Equine Coat Colors
Horses exhibit a diverse array of coat colors and distinctive markings. A specialized vocabulary has evolved to describe them.
While most horses remain the same color throughout life, a few, over the course of several years, will develop a different coat color from that with which they were born. Most white markings are present at birth, and the underlying skin color of a horse does not change, absent disease.
The basic outline of equine coat color genetics has largely been resolved, and DNA tests to determine the likelihood that a horse will have offspring of a given color have been developed for some colors. Discussion, research, and even controversy continues about some of the details, particularly those surrounding spotting patterns, color sub-shades such as "sooty" or "flaxen", and markings.
Read more about Equine Coat Colors: Basic Coat Colors, Other Coat Colors, Other Color Modifiers, Markings and Other Unique Identifiers, Color Breeds
Famous quotes containing the words coat and/or colors:
“I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.”
—Claude Monet (1840–1926)