft tissue they can just stay twisted until that part of the organ dies, and then having a section of intestine dead is just fatal unless you get surgical intervention and usually still even then.
It’s less common in humans and more survivable, maybe because we can do bed rest. You cant just tell a horse not to move wrong or go to a liquid diet.
We do bed rest pretty well (other than bed sores but we can prevent those) and often a bit of “stop moving and let all the energy go to the wound” is helpful!
Last time one had twisted intestines or something and had to be put down. Apparently that can happen if a horse moves wrong. It’s what the vet said.
from what I remember it can also happen to large dog breeds
that can happen in humans too. you can get torque on the lower intestines just on anatomy alone.
all of our digestive tracks are uniquely slightly different. some people can get a perferated bowel much easier than others.
Testicular torsion might be a closer comparison. Sometimes it just happens.
Also don’t forget that all horses officially have their birthday on January 1st. So when celebrating the new year, you are obligated to say happy birthday to all the horses.
Wrong. It’s 5:50 AM. Still didn’t need to know this though.
