Biology of the Horse @museum.de

M: They’re powerful and graceful, tenacious and fast.

F: They jump over obstacles, pull heavy loads, and reach top speeds within seconds.

M: Horses owe their tremendous performance capacity to their special anatomy and physiology. They’re perfectly adapted to life as herd and flight animals. That’s evident in their extremely sensitive perception and in the nature of their locomotor and respiratory systems.

F: Despite their size and weight, horses can achieve immense speeds. They can rapidly outrun pursuers such as big cats or wild dogs. To do that, horses use "catapult-like" acceleration in their legs, stretching their muscles and tendons like rubber bands. You probably know what happens when you stretch a rubber band and then suddenly let go!? The stored energy is instantly discharged. And so, with each step, the respective leg is catapulted forward. That enables a very fast series of steps. In their natural environment, horses only run fast over short distances. As flight animals, they must always be prepared to elude a predator again.

M: When horses take flight, they cover the first 500 metres by using up the oxygen stored in their bodies. Only then do the heart and lungs supply the muscles with more oxygen. A horse's lung is fairly light in weight, but it’s enormous and occupies a considerable proportion of the rib cage. All the alveoli combined are equal to an area the size of a football field! The amount of air that can be moved by those lungs is vast: horses inhale and exhale up to 100,000 litres a day.

F: At rest, adult animals breathe between eight and 16 times a minute. Under stress, the breathing rate can increase to more than 120 times a minute. Unlike humans, a horse can only breathe through its nose. Breathing through the mouth is only possible to a limited degree and would lead to respiratory distress.

M: As animals that originated on grassland, horses spend most of their time eating. Foraging takes up to 16 hours a day; but unlike cattle, horses aren’t ruminants. They have a smaller stomach, need to eat more slowly and spread their meals throughout the day. In the wild, they like to eat leaves, twigs and tree bark as well as grass and herbs.

F: As flight animals, horses have extremely finely tuned senses. They register even the minutest changes in their environment. A video will come up shortly as part of your audio tour, and if you click on it, you find out more about the extraordinary perception of horses. For example, they have almost 360 degree vision without having to turn their heads.