Smoky Black Mimics
- Dark bay: When smoky blacks fade from exposure to the elements, their legs usually retain their color, giving them the appearance of a bay or brown horse with black points. However, the brown coat of a bleached smoky black recalls orange rather than red or mahogany.
- Black: A true genetic black horse may still develop a sun-bleached coat, usually due to issues related to management and nutrition, though in some cases there may also be genetic factors contributing. A smoky black looks very similar to a sun-bleached black, and often only pedigree analysis or genetic testing can distinguish between the two.
- Seal brown: The just off-black coat color of true seal browns can sometimes be misidentified as smoky black, or vice versa.
- Liver chestnut: The palest, most evenly-bleached smoky blacks may mimic the darkest shades of chestnut. Chestnuts do not have true black tones in their coats, and will usually reveal reddish character around the fetlocks. Smoky blacks usually have uniformly black legs. Furthermore, chestnuts do not possess amber eyes.
- Classic champagne: Paler smoky blacks with amber eyes may be confused with the activity of champagne on a black coat. Champagne horses have pinkish, freckled skin and green, hazel or amber eyes, as opposed to the dark skin and brown or amber eyes of a smoky black.
- Grullo: Grullo is the action of the dun gene on black. Typically, grullo coats have cool slate hues as opposed to warm orange-brown tones. Furthermore, grullos have dun characteristics such as bold dorsal stripes and leg bars.
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Famous quotes containing the words smoky, black and/or mimics:
“We are wearied of our huts
And the smoky smell of our garments.
We are sick with desire of the sun
And the grass on the mountains.”
—Unknown. The Grass on the Mountain (l. 11–14)
“why
Do our black faces search the empty sky?
Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing
We have lost, wandering in strange lands?”
—Arna Bontemps (1902–1973)
“It is the simplest relation of phenomena, and describes the commonest sensations with more truth than science does, and the latter at a distance slowly mimics its style and methods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)