KidZone Animals
Horses

"Cool Haircut on an Icelandic Horse" by Thomas James Caldwell;
used with permission under CC BY 2.0

Did you know…

Horses are warm-blooded mammals that can be found all over the world. Domesticated thousands of years ago (as early as 4000 BCE!), horses spread around the world—influenced heavily by humans and our economic, political, and social processes. For example, in North America, the ongoing processes of colonialism by the West led to widespread horse populations on Indigenous land. Often mistaken for being "natural" to North America, horses were brought over through violent means of colonial expansion and erasure of Indigenous peoples, their rights, and their land on Turtle Island. The fact that most people do not know that horses are not native to North America proves this very point.

The feral horses you have probably seen on TV, read about in books, or heard from stories told are truly living freely on the land. Yet, most “wild” horses are descended from already domesticated breeds. Now, I say most because there is one exisiting horse in the world that has never been domesticated… the Przewalski’s horse!

Many people today are unaware of the fact that feral horses in places all over the world are just domesticated horses living without traditional human ownership. This is of course true unless you are face to face with a herd of infamous Mongolian wild horses…

Regardless, with the number of domesticated horse breeds in the hundreds, it is clear that humans maintain a fascination with these complex animals.

If we are not writing, reading, or creating things about horses, we are watching them, riding them, and most importantly, living alongside them.

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