Rhinopneumonitis (“rhino”) in horses is roughly equivalent to the common cold in people—it is a highly contagious respiratory infection spread by virus that passes readily from horse to horse. An outbreak can spread quickly and easily through a herd. How is rhinovirus spread in horses? EHV-1 is spread from horse Read more…
about 2.7 billion base pairs. An individual horse’s DNA contains about 2.7 billion base pairs divided amongst all the chromosomes. How much DNA do humans share with a horse? Thus we provide roughly one horse BAC clone for every megabase of human DNA sequence and cover about 17% of the Read more…
Common horse breeds native to Scandinavia include the Gotland Pony, North Swedish Horse, Scandinavian Coldblooded Trotter, Swedish Ardennes, Swedish Warmblood, Norwegian Fjord, Dole, and Nordlandshest/Lyngshest. Did Scandinavia have horses? Horses were first brought over from Scandinavia in the 9th and 10th centuries. They were used to assist with farming and Read more…
The Super-Sized Shire Clydesdales, Percherons, Belgians, Suffolks and the largest breed of horse, the Shire, all belong to the Clydesdales group. Draft horses are gentle giants that are employed to pull heavily loaded plows or carts. The Shire originated in England and was developed in the 1800s. What is a Read more…
Zebras belong to the same family as domestic horses but they are a different species from horses. In fact, there are three distinct Zebra species. Let’s look at some fun facts about zebras and horses! 8. Are zebras African horses? Zebras (US: /ˈziːbrəz/, UK: /ˈzɛbrəz, ˈziː-/) (subgenus Hippotigris) are African Read more…
Mesohippus means “middle” horse and it is considered the middle horse between the Eocene and the more modern looking horses. It had lost some of its toes and evolved into a 3-toed animal. Is Hyracotherium a horse? Hyracotherium is now believed to be a primitive horse, the earliest-known member of Read more…
Living during the Eocene era approximately 55 to 58 million years ago, Eohippus, the “dawn horse” or more correctly called Hyracotherium, is the most ancient ancestor of today’s horse. How did the Eohippus evolve into a horse? Called Eohippus, this diminutive animal had four toes, and lived in the dense Read more…
But it may come as a surprise that nearly all horses alive today descend from stallions that were brought into Europe from the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia over the past 700 years, according to new genetic research. Are all race horses related? Modern racehorses are virtually all descended from Read more…
The domestic horse is known to have been strongly impacted by artificial selection, and was often selected for functional traits. Our results confirm that morphological integration among bones within the same limb is strong and apparently partly produced by functional factors. Is a horse an example of artificial selection? The Read more…
While seadragons sound like creatures of folklore, these colorful cousins of seahorses are very real and incredibly unique. These fishes in the same family have a lot in common, but a few distinct characteristics set them apart. Are leafy sea dragons sea horses? The leafy seadragon is a charismatic species Read more…