Horse sense: Happiest equines love to snort, says study

By Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent

14 July 2018

Scientists haven't given too much attention to the significance of horse snorting before now.

The expulsion of air through the equine nose has normally been connected with "clearing phlegm, flies or other irritants".

But now researchers in France say that these blow-outs are a key indicator of what's going on in the equine mind.

They found horses living in relaxed environments produced far more snorts than those in stressful conditions.

Why the long face?

Understanding when a horse is feeling happy, scientifically, is quite difficult. Cats are easy by comparison; their purring is a clear sign of contentedness.

Horses give off conflicting signals - their heart rates increase at the anticipation of food, but decrease during grooming, something that humans generally believe they enjoy.

Some people believe that horses being playful are showing they are happy. But researchers say that this isn't always the case, as play can be a "coping mechanism" when horses are faced with unexpected events, and it may also be a way of reducing social tension in the group.

In this study, the scientists wanted to test the anecdotal idea that snorting in horses occurs more often in positive situations.

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Genome assembly of donkey reveals clues on how it may have branched from horse

April 9, 2018 by Bob Yirka, Phys.org report

A team of researchers from Denmark, Malaysia, France and the U.K. has conducted a genome assembly of the donkey to learn more about its evolutionary history. In their paper published on the open access site Science Advances, the group describes their study and what they found.

While the horse is well recognized by most people, the same cannot be said for the lowly donkey. This is likely due to some confusion regarding how it fits in with other horse-like animals. Scientifically speaking, the donkey is one of many of the asses. Mating a donkey with a horse can result in the birth of a mule (from a male donkey and a female horse) or a hinny (a female donkey and a male horse). As the researchers with this new effort note, a lot of genetic research has been done on the horse, but very little on the donkey. They have sought to rectify that situation by conducting a high-quality genome assembly of the donkey genome.

As part of their effort, the researchers created scaffolds, which are spans of genetic details, that are a factor of four higher than any other previous effort with donkeys. The amount of data was massive, filling 10 megabytes. But it also revealed a lot about donkeys, such as their history, including their split from the group that now includes the modern horse, going back approximately 4 million years. They also observed chromosomal rearrangements such as translocations and inversions, which will reveal more about how the donkey species diverged and separated from others.

Both horses and donkeys belong to the equid family, which prior research has shown have been around for approximately 55 million years. But today, the researchers note, just one member of the family remains, Equus. It includes both horses and donkeys, and also three kinds of zebras and other ass species. Asses, notably, split off from others in the family nearly two million years ago—the new sequencing results push the accepted date back approximately 200,000 years. Donkeys, the researchers note, were domesticated approximately 5,000 years ago.

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Gene therapy can cure lameness in horses, research finds

Date: October 18, 2017

Source: University of Nottingham

Injecting DNA into injured horse tendons and ligaments can cure lameness, new research involving scientists at Kazan Federal University, Moscow State Academy and The University of Nottingham has found.

The gene therapy technology was used in horses that had gone lame due to injury and within two to three weeks the horses were able to walk and trot. Within just two months they were back to full health, galloping and competing.

The study has big implications not just for the veterinary world but the future of human medicine -- injuries like these are common in people as well as animals, not just in lameness but in other illnesses and diseases from the legs and arms through to the back and hips.

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Why modern horses have only one toe

By Giorgia GuglielmiAug. 22, 2017 , 7:01 PM

How horses—whose ancestors were dog-sized animals with three or four toes—ended up with a single hoof has long been a matter of debate among scientists. Now, a new study suggests that as horses became larger, one big toe provided more resistance to bone stress than many smaller toes. To trace the evolution of the horse toe, researchers first examined 13 fossilized horse leg bones, from those of the 50-million-year-old, dog-sized Hyracotherium (which had three toes on its hind feet and four on its forefeet) to those of modern horses. They measured features like bone length and area using 3D scanning, which revealed the bones’ resistance to stresses such as squeezing or bending.

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Most modern horses are descendants of recently imported Oriental stallions

Date: June 29, 2017

Source: Cell Press

 

Summary: Researchers who have analyzed the Y chromosomes of more than 50 horses representing 21 breeds have found that the paternal lines of nearly all modern horses trace to stallions brought to Europe from the Orient over the last 700 years. The findings reveal the overwhelming influence of breeding schemes driven by strong selection on males. 

  

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Scythian horse breeding unveiled: Lessons for animal domestication

Date: April 27, 2017

Source: Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen

Nomad Scythian herders roamed vast areas spanning the Central Asian steppes during the Iron Age, approximately from the 9th to the 1st century BCE (Before Common Era). These livestock pastoralists, who lived on wagons covered by tents, left their mark in the history of warfare for their exceptional equestrian skills. They were among the first to master mounted riding and to make use of composite bows while riding. A new study published in Science led by Professor Ludovic Orlando and involving 33 international researchers from 16 universities, now reveals the suite of traits that Scythian breeders selected to engineer the type of horse that best fit their purpose.

The study took advantage of exceptionally preserved horse remains in royal Scythian burials, such as the site of Arzhan, Tuva Republic, where over 200 horses have been excavated but also at Berel', Kazakhstan, where no less than 13 horses were preserved in a single, permafrozen funerary chamber. Applying the latest methods in ancient DNA research, the researchers could sequence the genome of 13 Scythian stallions. These were 2,300-2,700 years old and included 11 specimens from Berel' and two from Arzhan. The researchers also sequenced the genome of one 4,100 year-old mare from Chelyabinsk, Russia, belonging to the earlier Sintashta culture, which developed the first two-wheeled chariots drawn by horses.

The DNA variation observed at key genes revealed a large diversity of coat coloration patterns within Scythian horses, including bay, black, chestnut, cream and spotted animals. Scythian horses did not carry the mutation responsible for alternate gaits, and as a consequence, were not natural amblers. However, some but not all individuals carried variants associated with short-distance sprint performance in present-day racing horses. This indicates that Scythian breeders valued animals showing diverse endurance and speed potential.

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Climate change responsible for the great diversity in horses

 Environmental factors causing rapid expansion of species over the last 20 million years

 

Date: February 9, 2017

Source: Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

Changing environments and ecosystems were driving the evolution of horses over the past 20 million years. This is the main conclusion of a new study published in Science by a team of palaeontologists from Spain and Argentina. The team analysed 140 species of horses, most of them extinct, synthesising decades of research on the fossil history of this popular group of mammals.

Their conclusions challenge a classic theory, which links the evolutionary success of horses to several novel adaptations in response to the spread of grasslands around 18 million years ago. "According to the classic view, horses would have evolved faster in when grasslands appeared, developing teeth that were more resistant to the stronger wear that comes with a grass-dominated diet. They also became bigger to more effectively digest this low quality food, and as a strategy against predators in these new, open habitats", explains Juan L. Cantalapiedra, researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany.

But did teeth and body size indeed evolve that fast? It seems they didn't. According to the new results, these evolutionary changes could have been much slower than previously assumed. In fact, Cantalapiedra and colleagues were able to show that all these newly evolved species of horses were ecologically very similar. Thus, rather than a multiplication of ecological roles, the new results point to external factors, such as increasing environmental heterogeneity, as the main evolutionary force.

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The Emperor's new coats: History of horse coat colors

Date: December 7, 2016

Source: Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB)

Human preferences for horse coat colors have changed greatly over time and across cultures. Spotted and diluted horses were more frequent from the beginning of domestication until the end of the Roman Empire, whereas solid colors (bay, black and chestnut) were predominant in the Middle Ages. These are the findings of an international research team under the direction of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW). The results have just been published in the open access journal Scientific Reports.

The study reveals that the diversity of coat colors in horses has been strongly affected by cultural differences since their initial domestication around 3,500 BC. To investigate the history of domestic horses with respect to this charismatic phenotypic character, the scientists analysed a dataset of 201 samples of ancient horse DNA. In total, they detected 14 different color types. Early breeds showed six color variants, of which three were already present in pre-domestic horses. During the Bronze Age (2,700 -- 900 BC) and Iron Age (900 BC -- 400 AD) the number of color variants further increased from six to nine, indicating a human preference for new colors. During these periods spotted and diluted horses were most frequent.

During medieval times, the attractiveness of spotted horses decreased and solid coat colors, especially chestnut, became dominant. Religious symbolism may have played a role in the shift from dominance to the decline of spotted horses. At the beginning of the Middle Ages this type was preferred by royalty, possibly influenced by the last book of the New Testament, the "Apocalypse of St. John" (AD 81-96). It described four riders on differently colored horses. The rider of victory was sitting on a white or white spotted horse, whereas the riders of famine (black), death (bay) and war (chestnut) rode on solid colored horses. After several epidemics this symbolism changed: the "good" rider of victory was replaced by the "bad" rider of the plague but still sitting on a white or white-spotted horse. Consequently, white and spotted horses now had a negative connotation, resulting in a lower religious prestige of these colorations. Further reasons for the decrease of spotted types might have been novel developments in weaponry such as the longbow, with these horses being an easier target than solid ones.

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DNA shows that horse's 'funny walk originated in York'

By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent

8 August 2016

The speedy, almost comical horse step known as an ambling gait originated in England in the middle of the Ninth Century, scientists say.

The gait, which makes horses comfortable to ride on long journeys, is an inherited trait that springs from a single genetic mutation.

According to this new analysis, it first appeared in horses in York about AD850.

Vikings took these horses to Iceland, and the trait spread globally.

Smooth ride

Horses have three essential speeds:

walk

trot

gallop

However, a four-beat rhythm, where the horse moves both legs on the same side at the same time has long been a prized feature of some breeds.

Called an ambling gait, the step produces a much smoother ride, particularly over longer distances or rough terrain.

It is as comfortable as a walk but the horse goes as fast as a trot.

In 2012, researchers examined Icelandic horses, and discovered that a single mutation in a gene involved in the movement of limbs was responsible for this ambling ability.

In this new study, scientists extended their search for the origins of this variation of the DMRT3 gene by examining genetic material from 90 horses, some dating back before 3500BC.

The earliest examples they found were in samples from York dating between AD850 and AD900, when the area was being raided and temporarily settled by Vikings.

"The first occurrence of this mutation was in two samples from medieval England from the York Archaeological Collection," said one of the authors, Dr Arne Ludwig, from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research.

"It is unlikely that it was present before, especially not in high frequency, because this is a big advantage, this specific movement of the horses."

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A horse of a different color: Genetics of camouflage and the dun pattern

Date:December 21, 2015

Source:Uppsala University

Most horses today are treasured for their ability to run, work, or be ridden, but have lost their wild-type camouflage: pale hair with zebra-like dark stripes known as the Dun pattern. Now an international team of scientists has discovered what causes the Dun pattern and why it is lost in most horses. The results, published in Nature Genetics, reveal a new mechanism of skin and hair biology, and provide new insight into horse domestication.

The work is an international collaboration led by groups at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, and the Huntsville Institute of Biotechnology, Huntsville, Alabama, USA.

Pale hair colour in Dun horses provides camouflage as it makes a horse in the wild less conspicuous. In contrast, domestic horses, as well as many other domestic animals, have been selected over many generations to be more conspicuous, more appealing or simply different than the wild type. The pale hair colour in Dun horses does not affect all parts of the body; most Dun horses have a dark stripe along their back, and often show zebra-like leg stripes. However, the majority of domestic horses are non-dun and show a more intense pigmentation that is uniformly distributed.

"Dun is clearly one of the most interesting coat colour variants in domestic animals because it does not just change the colour but the colour pattern," states Leif Andersson, whose group led the genetic analysis. We were really curious to understand the underlying molecular mechanism why Dun pigment dilution did not affect all parts of the body, continues Leif.

The research team started by analysing the distribution of pigment in individual hairs.

"Unlike the hair of most well studied mammals, the dilute coloured hairs from Dun horses are not evenly pigmented the whole way around. They have a section of intense pigmentation along the length of the hair, on the side that faces out from the body of the horse, whilst the rest of the hair has more or less no pigment," explains Freyja Imsland, the lead author for the genetic analysis, and a PhD student in Andersson's group. The hairs from the dark areas of Dun horses are in contrast intensely pigmented all around each individual hair. In spite of scientists having studied hair pigmentation in detail for a very long time, this kind of pigmentation is novel to science, and quite unlike that seen in rodents, primates and carnivores.

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Why the long face? Horses and humans share facial expressions

Date:

August 5, 2015

Source:

University of Sussex

Summary:

Horses and humans use similar facial expressions to communicate, according to new research.

Mammal communication researchers have shown that, like humans, horses use muscles underlying various facial features -- including their nostrils, lips and eyes -- to alter their facial expressions in a variety of social situations.

The findings, published in PLOS ONE today (05 August 2015), suggest evolutionary parallels in different species in how the face is used for communication.

The study builds on previous research showing that cues from the face are important for horses to communicate, by developing an objective coding system to identify different individual facial expressions on the basis of underlying muscle movement.

The Equine Facial Action Coding System (EquiFACS), as devised by the Sussex team in collaboration with researchers at the University of Portsmouth and Duquesne University, identified 17 "action units" (discrete facial movements) in horses. This compares with 27 in humans, 13 in chimps and 16 in dogs.

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Horses understand human gestures

Presented by

Zoe Gough

Horses (Equus caballus) were first domesticated around 6,000 years ago and have performed many important roles since then, but their ability to understand the gestures of their human handlers remained unstudied until fairly recently.

To date research has suggested that while horses are able to understand some signals, such as pointing, they are only able to use these signals when the human remains near to the reward. 

Their level of ability has previously been said to be similar to that of goats and cats, they are able to use human gestures even though they cannot be said to understand the meaning attached to the gesture.

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Fossils Suggest Ancestor Of Horses, Rhinos Originated On The Asian Subcontinent While It Was Still An Island

Provided by Shawna Williams, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Working at the edge of a coal mine in India, a team of Johns Hopkins researchers and colleagues have filled in a major gap in science’s understanding of the evolution of a group of animals that includes horses and rhinos. That group likely originated on the subcontinent when it was still an island headed swiftly for collision with Asia, the researchers reported Nov. 20 in the online journal Nature Communications.

Modern horses, rhinos and tapirs belong to a biological group, or order, called Perissodactyla. Also known as “odd-toed ungulates,” animals in the order have, as their name implies, an uneven number of toes on their hind feet and a distinctive digestive system. Though paleontologists had found remains of Perissodactyla from as far back as the beginnings of the Eocene epoch, about 56 million years ago, their earlier evolution remained a mystery, says Ken Rose, Ph.D., a professor of functional anatomy and evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Rose and his research team have for years been excavating mammal fossils in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming, but in 2001 he and Indian colleagues began exploring Eocene sediments in Western India because it had been proposed that perissodactyls and some other mammal groups might have originated there. In an open-pit coal mine northeast of Mumbai, they uncovered a rich vein of ancient bones. Rose says he and his collaborators obtained funding from the National Geographic Society to send a research team to the mine site at Gujarat in the far Western part of India for two weeks at a time once every year or two over the last decade.

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Horses' mobile ears are 'communication tool'

5 August 2014 Last updated at 07:45

By Victoria Gill

Science reporter, BBC News

Very mobile ears help many animals direct their attention to the rustle of a possible predator.

But a study in horses suggests they also pay close attention to the direction another's ears are pointing in order to work out what they are thinking.

Researchers from the University of Sussex say these swivelling ears have become a useful communication tool.

Their findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

The research team studies animal behaviour to build up a picture of how communication and social skills evolved.

"We're interested in how [they] communicate," said lead researcher Jennifer Wathan.

"And being sensitive to what another individual is thinking is a fundamental skill from which other [more complex] skills develop."

Ms Wathan and her colleague Prof Karen McComb set up a behavioural experiment where 72 individual horses had to use visual cues from another horse in order to choose where to feed.

They led each horse to a point where it had to select one of two buckets. On a wall behind this decision-making spot was a life-sized photograph of a horse's head facing either to left or right.

In some of the trials, the horses ears or eyes were covered.

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Future of Italy's Tuscan palios in doubt after horses put down following race

Animal rights activists scream abuse and spectators watch in stunned silence as the injured animals are carted off to be destroyed during the race in Pistoia

MICHAEL DAY

ROME 

Monday 28 July 2014

The future of the medieval horse race in the Tuscan city of Pistoia was in doubt after two horses were put down after breaking their legs during the race.

Animal rights activists screamed abuse and spectators watched in stunned silence as the injured animals were carted off to be destroyed soon after the start of their heats in the 2014 Giostra dell’Orso (Golden Carousel) race in Pistoia, north-west of Florence, on Friday evening.

The deaths of two animals have reignited the seasonal controversy over the palio, of which the most famous takes place in Siena. Friday’s race in Pistoia was allowed to take place in the confines of the town’s medieval central piazza, even though heavy rain had made conditions more treacherous than usual.

The accidents came in the penultimate and final rounds when the horses, Oracle Force and Golden Storming, set off at breakneck speed around the square as their riders attempted to throw spears at a target.

After the second accident in a matter of minutes, Golden Storming limped off the course, its right hind leg twisted sickeningly out of shape, to shouts of “shame” and “bastards”, from protesters. Vets quickly destroyed both animals. The riders suffered only minor injuries.

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Evidence that an Influenza A virus can jump from horses to camels

Date:

June 24, 2014

Source:

University of Florida

Summary:

Evidence that an influenza A virus can jump from horses to camels has been found by scientists – and humans could be next. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve been amazed at all the cross-species jumps of influenza. Now we’re finding yet another,” said one researcher. Although there is no immediate risk, the inter-mammalian transmission of the virus is a major concern for public health researchers interested in controlling the threat of pandemic influenza.

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4 Baby Horses Born from Frozen Embryos

By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | June 16, 2014 07:09pm ET

Attention horse lovers: A new technique could make it easier to breed the next Secretariat or Flicka.

Four new foals have been born from frozen embryos, a tricky task given the structure of horse embryos. The baby horses were born healthy after spending 11 months gestating in mares at a stud farm in France. The new technique could one day help breeders create horses with tailor-made traits, such as racing speed, friendliness or docility.

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Taming of the shrew: Bicolored shrew a health risk for horses

Date:

April 11, 2014

Source:

Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien

Summary:

The bicolored shrew is a protected species in Central Europe, but these furry insect-eaters have a dark secret. Researchers have discovered that bicolored shrews carry the Borna virus. Infection with this virus causes fatal encephalitis in horses. The mechanisms of transmission had until now been unclear, but we now know more about one route - from bicolored shrews to hosts.

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Important Step Forward for Gait Analysis of Horses

Aug. 19, 2013 — Gait and movement pattern are essential to the horse, whether it's a question of the horse's well-being, competition riding or breeding. For the first time, new research made in collaboration between University of Copenhagen and The Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom makes it possible to use sensors to accurately measure a horse's movements and to quantify limb movement outside the traditional gait laboratory. This provides veterinarians as well as breeders and trainers with a number of new possibilities. The new results have just been published in the Journal of Biomechanics.

Horses who develop a limp are one of the major sources of frustration for horse owners as well as vets. The same applies for Wobblers disease (ataxia) where growth abnormalities or articular process joint osteoarthritis put pressure on the spinal cord causing ataxic gait. At least one in a hundred horses develop Wobblers disease, which often leads to the horse having to be euthanased. Both lameness and Wobblers disease have an effect on a horses gait, and so far veterinarians have only been able to study horse movement in a gait-laboratory, which commonly only allows study of a few steps at a time on a straight line.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130819102712.htm