Love for Horses

Love for Horses

Love for Horses.

If you are an animal lover, specially horses, and you love riding, this article is going to be very informative for you. It will also help you understand the psyche of horses, that why do they become suddenly wild even after years of training and taming. The fact of the matter is 'Its their instinct to be free and wild.

Horses come in all shapes, colors and sizes. The equidae family describes your typical barnyard horse, but also includes asses, onagers and zebras.

Love for Horses.

According to Animal, in a list compiled by the Smithsonian Institution, what makes a horse a horse is its "deep chest, a mane on the neck, tufted or long-haired, tail, a solid hoof on each foot, thickened skin (called chestnuts) on the inside of the front legs above the knee, and mobile lips and nostrils." Horses also possess great endurance and speed. The fastest equidae is the onager, an Asian wild ass that can clock speeds in excess of 40 mph.

Horses are vegetarian. They get most of their nutrients from grasses and their teeth are specially designed for grazing. A 1,000-pound horse typically will ingest between 15 and 25 pounds of food per day. The horse's digestive track is equipped to handle this large amount of roughage. Its stomach is small, but the intestines are very long, allowing the constant stream of nutrients to be easily digested.
Where once wild horses galloped across open plains, they are endangered today due to habitat loss.
There's a difference between true wild horses and feral horses. True wild horses, like the Przewalski's horse, were never domesticated; feral horses, like mustangs, are descended from domestic stock.

Love for Horses.

History :

Horses, at first, were all wild animals like zebras are today. Although they first evolved in North America, by the time people were spreading through the world, horses had become extinct in North America. All living horses lived in Central Asia, where they ate the long grass that grew there, and also the native apples and carrots (that's why horses love apples and carrots even today!). When the first people arrived in Central Asia, about 100,000 BC, they hunted horses for their meat and especially for their skins, to make into leather hides for clothes and for tents and tools. But around 4000 BC, people in Central Asia began to tame horses, to domesticate them, to eat them and to use them to carry things. It was probably the Indo-Europeans, living around the Caspian Sea in Central Asia, who first tamed horses for their own use. The first horses were too small to carry people, and it wasn't until they had been bred bigger that people could ride them.
Soon the idea of using horses and wagons to carry people and stuff began to spread out of Central Asia. By about 2500 BC, Sumerian people in West Asia were using horses and wagons.
When the Indo-Europeans began to leave Central Asia and settle in other parts of Asia and Europe, they used their horses to help them win their battles. The first appearance of the horse in Greece comes with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans around 2100 BC. The first appearance of horses at Troy is around 1900 BC, also probably with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. And the first arrival of the horse and chariot in Egypt comes with the invasion of the Hyksos, or Amorites, around 1700 BC, when the Amorites had been learning things from the Indo-European Hittites.
By about 1200 BC, in the late Shang Dynasty, people in China were also using horses and chariots. This grave from China (from about 1200 BC) contained two horses, a chariot, and their charioteer, who were all sacrificed for the grave of a rich and powerful man.
Having tame horses made a big difference to people's lives. First off, horses were a tremendous military weapon. You could use chariots to get into battle and use them to squash your enemies, and you could ride them in order to get from one city to another much more quickly than the other army could. You could send quick messengers. And you could carry tents and food on their backs.
In peacetime, horses could carry trade goods from one city to another, and they could pull wagons full of people or hay or wheat or pots from one place to another too.
People didn't usually use horses for plowing in the ancient world (they usually used oxen instead). Horses were too expensive, and they needed better quality food than oxen. Also, no good harness arrangement for horses was invented until about 200 BC, when one was invented in China.
Also, until the medieval period, people generally did not really fight on horseback. They rode their horses to the battle and then dismounted to fight. In the Middle Ages this changed with the development of mounted knights. Some people have said that this was because the stirrup had not been invented until the Middle Ages, but this is probably not the main reason.
More likely, the reason men did not fight on horseback under Greek and Roman rule is that horsemen are not actually that effective against trained, organized foot soldiers. Both the Greeks (after about 750 BC) and the Romans had trained foot-soldiers, but in the medieval period armies did not have the resources to train foot-soldiers, and so the cavalry (the horses and their riders) became more useful.

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