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:

    Love and marriage, love and marriage
    Go together like a horse and carriage
    Dad was told by mother
    You can’t have one without the other.
    Sammy Cahn (1913–1993)

    God help the horse, and the driver too!
    And the people and beasts who have never a friend!
    For the driver easily might have been you,
    And the horse be me by a different end!
    And nobody knows how their days will cease!
    And the poor, when they’re old, have little of peace!
    James Kenneth Stephens (1882–1950)

    I on my horse, and Love on me, doth try
    Our horsemanships, while by strange work I prove
    A horseman to my horse, a horse to Love,
    Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)