Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we are going to
Speaker 3: begin a look at the hoof, the animal hoof, specifically
Speaker 3: the horse hoof. Rob how did you get interested in this?
Speaker 2: Well, I was in New York last week with my family,
Speaker 2: went to the American Natural History Museum, and I was
Speaker 2: looking at fossils and bones, and I was captivated by
Speaker 2: some of the some of the bones of the horse
Speaker 2: and started thinking about the hoof and just how strange
Speaker 2: the hoof is. Yet yet at the same time, we
Speaker 2: kind of take it for granted, because even if you
Speaker 2: are not a person who lives among horses and cares
Speaker 2: for horses, horses are everywhere in our imagery and our
Speaker 2: iconography and our entertainment. You can scarcely be a video
Speaker 2: game player at all without having mounted a horse, or
Speaker 2: lost a horse, or accidentally driven a horse off a
Speaker 2: cliff or up a wall at some point. So I
Speaker 2: was I was really taken by this, like I had
Speaker 2: not really in my life set aside any time to
Speaker 2: just consider the utter weirdness of the horse hoof.
Speaker 3: I almost feel like the weirdness of the horse hoof
Speaker 3: is embodied in the sound of the horse galloping, and
Speaker 3: how different that is from the sound of the movement
Speaker 3: and most other animals you'd think about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's like the drumming of fingers on
Speaker 2: a table, right, Yeah, like that's that's that's an attempting
Speaker 2: direction to go in anyway. Yeah, I feel like it's
Speaker 2: it's all too easy to take the hoof for granted,
Speaker 2: even in literature. You know, I was thinking, well, we can,
Speaker 2: we can kick off this episode with a nice little
Speaker 2: quote or a little reading from something that kind of captures,
Speaker 2: you know, our current level of fascination with the hoof,
Speaker 2: But I really wasn't able to find much. Now again,
Speaker 2: horses and hooves are just throughout human literature. They're everywhere,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of literary references to the
Speaker 2: to hooves and the sound of hooves. One poem in particular,
Speaker 2: in particular that I found that I ultimately didn't like
Speaker 2: well enough to feature in the Cold Open, but it's
Speaker 2: still notable, is The hoofs of the Horses by William
Speaker 2: Henry Ogilvy, who lived eighteen sixty nine through nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar with this poem, Joe,
Speaker 2: but it's just all about how much he just absolutely
Speaker 2: loves the cadence of horse hooves.
Speaker 3: No, I was not familiar with this poem before you
Speaker 3: did share it with me. It is it's an almost
Speaker 3: comical level of appreciation for horse hooves, an attitude very
Speaker 3: much of I'll stop thinking about the sound of horse
Speaker 3: hooves when I'm dead, or maybe I won't. When I'm dead,
Speaker 3: I'll still dream of them even in the grave. It's
Speaker 3: also it goes with the plural. I looked it up
Speaker 3: to see is there any difference hooves versus hoofs, and
Speaker 3: it seems like no, I both have been used in English.
Speaker 3: I think hoofs with the F plural is more archaic.
Speaker 2: Usually, this is one of those poems that you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes I read a really good rhyming poem with great cadence,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm like, why don't we rhyme our
Speaker 2: poems anymore? You know, all poems should rhyme. This is great.
Speaker 2: This is the opposite end of the spectrum for me,
Speaker 2: Like this one's just kind of goofy like it starts
Speaker 2: off the hoofs of the horses. Oh, witching and sweet
Speaker 2: is the music Earth steals from the ironshod feet, yeah,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So it's not to my liking, but I
Speaker 2: can understand where someone else might might love it as
Speaker 2: much as this man loved horse hoofs. Well.
Speaker 3: It also commits the ultimate sin of rhyming above with love.
Speaker 3: That's you can't you can't come back from that.
Speaker 2: But again, it is not the only account of hooves
Speaker 2: or mention of hooves in literature. Shakespeare writes of horses
Speaker 2: quote printing their proud hoofs in the Receiving Earth. Other
Speaker 2: quotes speak of the violence of the hoof, a thing
Speaker 2: that imprints the soil or even the flesh of those
Speaker 2: fallen in war. Here's a bit from the Jackery, a
Speaker 2: fragment by Sidney Lanier who lived eighteen forty two through
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty one. Midst of the crowd Old Grisgrion the Maimed,
Speaker 2: a wretched wreck that fate had floated out from the
Speaker 2: deer storm of battle at Poci. A living man whose
Speaker 2: larger moiety was dead and buried on the battlefield. A
Speaker 2: grizzly trunk without arms or legs and scarred with hoof
Speaker 2: cuts over cheek and brow lay in his wicker cradle smiling,
Speaker 2: And then later on in the same scene, the protagonists
Speaker 2: comments that quote there is no face of man or
Speaker 2: woman here, but showeth print of the hard hoof of war.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's fair. As much as we can
Speaker 3: admire hoofs from afar, I don't think you want to
Speaker 3: come into contact with by way of force.
Speaker 2: No, no, absolutely you didn't absolutely do not want to
Speaker 2: be kicked by a horse. On one level, just for
Speaker 2: sheer strength and power of said kick or or the
Speaker 2: weight of said step. But also yeah, the hoof as well,
Speaker 2: explain is it's not an instrument you want make in
Speaker 2: contact with your body with force or speed. Now, there are,
Speaker 2: of course many references to the hoof and the works
Speaker 2: of Cormick McCarthy, the none that I could remember or
Speaker 2: search up that really goes in deep on the weirdness
Speaker 2: and wonder of the horse hoof. Still, here's a favorite
Speaker 2: from Blood Meridian quote under the hoofs of the horses,
Speaker 2: the alabaster sand shaped itself in whirls, strangely symmetric like
Speaker 2: iron filings in a field, and these shapes flared and
Speaker 2: drew back again, resonating upon that harmonic ground, and then
Speaker 2: turning to swirl away over the plaia, as if the
Speaker 2: very sediment of things contained yet some residue of scentiens,
Speaker 2: as if in the trendsit of those riders were a
Speaker 2: thing so profoundly terrible as to register even to the
Speaker 2: uttermost granulation of reality. Wow. Yeah, so great line. But also,
Speaker 2: you know, Cormack doesn't rest, doesn't really go in hard
Speaker 2: on just how weird it is that horses are strange
Speaker 2: mammals running around on highly evolved like finger bones, Like
Speaker 2: there's a there's a weirdness to the hoof that you
Speaker 2: know that he doesn't he even doesn't get into, because
Speaker 2: it's just such a part of, say, the tapestry of
Speaker 2: the American West, you know, in the case of his Westerns.
Speaker 2: It's also possible that I'm forgetting some some key line
Speaker 2: and another of his book, maybe the you know, the
Speaker 2: All the Pretty Horses or one of its sequels. But nothing,
Speaker 2: nothing came to mind or in search when I was
Speaker 2: thinking about it just the other day.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe here is an amazing place to start. If
Speaker 3: you want to consider the more granular anatomy of the
Speaker 3: horse's foot and the hoof. Uh So, look look at
Speaker 3: your hands there. You know you get human hands and
Speaker 3: extend the middle fingers on both of your hands. Obviously,
Speaker 3: not if you're.
Speaker 2: In prospectible things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, in p you know, discreetly extend those two
Speaker 3: middle fingers. These are the analogous bone structures that evolved
Speaker 3: in the horse to become the part of the horse's
Speaker 3: body that makes contact with the ground. So when horses gallop,
Speaker 3: they are galloping on adapted versions of your middle fingers.
Speaker 3: So you just imagine running out of that middle your
Speaker 3: two middle fingers in front, your two middle toes in
Speaker 3: the back. Uh, those got really thick, really strong. Everything
Speaker 3: else kind of shrank back and receded in a way.
Speaker 3: We can talk later on about whether it makes sense
Speaker 3: to say that the horse still has those other fingers
Speaker 3: in some way or not. But basically that the part
Speaker 3: of the the leg that is making contact with the
Speaker 3: ground and supporting the weight of the horse is the
Speaker 3: middle finger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is just absolutely bonkers when you stop and
Speaker 2: think about it.
Speaker 3: It is. And the genus T which horses belong is
Speaker 3: unique in this regard among the ungulates. So all of
Speaker 3: the four legged vertebrates on earth that live on land
Speaker 3: share a common ancestor that had five toes on each
Speaker 3: foot had four legs and five toes on each foot.
Speaker 3: That's our heritage, and we walk around on two legs now.
Speaker 3: But we are still we're still part of that evolutionary lineage.
Speaker 3: We still have five fingers on our hands and five
Speaker 3: toes on our feet to show for it. But some
Speaker 3: of our cousins in this lineage have undergone more radical
Speaker 3: transformations in the bone structure of these distal regions of
Speaker 3: the limbs, the ends of each limb. Hippopotamuses, for example,
Speaker 3: have four toes, rhinoceroses and tapers have three toes. Camels, deer, sheep, goats,
Speaker 3: and cattle have two toes. But there is only one
Speaker 3: group of animals existing today that has evolved to have
Speaker 3: a single toe that contacts the ground on each foot,
Speaker 3: and that is horses, or more precisely, the evolutionary group
Speaker 3: to which modern horses belong, which is the genus equus,
Speaker 3: which includes horses, zebras, and donkeys. And the scientific term
Speaker 3: for having only one toe is monodactyally, So these monodactyls
Speaker 3: are out there running around on their middle fingers that
Speaker 3: when you hear hoof beats, that's what you're hearing, the
Speaker 3: middle fingers.
Speaker 2: And you know, again this is super weird and glorious.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, it would be a mistake
Speaker 2: to think of this as a kind of simplification, you know,
Speaker 2: because the horse hoof will be discussing here is anything,
Speaker 2: but it's a complex structure composed of hard cornified structures,
Speaker 2: living tissues, tendons, ligaments.
Speaker 4: And more.
Speaker 2: You know, there are the various bones we're going to
Speaker 2: be discussing. We should you know, also not make the
Speaker 2: mistake of overestimating the strength of the hoof, because yes,
Speaker 2: it's a highly evolved anatomical feature that serves a horse
Speaker 2: very well in its natural environment, but they are still
Speaker 2: susceptible to injury and illness, and you know, the ravages
Speaker 2: of aging plus domestication by humans has of course augmented
Speaker 2: the horse's natural environment and also changed the sort of
Speaker 2: regular wear and tear that they might endure on set hoofs.
Speaker 2: So to just doing what I'm gonna do is going
Speaker 2: to provide kind of an overview of the different parts
Speaker 2: of the main outer and inner parts of the horse,
Speaker 2: hoof of the foot of the horse. Not in a
Speaker 2: way that will just completely bombard the listener with horse terminology,
Speaker 2: but hopefully get across some of the complexity here. And
Speaker 2: if you are a horse person, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe you're listening to this podcast whilst you attend to
Speaker 2: the hoofs of a horse, well you might have some
Speaker 2: added information to write into us about. If you're not
Speaker 2: a horse person, then I think you might find some
Speaker 2: of the terminology kind of surprising. I know, not being
Speaker 2: a horse person myself. There there. I remember the first
Speaker 2: time I read Cornick McCarthy's Blood Meridian, there was there
Speaker 2: was a bit that really threw me for a curve.
Speaker 2: It goes as follows quote. He got down and drew
Speaker 2: up the horse's leg. The frog of the hoof was
Speaker 2: split and bloody, and the animal's shoulder quivered. He let
Speaker 2: the hoof down. The sun was about two hours high,
Speaker 2: and now there was dust on the horizon.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good.
Speaker 3: The frog of the hoof.
Speaker 2: Yep, the frog of the hoof. So the frog is
Speaker 2: a is a key part of the outer anatomy of
Speaker 2: the horse's foot. This is a wedge shaped mass on
Speaker 2: the bottom of the horse's foot that you know, I suppose,
Speaker 2: kind of looks like a dark frog. According to Robert C.
Speaker 2: McClure at all in a paper titled Functional Anatomy of
Speaker 2: the horse Foot. This was for the University of Missouri,
Speaker 2: the frog is one of the flexible parts of the
Speaker 2: hoof's external structures. It normally makes contact with the ground first,
Speaker 2: and then it kind of like pushes into the digital cushion,
Speaker 2: an internal mass of flexible material above the frog that
Speaker 2: contributes to the formation of the heels and serves as
Speaker 2: one of the primary shock absorbers in the horse's foot.
Speaker 3: This is an interesting balance to observe with the hoof
Speaker 3: here in that it has a so the outer mass
Speaker 3: of the hoof that you will have observed before you know,
Speaker 3: the hard part is a hard carrat in structure, and
Speaker 3: yet the hoof also has to remain somewhat springy and flexible.
Speaker 3: You don't want it to be like a piece of
Speaker 3: concrete that might be really hard but on sufficient impact
Speaker 3: is rigid and cracks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, again, it would be a gross simplification to
Speaker 2: think of a horse as just running around on like
Speaker 2: wooden stilt legs, you know, like that its hoofs are
Speaker 2: just like solid things. It's a lot more complicated than that.
Speaker 2: Now you might be wondering, well, why do they call
Speaker 2: it a frog? You may be looking it up to
Speaker 2: see just how much like a frog it, you know,
Speaker 2: to what degree it resembles a frog. I've seen it
Speaker 2: sort of described a couple of different ways that either
Speaker 2: it does roughly look like a frog, and that perhaps
Speaker 2: there's this added level of well, you find it under
Speaker 2: the hoof in the same way a frog might be
Speaker 2: found under a rock or leaf. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 2: I've also heard that it really more accurately resembles the
Speaker 2: pelvic bone of a frog, which apparently was carried for
Speaker 2: good luck by horsemen. And this also might be tied
Speaker 2: to traditions of the horseshoe, which we're not going to
Speaker 2: really discuss in this episode, but we may get to
Speaker 2: in a subsequent episode these of horseshoes as lucky charms
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Okay, I just looked up the pelvic bone of
Speaker 3: a frog. It kind of looks like the wishbone on
Speaker 3: a chicken. So yeah, I don't know. And I'm looking
Speaker 3: at the frog of a hoof Now it's sort of
Speaker 3: v shaped. Uh, you have to you have to stretch
Speaker 3: your mind a little bit. But I could see that.
Speaker 2: Now the frog is apparently made up of the same
Speaker 2: material as the hoof wall. More on what do we
Speaker 2: mean by hoofball in the second, But you can think
Speaker 2: like the outer hoof as you see it, But it's
Speaker 2: more moist certainly if it's healthy, apparently something like fifty
Speaker 2: percent moisture or thereabouts. Now, And that's not to say
Speaker 2: that the hoof wall itself is dry. In fact, the
Speaker 2: hoof wall or the proper you know hoof that you
Speaker 2: see if you're just looking at a picture of a horse,
Speaker 2: it's in fact covered with material that prevents moisture loss.
Speaker 2: And with domestic horses, hoof paint is sometimes added as
Speaker 2: well to help contain moisture. So again, even the hardest
Speaker 2: part of the of the horses hoof cannot be really
Speaker 2: thought of as just this, you know, like you rock,
Speaker 2: you know, hard substance, like it's in these these are
Speaker 2: you know, organic structures, and there is moisture to them.
Speaker 3: And with the keratin basis. I think you could probably
Speaker 3: think about it more akin to like a like a
Speaker 3: horn or like a thick fingernail exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, the frog, interestingly enough, is also a scent gland,
Speaker 2: along with the chestnut of the leg and the airgut
Speaker 2: of the fetlock. This is one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: dogs can track horses as well as they can. Plus
Speaker 2: is apparently one of the ways that horses sniff out
Speaker 2: each other in the field.
Speaker 3: I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a hole. There's a hole just un right
Speaker 2: underneath the horse's hoof. There's a whole wonderland of weirdness.
Speaker 3: Well, this is funny because we were just talking about beavers,
Speaker 3: which apparently, you know, their scent glands and scent markings
Speaker 3: play a big role in their their behavior and how
Speaker 3: they interact with the environment. But I had no idea
Speaker 3: that was true of horses.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, as we're discuss in a bit horse hoofs,
Speaker 2: the hard part of the hoof grows throughout their life
Speaker 2: and has to either be worn down or trim down.
Speaker 2: This is where professional farriers come into play with domestic horses,
Speaker 2: and not only do they have to trim the hoof
Speaker 2: proper but they also have to trim the frog as
Speaker 2: it keeps growing as well, and if not maintained, it
Speaker 2: can lead to some infections conditions like thrush and so forth.
Speaker 2: I'm also told by horse and dog people in my
Speaker 2: family that dogs absolutely love it when their friendly neighborhood
Speaker 2: ferry or gives them some hoof or some frog shavings
Speaker 2: to eat. Joe, has this ever been your experience?
Speaker 3: No, I never had a dog get this particular treat,
Speaker 3: but I can imagine it's in the ballpark.
Speaker 2: All right. So, moving outward from the frog, it pushes
Speaker 2: against the digital cushion, and when the foot is on
Speaker 2: the ground, the increase in pressure and change and shape
Speaker 2: in the digital cushion and the frog. It kind of
Speaker 2: works everything like a pump forcing blood from the foot
Speaker 2: into the leg. And the clure stresses that quote exercise
Speaker 2: increases the blood circulation in the foot and favors good
Speaker 2: hoof growth. Lack of exercise, dryness of the horny wall,
Speaker 2: and poor nutrition inhibit hoof growth. All right, So let's
Speaker 2: get to that hoof wall. The hoof wall is exactly
Speaker 2: what it sounds like. It's that tough, horny outside part
Speaker 2: of the hoof that's essentially a fingernail. I mean, if
Speaker 2: we're comparing it to what we've got going on, it
Speaker 2: contains no blood, vessels or nerves, and it grows continuously,
Speaker 2: so it has to be worn or trimmed off. And
Speaker 2: to be specific, the hoof wall grows out of the
Speaker 2: cornet located at the junction of the skin and the
Speaker 2: hoof wall. So if you're just looking at a picture
Speaker 2: of a horse's foot, like this is where hoof ends,
Speaker 2: and like you know, the hairy part of the leg
Speaker 2: begins now along with the frog and the bar which
Speaker 2: is part of the wall aka bars of the wall
Speaker 2: bordering the frog. It's a key weight bearing part of
Speaker 2: the hoof. The wall is made up of the toe
Speaker 2: in the front, quarters on the sides, and the heel. Now,
Speaker 2: the interior of the hoof, inside the hoof wall, you
Speaker 2: can almost think of, is kind of like this little
Speaker 2: kind of U shaped walled city. Is the sole separated
Speaker 2: from the wall by the white line or the golden
Speaker 2: line where the inner wall and the sole joined together.
Speaker 2: The soul does not make contact with the ground and
Speaker 2: it primarily protects the inner structures beneath it. So these
Speaker 2: are all you know, things, with the exception of the
Speaker 2: digital cushion that we reference, like, these are all things
Speaker 2: that you would see if you were a if you
Speaker 2: were just attending to a horse's foot, if you you know,
Speaker 2: we're checking out a horseshoe or what have you. Now, again,
Speaker 2: the hoof is a complex structure, and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to attempt to cover every detail of it. Instead, hopefully
Speaker 2: we can cover the key parts of the internet or
Speaker 2: hoof here and provide like a decent audio snapshot of
Speaker 2: what it consists of. And I realize, even with all
Speaker 2: the you know, the terminology we're going through, it still
Speaker 2: might make sense to look up a diagram to see
Speaker 2: exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Internally, it's of course essential to over the phalanxes and phalanges,
Speaker 2: essentially the finger bones that make up the hoof, and
Speaker 2: the first of these to cover really is the famous
Speaker 2: coffin bone, which is also known as the petal bone
Speaker 2: or the distal phalanx or p three. It's contained in
Speaker 2: the hoof capsule and provides its shape. It contains no
Speaker 2: bone marrow, but it has a lot of blood vessels,
Speaker 2: and the name apparently has to do with the fact
Speaker 2: that it's entirely seated within the hoof wall, in the
Speaker 2: interior of the hoof, as if it were positioned within
Speaker 2: a coffin. It does not look like a coffin per se.
Speaker 3: The fact that it seems to be positioned within a coffin,
Speaker 3: shouldn't that make it the corpse bone rather than the
Speaker 3: coffin bone or the cadaver bone, you.
Speaker 2: Would think, you would think, I don't know. I couldn't
Speaker 2: run down any additional information on where this comes from
Speaker 2: other than just like you know, the built up lingo
Speaker 2: of horse people over time. So if we have horse
Speaker 2: people out there listening to the show that have more
Speaker 2: insight on this, certainly right end, Oh, please be gentle.
Speaker 2: We are used to working with horses. Of course they're
Speaker 2: gonna they're gonna be gentle. Okay. Now, more broadly, the
Speaker 2: pedal bone is the bottommost bone in the front and
Speaker 2: rear legs of horses, cattle, pigs, and other ruminants. Then
Speaker 2: there's the navicular bone, uh so named because it's shaped
Speaker 2: like a boat, and looking at images of it, at
Speaker 2: least from the horse, I thought it also reminds me
Speaker 2: a bit of a whale's tail as well. But I'm
Speaker 2: to understand. It's named this because it looks kind of
Speaker 2: like a boat. It's also known as the distal sesamoid bone.
Speaker 2: Most mammals have a navicular bone in their feet. Then
Speaker 2: there's also the short pastern bone or middle phalanx. Its
Speaker 2: positioned to top the articulating joint of the pedal bone,
Speaker 2: with only the bottom portion extending to the hoof capsule,
Speaker 2: essentially a fingerbone. So I don't know to what extent
Speaker 2: all that accurately conveyed the complexity and the beauty of
Speaker 2: a horse's hoof. Of a horse's foot, but I guess,
Speaker 2: if anything, it should remind you like the horse hoof,
Speaker 2: easy to draw, but far more complicated than you might think.
Speaker 3: Well, another way to look at it is like if
Speaker 3: you look up a diagram of the bones in the
Speaker 3: horse's hoof, It's not just like a straight bone down
Speaker 3: to the ground ending in a nail. There are actually
Speaker 3: a lot of bones, little bones crammed up in there,
Speaker 3: kind of in the same way that you would see
Speaker 3: a lot of little bones making up the human hand,
Speaker 3: except in the case of a horse, it has been
Speaker 3: streamlined into one more continuous vertical structure or column, with
Speaker 3: the different bones kind of supporting each other in that
Speaker 3: column as opposed to in the hand the way these
Speaker 3: bones are kind of fanned out. Yes, Now, Rob, before
Speaker 3: we got recording today, you sent me a picture of
Speaker 3: a famous horse from I was going to say history,
Speaker 3: but maybe better to say legend. The meat point of
Speaker 3: legend and history. That really revealed something to me, and
Speaker 3: it's that there are certain features that are often quite
Speaker 3: surprising to discover, are really unsettling to find on an animal.
Speaker 3: One example is if you see human teeth on a
Speaker 3: non human animal, like a cat with human teeth, somebody
Speaker 3: photoshops that together. It's horrifying. You don't want to see it,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of surprising how horrifying it is. And
Speaker 3: I discovered a new one today when you shared this
Speaker 3: picture with me, and it is a horse with human feet.
Speaker 3: Don't like it. Something's unpleasant about that. It's not a
Speaker 3: good vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is an engraving from sixteen eighty seven, attributed
Speaker 2: to P. Trocial. You can look this image up. I'll
Speaker 2: have to share it on some of our socials or something,
Speaker 2: because it's terrific and also a little bit horrifying because
Speaker 2: the forefeet of the horse are human feet or something
Speaker 2: close to human feet with with clearly visible multiple toes,
Speaker 2: like five human toes per foot. It does not make
Speaker 2: sense to look at This does not seem like a
Speaker 2: good variation on the equine form. You know, it's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: like a centaur where you can be like, well, it's
Speaker 2: like a horse and a rider as one. You know,
Speaker 2: you can run around, it can shoot arrows, that's great.
Speaker 2: Like No, this is a situation where you're immediately thinking,
Speaker 2: shouldn't those front feet and they have shoes on or something?
Speaker 2: How is this force going to gallop? All sorts of
Speaker 2: questions and problems emerge.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right now, this is a cat with human teeth.
Speaker 3: It doesn't look like it should work, and it doesn't
Speaker 3: look nice. However, I will say other things about this horse,
Speaker 3: and I guess in a minute we'll have to reveal
Speaker 3: what historical horse this is supposed to be. But first,
Speaker 3: just allow me to describe this is a hair metal horse.
Speaker 3: It has a tail and domain that are luxurious, glorious,
Speaker 3: voluminous hair just waving in the wind. You can imagine
Speaker 3: this source really getting on a guitar solo, playing with
Speaker 3: striper or something and then also, this horse has it
Speaker 3: appears to me forward facing eyes horses. I don't know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't quite get the horse face right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean the artist was already having to draw
Speaker 2: those feet on this horse, so I think we can
Speaker 2: forgive them if they maybe didn't put a maximum amount
Speaker 2: of effort into the face.
Speaker 3: Oh. I'm not holding a grudge against p trocil here,
Speaker 3: but forward facing eyes implies that this horse is a
Speaker 3: predatory carnivore, which makes me think it is one of
Speaker 3: the Diamedean mirrors or you know, the flesh eating mirrors
Speaker 3: of ancient Greek legend.
Speaker 2: It made me think too, of the horse that ucla
Speaker 2: the mock Rides and thunder of the Barbarian if anyone
Speaker 2: remembers that old Hanna Barbara cartoon.
Speaker 3: I had to look that up when you said it,
Speaker 3: I wasn't familiar. But that's like it's kind of a
Speaker 3: dinosaur insectoid kind of horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a monster horse, you see, especially, sort of like
Speaker 2: some old timey side in fantasy.
Speaker 3: But okay, what's the deal with this horse? Who is
Speaker 3: this horse with human feed in the front.
Speaker 2: This is none other than Julius Caesar's horse, sometimes referenced
Speaker 2: by the name as Turkus or Astracus, but the horse's
Speaker 2: actual name, whatever it might have been, seems to have
Speaker 2: mostly been lost to history. I don't know that it
Speaker 2: has a definite name. It's very much in the vein
Speaker 2: in the tradition of say, Alexander the Great's horse Bucephalus,
Speaker 2: that one's a more famous horse. That also ties back
Speaker 2: in in a bit. This also tends to be part
Speaker 2: of the general tradition in the Greco Roman culture of
Speaker 2: having like a great leader riding a great steed into
Speaker 2: battle that only they can mount, that is much loved,
Speaker 2: that will of course eventually die and will be remembered
Speaker 2: and so forth. But also there's this idea of like
Speaker 2: a something strange about a horse. There's some sort of ay,
Speaker 2: a portent of future success or in some cases dire
Speaker 2: omens tied up in the strange anatomy of certain creatures,
Speaker 2: especially the horse. But anyway, so where does this come from,
Speaker 2: this idea that there's this this horse by according to
Speaker 2: various sources, that had human feet in the front, or
Speaker 2: it had some sort of toes in the front. I
Speaker 2: had a time sort of trying to find any actual
Speaker 2: source on this, but a lot of it comes back
Speaker 2: to what the Roman imperial historian Sutanius had to say
Speaker 2: about it. This particular historian lived sixty nine through one
Speaker 2: twenty two CE. Here's what he wrote. Quote, he wrote,
Speaker 2: a very remarkable horse, with feet almost like those of
Speaker 2: a man, the hoofs being divided in such a manner
Speaker 2: as to have some resemblance to toes. This horse he
Speaker 2: had bred himself, and the soothsayers, having interpreted these scumstances
Speaker 2: into an omen that its owner would be master of
Speaker 2: the world. He brought him up with particular care and
Speaker 2: broke him in himself, as the horse would suffer no
Speaker 2: one else to mount him. A statue of the horse
Speaker 2: was afterwards erected by Caesar's order before the temple of
Speaker 2: Venus Genetrix. Ah.
Speaker 3: That would be the temple of the Venus of motherhood,
Speaker 3: the venus of the as the founder of the family.
Speaker 3: I wonder what that would have to do with the horse.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess maybe it has to do with with
Speaker 2: like the rearing and the breaking of the horse, that
Speaker 2: he's kind of like the mother of the horse. Maybe
Speaker 2: it means a female horse. And I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 2: why that particular temple interesting. So anyway, some illustrations, as
Speaker 2: much like the one we've discussed already, depict this as
Speaker 2: just a straight up monster horse with human feet in
Speaker 2: the front, which I love. But a more reasonable interpretation
Speaker 2: is that this was a polydactyl horse, much in the
Speaker 2: same way that you will occasionally find you know, you'll find, say,
Speaker 2: like a polydactyl cat, or of course polydactyl digits in
Speaker 2: human beings as well. I found an eighteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: paper on the general topic of polydactyl horses by o'thaniel
Speaker 2: Charles Marsh titled Polydactyl Horse's Recent and Extinct. He writes, quote,
Speaker 2: numerous cases of extra digits in the horse have been recorded,
Speaker 2: and in nearly all of them, a single lateral hooflet
Speaker 2: was present on one of the four legs. In most instances,
Speaker 2: the occurrence was noted chiefly on account of its rarity,
Speaker 2: and no record was made of the exact position of
Speaker 2: the extra hoofs with reference to the main digit, nor
Speaker 2: the significance of these useless appendages.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, So the idea here would be that if
Speaker 3: there is anything to the story that Swetonius tells about
Speaker 3: Caesar's horse. It might be just that the horse did
Speaker 3: actually have extra toes, not that it had feet that
Speaker 3: looked like a human's feet, but that it was a
Speaker 3: case of polydactyle in this horse exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be like the more likely the interpretation.
Speaker 2: It's also worth noting, I believe Marsh mentions this as well,
Speaker 2: that some accounts may have indicated that Alexander the Great's
Speaker 2: horse Bucephalus was also polydactyl, in which case, if that
Speaker 2: was a you know, that was an idea already present
Speaker 2: that would of course inform either the selection or interpretation
Speaker 2: of a polydactyl horse for another great general. So you know,
Speaker 2: we have to take that into account as well. And
Speaker 2: again this general idea that if there's something strange going
Speaker 2: on with a with an organism, there might be something
Speaker 2: about it that is that is a beneficial importent for
Speaker 2: the receiving individual. I believe we touched on one of
Speaker 2: these stories regarding if not Caesar or another Roman emperor
Speaker 2: in pre in episodes over the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: and I don't think believe it was a horse. It
Speaker 2: was some other animal that was brought before the general
Speaker 2: and said hey, look at this weird creature and there
Speaker 2: everyone was like, this is great. This means this means
Speaker 2: the campaign going.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, folks, we just had to take a second
Speaker 3: to dig this up because it was too good of
Speaker 3: a memory. No, this was something from our Goats episode,
Speaker 3: right that we did last October.
Speaker 2: That's right, right, Yeah, this concerned a goat creature that
Speaker 2: was brought to Sola, and it was I think the
Speaker 2: main interpretation was like, yeah, this is great, this is
Speaker 2: a this is an omen this means that we're going
Speaker 2: to be successful in the campaign.
Speaker 3: It was like somebody found a half man, half goat
Speaker 3: in a cave somewhere and then they're like, hey, look
Speaker 3: at this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it made horrible sounds, et cetera. So go back
Speaker 2: and listen to that episode if you want the full
Speaker 2: story on that, and just goats in general, the cloven
Speaker 2: hoof as opposed to the.
Speaker 4: Horse hoof, that feeling when you find a goat man
Speaker 4: in a cave and you know everything's going to be
Speaker 4: all right.
Speaker 2: All right, anyway, back to back to Marsh here, Marsh
Speaker 2: noted that and I didn't look for other sources on this,
Speaker 2: but it kind of casually he mentions that the indigenous
Speaker 2: peoples of the Americas were said to have described the
Speaker 2: horse when the Spanish arrived as the beast with one fingernail,
Speaker 2: which of course is rather correct as as we've been discussing.
Speaker 2: And then Marsh goes on to point out that there
Speaker 2: are two slender splint bones within the hoof, the remnants
Speaker 2: of two other toes belonging to the ancestors of the
Speaker 2: modern horse. Now Marsh points out a few other key
Speaker 2: facts that I think are worth mentioning here. The forefeet
Speaker 2: are the most affected. When you look at accounts in
Speaker 2: the records of polydactyl horses, it's almost always the fore feet,
Speaker 2: and of course this would match up with the story
Speaker 2: of Caesar's horse. Also, the additional hooves or if you
Speaker 2: want to call them, toes, seem to generally amount to
Speaker 2: one or two, so you're maybe looking at three toes
Speaker 2: maximum on a four on a front hoof, though it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily an equal amount on both four feet, so
Speaker 2: like one there's a for instance, there's an account that
Speaker 2: he points to where an animal had two hooves on
Speaker 2: one and three on the other, so one extra on
Speaker 2: one four foot and two extra on the other four
Speaker 2: foot some of the horses, and this is English. This
Speaker 2: is not getting into you know, in any translations here,
Speaker 2: but in English, some of these were described as having
Speaker 2: eight hooves or the like, thus counting all of the
Speaker 2: hoofs on the animal. So this is just me, but
Speaker 2: I can imagine first of all, a three toed four
Speaker 2: foot reminding one of a human foot, looking at it
Speaker 2: and being like, oh, it's kind of like toes. Look
Speaker 2: there are three of them. I can likewise imagine some
Speaker 2: manner of telephone game deviation occurring when describing a horse
Speaker 2: and saying, oh, it had it had five toes. Well,
Speaker 2: what do you mean by that? Do you mean that
Speaker 2: it just has a single extra hooflet on one of
Speaker 2: its four feet. That would be a reasonable case, I think,
Speaker 2: based on what I've been reading here, Or are you
Speaker 2: going to interpret that as oh, well that means it
Speaker 2: has five hooves or five toes to a foot something
Speaker 2: that is too extreme based on what I've been looking at.
Speaker 3: I see what you mean. But like the statement about
Speaker 3: having total across the animal could be interpreted as on
Speaker 3: one one leg.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's so that's anyway that's me thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Marsh't didn't discuss that idea, but it just has me
Speaker 2: wondering if that's the sort of thing that could be
Speaker 2: going on here as well. Now, there are plenty of
Speaker 2: recent accounts of polydactyl horse hoofs and photos. Of course,
Speaker 2: you can do an image search and you can find
Speaker 2: images of horses that have additional hooves or hooflits or
Speaker 2: toes or whatever you want to call them. Most accounts
Speaker 2: I came across of, in terms of like veterinary literature,
Speaker 2: dealt with congenital abnormalities that were at least in some
Speaker 2: cases surgically corrected. So yeah, this is I guess in
Speaker 2: the horse world. These are rare enough to be notable,
Speaker 2: but certainly not so rare that they are unknown, So
Speaker 2: it's not beyond the realm of possibility. It seems that yes,
Speaker 2: Caesar may have had a polydactyl horse, acquired a polydactyl horse,
Speaker 2: or it's also equally likely that this is just all
Speaker 2: you know, legend building in order to build up the
Speaker 2: case that hey, Caesar is a lot like that guy
Speaker 2: Alexander the Great. Both of them rode around undeformed horses,
Speaker 2: both of them were destined for greatness.
Speaker 3: Now, you mentioned a minute ago when you were citing
Speaker 3: the paleontologist Othneil Charles Marsh that he had written that
Speaker 3: horses have these little splint bones within the hoof, which
Speaker 3: he attributed to being remnants of other toes that used
Speaker 3: to belong to the ancestors of horses today. And it
Speaker 3: turns out that's actually onto something. Because I was reading
Speaker 3: some stuff about the evolution of the horse hoof. This
Speaker 3: is an interesting and broad topic that's going to have
Speaker 3: to span into the next part in the series, but
Speaker 3: just to introduce a bit of it here, I was
Speaker 3: looking at an article in The New York Times called
Speaker 3: How Horses Got their hoofs by steph Ynn, published August
Speaker 3: twenty eighth, twenty seventeen. Now, this article is mainly responding
Speaker 3: to a journal article that was published in Proceedings of
Speaker 3: the Royal Society b Biological Sciences in twenty seventeen by
Speaker 3: authors Brionna K. Mccurse Good research focus there, Andrew A.
Speaker 3: Bee Winner and Stephanie E. Pierce, And the paper is
Speaker 3: called Mechanics of Evolutionary digit Reduction in Fossil Horses meaning
Speaker 3: the biological family equity. Now, what this journal article did
Speaker 3: is it added some evidence to comment on the long
Speaker 3: held hypothetical story of horse hoof evolution, which is based
Speaker 3: somewhat on fossil evidence and inferences from other sources. But basically,
Speaker 3: the story that experts have long believed goes something like this,
Speaker 3: that the earliest horses were small, much smaller than horses today.
Speaker 3: They were sort of dog sized animals that lived in
Speaker 3: forested areas, and they had multiple toes per foot, So
Speaker 3: you have to imagine like small, little, you know, doggy
Speaker 3: horses that had at least three toes per foot I
Speaker 3: think maybe four toes on their front legs and three
Speaker 3: toes on their back legs. And then came some climate
Speaker 3: change about twenty million years ago. Some of these horses
Speaker 3: were living in previously forested habitats that changed into grasslands
Speaker 3: and plains. The disappearance of forests and the transition to
Speaker 3: grassland environments put different adaptive pressures on these herbivorous, four
Speaker 3: legged animals. And you might imagine there could be a
Speaker 3: lot of different pressures there. But one example would be
Speaker 3: if you're not in a forest, if you're in a
Speaker 3: grassland instead, it is a lot easier for predators to
Speaker 3: see you it's harder to hide, and so this could
Speaker 3: drive the evolution of larger bodies as a defensive adaptation,
Speaker 3: you need to make it easier to defend yourself. And
Speaker 3: it could also lead to selection for speed in order
Speaker 3: to be able to evade predators, and so the story goes.
Speaker 3: For some reason, this shift to becoming an animal that
Speaker 3: needed to be both big and fast caused the selection
Speaker 3: of the single toe for the contact point with the ground,
Speaker 3: as opposed to the previous version of this animal, which
Speaker 3: had had multiple toes per foot. Now, the authors of
Speaker 3: the study investigated this hypothetical evolutionary trajectory by analyzing leg
Speaker 3: fossils from twelve different types of horses over evolutionary time,
Speaker 3: going back as far as fifty five million years ago,
Speaker 3: all the way up to modern horses. And the researchers
Speaker 3: had previously investigated the different types of physical stress put
Speaker 3: on horse legs by various types of normal behaviors like
Speaker 3: trotting around, jumping, or speeding up into a run, and
Speaker 3: using this information about the physical stresses on horse legs,
Speaker 3: they created a model of how these activities would put
Speaker 3: stress on the legs of the horse and then tested
Speaker 3: that model against different forms of the horse's foot with
Speaker 3: different numbers of toes, and what they found was that
Speaker 3: when horses were smaller and also had multiple toes contacting
Speaker 3: the ground, the extra digits were actually important for carrying
Speaker 3: the weight of the body. Body weight was distributed across
Speaker 3: multiple toes, but as horses got bigger, the toes on
Speaker 3: the sides began to shrink and essentially disappeared as distinct digits,
Speaker 3: leaving only the single middle toe and the middle finger
Speaker 3: hit in the ground as the single mighty hoof. This
Speaker 3: is the lone contact point with the earth now, so
Speaker 3: it seems pretty clear that this is the trajectory that
Speaker 3: happened over the evolutionary history of horses or horses, zebras,
Speaker 3: and donkeys. But why did the side toes disappear? This
Speaker 3: study in particular does not answer that definitively, but in
Speaker 3: the New York Times article they interviewed the lead author
Speaker 3: breonn and mccorse, and she suggested that maybe it's that
Speaker 3: having just a single toe made it easier for the
Speaker 3: horses to move their feet more quickly, using the comparison
Speaker 3: of like trying to run with ankle weights on or
Speaker 3: I think of the experience of trying to run in
Speaker 3: heavy boots, which I've done. It's very difficult to do.
Speaker 3: You know, running shoes tend to be very lightweight.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 3: And one thing this does highlight is the kind of
Speaker 3: paradox of the behavior, the graceful behavior of the horse.
Speaker 3: It is like strange to observe how graceful and quick
Speaker 3: horses are given their size. Though I would like to
Speaker 3: point out that while horses are sort of a peak
Speaker 3: example of this, I'm often struck by the shocking speed
Speaker 3: and grace of even much more modest displays by animals
Speaker 3: like bovines. Like have you ever seen a cow just
Speaker 3: suddenly jump over a fence and it didn't look at
Speaker 3: all like that was something that could happen until you
Speaker 3: saw it. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean especially with cattle, because a lot of
Speaker 2: times they do appear to be not moving a lot,
Speaker 2: but when they do move, it can be kind of shocking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cows can look like four footed barges, like they
Speaker 3: should not be able to move at anything other than
Speaker 3: kind of a shuffle, But then suddenly you see them
Speaker 3: leap over a fence or something like that. And now,
Speaker 3: of course, cows, as a reminder, are not single toed
Speaker 3: ungulates like horses. Cows have two toes per foot, and
Speaker 3: they got the hoofs on the two toes. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so you multiply that to an even greater extent with horses.
Speaker 3: When you actually see them up close and see how
Speaker 3: big the animal is and then how fast and gracefully
Speaker 3: it moves, something seems like wrong. It's like how is
Speaker 3: it doing this? And it's quite it seems quite likely
Speaker 3: that the single toed point of contact with the ground
Speaker 3: is part of that equation that is how the horses possible.
Speaker 2: You know, I think this might touch on another reason
Speaker 2: that in literature and like culture in general, there's less
Speaker 2: focus on how weird the hoof is and more just
Speaker 2: on like the majesty of the horse. Because yeah, watching
Speaker 2: like the sum total of all of this, watching a
Speaker 2: horse run, it's enthralling, Like it's it's hard to imagine,
Speaker 2: like riding along in a car and someone like saying, hey,
Speaker 2: look look over there, those horses in that field are
Speaker 2: running and being like, ah, I'm good. I don't need
Speaker 2: to see that. No, of course you want to see that.
Speaker 2: There's just something about it. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: how much of it is just the the majesty of
Speaker 2: the creature itself, how much of it is like the
Speaker 2: historical and cultural weight of horses. But you know, it's
Speaker 2: like they fascinated us. They've always fascinated us, you know,
Speaker 2: since since time out of mind, since you know, before
Speaker 2: our ability to even scrawl them roughly on a on
Speaker 2: a cavern wall.
Speaker 3: I'm not even one of those horse people, you know,
Speaker 3: they're like horse people and the non horse I'm a
Speaker 3: non horse person. But when I let myself be amazed,
Speaker 3: they are amazing. I guess this is what it's like
Speaker 3: twenty four to seven to be a horse person.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, and again I'm not like if you
Speaker 2: asked me, hey, do you want to ride a horse
Speaker 2: this afternoon, I would probably say no, thank I'm good.
Speaker 2: I did it once. I'm fine. It's not my thing.
Speaker 2: But again, if you were to point out the window
Speaker 2: and say, hey, there's some horses running, would you like
Speaker 2: to slow the car down and take a look at this,
Speaker 2: I would say yes, please, let's watch, because watching horses
Speaker 2: that's more my speed.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I think we're going to have to cap
Speaker 3: Part one of this series there, but we will be
Speaker 3: back to talk about the hoofs some more. I know
Speaker 3: we have plenty more questions and ideas to get into
Speaker 3: about the evolution of horse hoofs. And also we want
Speaker 3: to talk about the invention of the horseshoe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because that is a key invention in the
Speaker 2: human relationship with the horse. And also I think understanding
Speaker 2: the horseshoe helps us understand the hoof a little bit
Speaker 2: more as well. In the meantime, if you have anything
Speaker 2: you'd like to ride in and share with us about
Speaker 2: a horses of their relatives, anything in general about hoofs
Speaker 2: or horse like steeds in fantasy and science fiction, everything's
Speaker 2: fair game. We'll share that email address in just a minute.
Speaker 2: But in the meantime, you can also check out other
Speaker 2: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and the Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Listener Mail on Mondays.
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster
Speaker 2: fact episode, and on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird movie.
Speaker 3: On Weird House Cinema huge thanks to our excellent audio producer,
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.