KNOWING THE SPECIES

There is no better way to know the age of a horse than knowing the date of birth; however, observing the horse’s physical condition, as well as its teeth…

The different teeth of the horse (incisors, canines, premolars, and molars) are designed and located for a wide range of functions:

By observing and evaluating the incisors, it is possible to estimate a horse’s age fairly accurate until the horse is 11 years old. After that, estimates become less exact because there are some factors that cause significant individual differences among horses, such as tooth hardness, the kind of food offered (grass in the pasture or hay in the stall), type of soil, and bad habits (such as cribbing or occlusal wood).

People who are directly involved with horses should know basic information about the species’ systems for at least two reasons: to call the systems and their parts by the most common names and to be able to identify possible health issues early. 

Knowing the parts of the horse, as well as the internal framework, assures a better understanding of the horse’s biology and, therefore, its care. Furthermore, knowing the horse part names as we call them here is necessary to better understand the teachings in other sections of this school site.

A breed is a group of domestic animals of the same species that share some unique phenotypic characteristics, which are transmitted genetically for generations. horse breeds are developed based on either of the two situations described below or as a combination of both:

Besides horses (Equus caballus), the most numerous equine species around the world, represented by hundreds of different breeds and their crosses, other species of Genus Equus include:

Based on discoveries widely supported through scientific studies of fossils, domestic horses, like most plant and animal species of today, are the result of a series of gradual changes throughout time. It has been concluded that ancestors of today’s horses appeared during “the Age of Mammals” also known as Cenozoic Age. In the following table there is a list of the most important species considered to be ancestors of the modern horses:

This article is about history and may not be too appealing to you because it does not seem to have any information to be used on your horses right away. Well, if you love horses, by reading will help you understand better why horses have transformed human history and why millions of people around the globe are passionate for horses, exactly like you are.

important learnings from the historic changes of the Equidae family that should be used as guidance to provide the modern horses with an environment that best meet their needs:

Special characteristics of a horse may be better understood by briefly studying the horses’ zoological classification. The following table starts with the species (Equus caballus) and opens to the animal kingdom.