Horse

Horse

The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began to domesticate horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.

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Famous quotes containing the word horse:

    But when his horse had put its hoof
    Into a rabbit hole
    He dropped upon his head and died.
    His lady saw it all
    And dropped and died thereon, for she
    Loved him with her soul.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Body my house
    my horse my hound
    what will I do
    when you are fallen
    May Swenson (1919–1995)

    Later you hear it wander the dark house
    Like a mother who rises at night to seek a childhood picture;
    Or it goes to the backyard and stands like an old horse cold in the
    pasture.
    Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)