Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This
Speaker 1: is a Vaald episode. It is Saturday, after all. This
Speaker 1: is going to be the first of our two parter
Speaker 1: on hooves. Yes, this is going to be Hoo's Part one,
Speaker 1: which originally published six ' eight twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: 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 1: Well, I was in New York last week with my family,
Speaker 1: went to the American Natural History Museum, and I was
Speaker 1: looking at fossils and bones, and I was captain by
Speaker 1: some of the some of the bones of the horse
Speaker 1: and started thinking about the hoof and just how strange
Speaker 1: the hoof is. Yet yet at the same time, we
Speaker 1: kind of take it for granted, because even if you
Speaker 1: are not a person who lives among horses and cares
Speaker 1: for horses, horses are everywhere in our imagery and our
Speaker 1: iconography and our entertainment. You can scarcely be a video
Speaker 1: game player at all without having mounted a horse or
Speaker 1: lost a horse, or accidentally driven a horse off a
Speaker 1: cliff or up a wall at some point. So I
Speaker 1: was really taken by this, Like I had not really
Speaker 1: in my life set aside any time to just consider
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, I mean, it's like the drumming of fingers on
Speaker 1: a table, right, Like that's that's that's an attempting direction
Speaker 1: to go in anyway. Yeah, I feel like it's it's
Speaker 1: all too easy to take the hoof for granted, even
Speaker 1: in literature. You know, I was thinking, well, we can,
Speaker 1: we can kick off this episode with a nice little
Speaker 1: quote or a little reading from something that kind of captures,
Speaker 1: you know, our current level of fascination with the hoof,
Speaker 1: But I really wasn't able to find much. Now again,
Speaker 1: horses and hoofs are just throughout human literature. They're everywhere,
Speaker 1: and there are you know a lot of literary references
Speaker 1: to the to hooves and the sound of hooves. One
Speaker 1: poem in particular, in particular that I found that I
Speaker 1: ultimately didn't like well enough to feature in the Cold Open,
Speaker 1: but it's still notable, is The Hoofs of the Horses
Speaker 1: by William Henry Ogilvy, who lived eighteen sixty nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: this poem, Joe, but it's just all about how much
Speaker 1: you just absolutely love 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 F plural. I looked it
Speaker 3: up to see is there any difference hooves versus hoofs,
Speaker 3: and it seems like no, I both have been used
Speaker 3: in English. I think hoofs with the F plural is
Speaker 3: more archaic.
Speaker 1: Usually this is one of those poems that you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I read a really good rhyming poem with great cadence.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm like, why don't we rhyme our
Speaker 1: poems anymore? You know, all poems should rhyme. This is great.
Speaker 1: This is the opposite end of the spectrum for me.
Speaker 1: Like this one's just kind of goofy, Like it starts
Speaker 1: off the hoofs of the horses. Oh, witching and sweet
Speaker 1: is the music Earth steals from the ironshod feet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So it's not to my liking, but I
Speaker 1: can understand where someone else might love it as much
Speaker 1: as this man loved horse hoofs.
Speaker 3: Well, it also commits the ultimate sin of rhyming above
Speaker 3: with love. That's you can't you can't come back from that.
Speaker 1: But again, this is not the only account of hoofs
Speaker 1: or mention of hoofs in literature. Shakespeare writes of horses
Speaker 1: quote printing their proud hoofs in the Receiving Earth. Other
Speaker 1: quotes speak of the violence of the hoof, a thing
Speaker 1: that imprints the soil or even the flesh of those
Speaker 1: fallen in war. Here's a bit from the Jackery, a
Speaker 1: fragment by Sidney Lanier who lived eighteen forty two through
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one, midst of the crowd, Old Grisgrion, the maimed,
Speaker 1: a wretched wreck that fate had floated out from the
Speaker 1: deer storm of battle at Potchi. A living man whose
Speaker 1: larger moiety was dead and buried on the battlefield, A
Speaker 1: grizzly trunk, without arms or legs and scarred with hoof
Speaker 1: cuts of or cheek and brow lay in his wicker cradle, smiling.
Speaker 1: And then later on in the same scene, the protagonist
Speaker 1: comments that quote, there is no face of man or
Speaker 1: 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 one by way of force.
Speaker 1: No, no, absolutely you didn't absolutely do not want to
Speaker 1: be kicked by a horse on one level, just for
Speaker 1: sheer strength and power of said kick or or the
Speaker 1: weight of said step. But also yeah, the hoof as well,
Speaker 1: explain is it's not an instrument you want make in
Speaker 1: contact with your body with force or speed. Now, there,
Speaker 1: of course many references to the hoof and the works
Speaker 1: of Cormick McCarthy, The none that I could remember or
Speaker 1: search up that really goes in deep on the weirdness
Speaker 1: and wonder of the horse hoof. Still, here's a favorite
Speaker 1: from Blood Meridian quote under the hoof of the horses,
Speaker 1: the alabaster sand shaped itself in whorls, strangely symmetric, like
Speaker 1: iron filings in a field. And these shapes flared and
Speaker 1: drew back again, resonating upon that harmonic ground, and then
Speaker 1: turning to swirl away over the plaia, as if the
Speaker 1: very sediment of things contained yet some residue of scentience,
Speaker 1: as if in the transit of those riders were a
Speaker 1: thing so profoundly terrible as to register even to the
Speaker 1: uttermost granulation of reality. Wow. Yeah, so great line. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, Cormack doesn't result doesn't really go in hard
Speaker 1: on just how weird it is that horses are strange
Speaker 1: mammals running around on highly evolved like finger bones, Like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a weirdness to the hoof that you
Speaker 1: know that he doesn't he even doesn't get into because
Speaker 1: it's just such a part of, say, the tapestry of
Speaker 1: the American West. You know, in the case of his Westerns,
Speaker 1: it's also possible that I'm forgetting some some key line
Speaker 1: and another of his book, maybe the you know, the
Speaker 1: All the Pretty Horses or one of its sequels. But nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing came to mind or in search when I was
Speaker 1: 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. So look look at your
Speaker 3: hands there, you know, you get human hands and extend
Speaker 3: the middle fingers on both of your hands. Obviously not
Speaker 3: if you're.
Speaker 1: In prospectible thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, in you know, discreetly extend those two middle fingers.
Speaker 3: These are the analogous bone structures that evolved in the
Speaker 3: horse to become the part of the horse's body that
Speaker 3: makes contact with the ground. So when horses gallop, they
Speaker 3: are galloping on adapted versions of your middle fingers. So
Speaker 3: you just imagine run out that middle, your two middle
Speaker 3: fingers in front, your two middle toes in the back.
Speaker 3: Those got really thick, really strong. Everything else kind of
Speaker 3: shrank back and receded in a way. We can talk
Speaker 3: later on about whether it makes sense to say that
Speaker 3: the horse still has those other fingers in some way
Speaker 3: or not. But basically that the part of the leg
Speaker 3: that is making contact with the ground and supporting the
Speaker 3: weight of the horse is the middle finger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is just absolutely bonkers when you stop and
Speaker 1: think about.
Speaker 3: It, it is. And the genus to which horses belong
Speaker 3: is unique in this regard among the ungulates. So all
Speaker 3: of the four legged vertebrates on earth that live on
Speaker 3: land share a common ancestor that had five toes on
Speaker 3: each 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 lige 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 monodactyly. 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 1: And you know, again, this is super weird and glorious,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it would be a mistake
Speaker 1: to think of this as a kind of simplification, you know,
Speaker 1: because the horse hoof we'll be discussing here is anything,
Speaker 1: but it's a complex structure composed of hard cornified structures,
Speaker 1: living tissues, tendons, ligaments, and more. You know, they are
Speaker 1: the various bones we're going to be discussing. We should,
Speaker 1: you know, also not make the mistake of overestimating the
Speaker 1: strength of the hoof, because yes, it's a highly evolved
Speaker 1: anatomical feature that serves a horse very well in its
Speaker 1: natural environment, but they are still susceptible to injury and illness,
Speaker 1: and you know, the ravages of aging plus domestication by
Speaker 1: humans has of course augmented the horse's natural environment and
Speaker 1: also changed the sort of regular wear and tear that
Speaker 1: they might endure on set hoofs. So to just doing
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do is going to provide kind of
Speaker 1: an overview of the different parts of the main outer
Speaker 1: and inner parts of the horse hoof of the foot
Speaker 1: of the horse. Not in a way that will just
Speaker 1: completely bombard the listener with horse terminology, but hopefully get
Speaker 1: across some of the complexity here. And if you are
Speaker 1: a horse person, and I don't know, maybe you're listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast whilst you attend to the hoofs of
Speaker 1: a horse, well you might have some added information to
Speaker 1: write into us about. If you're not a horse person,
Speaker 1: then I think you might find some of the terminology
Speaker 1: kind of surprising, I know, not being a horse person myself. There.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I read Cornick McCarthy's Blood Meridian,
Speaker 1: there was there was a bit that really threw me
Speaker 1: for a curve. It goes as follows. Quote he got
Speaker 1: down and drew up the horse's leg. The frog of
Speaker 1: the hoof was split and bloody, and the animal's shoulder quivered.
Speaker 1: He let the hoof down the sun was about two
Speaker 1: hours high, 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 1: Yep, the frog of the hoof. So the frog is
Speaker 1: a is a key part of the outer anatomy of
Speaker 1: the horse's foot. This is a wedge shaped mass on
Speaker 1: the bottom of the horse's foot that you know, I
Speaker 1: suppose kind of looks like a dark frog. According to
Speaker 1: Robert C. McClure at all in a paper titled Functional
Speaker 1: Anatomy of the horse Foot. This was for the University
Speaker 1: of Missouri, the frog is one of the flexible parts
Speaker 1: of the hoof's external structures. It normally makes contact with
Speaker 1: the ground first and then it kind of like pushes
Speaker 1: into the digital cushion, an internal mass of flexible material
Speaker 1: above the frog that contributes to the formation of the
Speaker 1: heels and serves as one of the primary shock absorbers
Speaker 1: 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 carat 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 insufficient impact, is
Speaker 3: rigid and cracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, again, it would be a gross simplification to
Speaker 1: think of a horse as just running around on like
Speaker 1: wooden stilt legs, you know, like that. Its hooves are
Speaker 1: just like solid things. It's a lot more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: Now you might be wondering, well, why do they call
Speaker 1: it a frog? You may be looking it up to
Speaker 1: see just how much like a frog it, you know,
Speaker 1: to what degree it resembles a frog. I've seen it
Speaker 1: sort of described a couple of different ways that either
Speaker 1: it does roughly look like a frog, and that perhaps
Speaker 1: there's this added level of well, you find it under
Speaker 1: the hoof in the same way a frog might be
Speaker 1: found under a rock or leaf. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: I've also heard that it really more accurately resembles the
Speaker 1: pelvic bone of a frog, which apparently was carried for
Speaker 1: good luck by horsemen. And this also might be tied
Speaker 1: to traditions of the horseshoe, which we're not going to
Speaker 1: really discuss in this episode, but we may get to
Speaker 1: in a subsequent episode these of horseshoes as lucky charms
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And I'm looking at the frog of a hoof Now
Speaker 3: it's sort of V shaped. I mean, you have to
Speaker 3: stretch your mind a little bit, but I could see that.
Speaker 1: Now the frog is apparently made up of the same
Speaker 1: material as the hoof wall. More on what do we
Speaker 1: mean by hoofwall in the second, But you can think
Speaker 1: of like the outer hoof as you see it, but
Speaker 1: it's more moist a certainly if it's healthy, apparently something
Speaker 1: like fifty percent moisture or thereabouts. Now, And that's not
Speaker 1: to say that the hoof wall itself is dry. In fact,
Speaker 1: the hoof wall or the proper hoof that you see
Speaker 1: if you're just looking at a picture of a horse,
Speaker 1: it's in fact covered with material that prevents moisture loss.
Speaker 1: And with domestic horses, hoof paint is sometimes added as
Speaker 1: well to help contain moisture. So again, even the hardest
Speaker 1: part of the of the horses hoof cannot be really
Speaker 1: thought of as just this you know, like you rock,
Speaker 1: you know, hard substance like it's in these These are
Speaker 1: you know, organic structures, and there is moisture to.
Speaker 3: Them, and with the keratin basis, I think you could
Speaker 3: probably think about it more akin to like a like
Speaker 3: a horn or like a thick fingernail exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, the frog, interestingly enough, is also a scent gland,
Speaker 1: along with the chestnut of the leg and the airgut
Speaker 1: of the fetlock. This is one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: dogs can tract horses as well as they can. Plus
Speaker 1: is apparently one of the ways that horses sniff out
Speaker 1: each other in the field. I had no idea, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a hole, there's a whole just un right underneath
Speaker 1: the horse's hoof. There's a whole wonderland of weirdness. Well,
Speaker 1: this is funny because we were just talking about beavers,
Speaker 1: which apparently, you know, their scent glands and scent markings
Speaker 1: play a big role in their their behavior and how
Speaker 1: they interact with the environment. So, but I had no
Speaker 1: idea that was true of horses. Yeah. Now, as we'll
Speaker 1: discuss in a bit, horse hoofs, the hard part of
Speaker 1: the hoof grows throughout their life and has to either
Speaker 1: be worn down or trim down. This is where professional
Speaker 1: farriers come into play with domestic horses, and not only
Speaker 1: do they have to trim the hoof proper, but they
Speaker 1: also have to trim the frog as it keeps growing
Speaker 1: as well, and if not maintained, you can lead to
Speaker 1: some infections conditions like thrush and so forth. I'm also
Speaker 1: told by horse and dog people in my family that
Speaker 1: dogs absolutely love it when their friendly neighborhood ferrier gives
Speaker 1: them some hoof or some frog shavings to eat. Joe,
Speaker 1: 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 1: All right. So moving outward from the frog, it pushes
Speaker 1: against the digital cushion, and when the foot is on
Speaker 1: the ground, the increase in pressure and change and shape
Speaker 1: in the digital cushion and the frog. It kind of
Speaker 1: works everything like a pump forcing blood from the foot
Speaker 1: into the leg. And McLure stresses that quote exercise increases
Speaker 1: the blood circulation in the foot and favors good hoof growth.
Speaker 1: Lack of exercise dryness of the horny wall and poor
Speaker 1: nutrition inhibit hoof growth. All right, So let's get to
Speaker 1: that hoof wall. The hoof wall is exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. It's that tough, horny outside part of the
Speaker 1: hoof that's essentially a fingernail. I mean, if we're comparing
Speaker 1: it to what we've got going on, it contains no blood,
Speaker 1: vessels or nerves, and it grows continuously, so it has
Speaker 1: to be worn or trimmed off. And to be specific,
Speaker 1: the hoof wall grows out of the cornet located at
Speaker 1: the junction of the skin and the hoof wall. So
Speaker 1: if you're just looking at a picture of a horse's foot,
Speaker 1: like this is where hoof ends, and like you know,
Speaker 1: the hairy part of the leg begins now along with
Speaker 1: the frog and the bar, which is part of the
Speaker 1: wall aka bars of the wall bordering the frog. It's
Speaker 1: a key weight bearing part of the hoof. The wall
Speaker 1: is made up of the toe in the front, quarters
Speaker 1: on the sides, and the heel. Now the interior of
Speaker 1: the hoof inside the hoof wall. You can almost think
Speaker 1: of it as kind of like this little kind of
Speaker 1: U shaped walled city is the sole separated from the
Speaker 1: wall by the white line or the golden line where
Speaker 1: the inner wall and the sole joined together. The sole
Speaker 1: does not make contact with the ground and it primarily
Speaker 1: protects the inner structures beneath it. So these are all,
Speaker 1: you know, things with the exception of the of the
Speaker 1: digital cushion that we reference like, these are all things
Speaker 1: that you would see if you were a if you
Speaker 1: were just attending to a horse's foot, if you you know,
Speaker 1: we're checking out a horseshoe or what have you. Now, again,
Speaker 1: the hoof of a complex structure, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to attempt to cover every detail of it. Instead, hopefully
Speaker 1: we can cover the key parts of the intern out
Speaker 1: or hoof here and provide like a decent audio snapshot
Speaker 1: of what it consists of. And I realize, even with
Speaker 1: all the terminology we're going through, it still might make
Speaker 1: sense to look up a diagram to see exactly what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Now. Internally, it's of course essential to
Speaker 1: cover the phalanxes and valanges, essentially the finger bones that
Speaker 1: make up the hoof, and the first of these to
Speaker 1: cover really is the famous coffin bone, which is also
Speaker 1: known as the petal bone or the distal phalanx or
Speaker 1: P three. It's contained in the hoof capsule and provides
Speaker 1: its shape. It contains no bone marrow, but it has
Speaker 1: a lot of blood vessels. And the name apparently has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that it's entirely seated within
Speaker 1: the hoof wall, in the interior of the hoof, as
Speaker 1: if it were positioned within a coffin. It does not
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: You would think, You would think, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: couldn't run down any additional information on where this comes
Speaker 1: from other than just like you know, the built up
Speaker 1: lingo of horse people over time. So if we have
Speaker 1: horse people out there listening to the show that have
Speaker 1: more insight on this, certainly right end.
Speaker 3: Oh, please be gentle.
Speaker 1: Whether you're used to working with horses, of course they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna be gentle. Okay. Now, more broadly, the
Speaker 1: pedal bone is the bottomost bone in the front and
Speaker 1: rear legs of horses, cattle, pigs, and other ruminants. Then
Speaker 1: there's the navicular bone, so named because it's shaped like
Speaker 1: a boat, and looking at images of it, at least
Speaker 1: from the horse, I thought it also reminds me a
Speaker 1: bit of a whale's tail as well. But I'm to
Speaker 1: understand it's named this because it looks kind of like
Speaker 1: a boat. It's also known as the distal sesamoid bone.
Speaker 1: Most mammals have a navicular bone in their feet. Then
Speaker 1: there's also the short pastern bone or middle phalanx. Its
Speaker 1: positioned to top the articulating joint of the pedal bone,
Speaker 1: with only the bottom portion extending to the hoof capsule,
Speaker 1: essentially a fingerbone. So I don't know to what extent
Speaker 1: all of that accurately conveyed the complexity and the beauty
Speaker 1: of a horse's hoof, of a horse's foot, but I guess,
Speaker 1: if anything, it should remind you like the horse hoof,
Speaker 1: 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 gonna say history, but
Speaker 3: maybe better to say legend. The meeting point of legend
Speaker 3: and history. That really revealed something to me, and it's
Speaker 3: that there are certain features that are often quite surprising
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, this is an engraving from sixteen eighty seven, attributed
Speaker 1: to P. Trocial. You can look this image up. I'll
Speaker 1: have to share it on some of our socials or something,
Speaker 1: because it's terrific and also a little bit horrifying because
Speaker 1: the fore feet of the horse are human feet or
Speaker 1: something close to human feet, with clearly visible multiple toes,
Speaker 1: like five human toes per foot. It does not make
Speaker 1: sense to look at This does not seem like a
Speaker 1: good variation on the equine form. You know, it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: like a centaur where you can be like, well, it's
Speaker 1: like a horse and a rider as one. You know,
Speaker 1: you can run around, it can shoot arrows, that's great. Like, No,
Speaker 1: this is a situation where you're immediately thinking, shouldn't those
Speaker 1: front feet and they have shoes on or something? How
Speaker 1: is this force going to gallop? All sorts of questions
Speaker 1: 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 a main that are luxurious, glorious,
Speaker 3: voluminous hair just waving in the wind. You can imagine
Speaker 3: this horse really getting down on a guitar solo, playing
Speaker 3: with striper or something. And then also this horse has
Speaker 3: it appears to me, forward facing eyes horses. I don't know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't quite get the horse face right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean the artist was already having to draw
Speaker 1: those feet on this horse, so I think we can
Speaker 1: forgive them if they maybe didn't put a maximum amount
Speaker 1: 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 legend.
Speaker 1: It made me think too, of the horse that Ucla
Speaker 1: the Mock rides in Thunder of the Barbarian. If anyone
Speaker 1: remembers that old one 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 1: Yeah, a monster horse, you see, and especially sort of
Speaker 1: like some old timey sci fi and fantasy.
Speaker 3: But okay, what's the deal with this horse? Who is
Speaker 3: this horse with human feet in the front.
Speaker 1: This is none other than Julius Caesar's horse, sometimes referenced
Speaker 1: by the name as Turkus or Astracus, But the horse's
Speaker 1: actual name, whatever it might have been, seems to have
Speaker 1: mostly been lost to history. I don't know that it
Speaker 1: has a definite name. It's very much in the vein
Speaker 1: in the tradition of say, Alexander the Great's horse Bucephalus.
Speaker 1: That one's, you know, a more famous horse that also
Speaker 1: ties back in a bit. This also tends to be
Speaker 1: part of the general tradition in the Greco Roman culture
Speaker 1: of having like a great leader riding a great steed
Speaker 1: into battle that only they can mount, that is much loved,
Speaker 1: that will of course eventually die and will be remembered
Speaker 1: and so forth. But also there's this idea of a
Speaker 1: something strange about a horse. There's some sort of a
Speaker 1: physical portent of future success or in some cases dire
Speaker 1: omens tied up in the strange anatomy of certain creatures,
Speaker 1: especially the horse. But anyway, So where does this come from,
Speaker 1: this idea that there's this horse by, according to various sources,
Speaker 1: that had human feet in the front, or it had
Speaker 1: some sort of toes in the front. I had a
Speaker 1: time sort of trying to find any actual source on this,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it comes back to what the
Speaker 1: Roman imperial historian Sutanius had to say about it. This
Speaker 1: particular historian lived sixty nine through one twenty two CE.
Speaker 1: Here's what he wrote. Quote, he rode a very remarkable horse,
Speaker 1: with feet almost like those of a man, the hoofs
Speaker 1: being divided in such a manner as to have some
Speaker 1: resemblance to toes. This horse he had bred himself, and
Speaker 1: the soothsayers, having interpreted these circumstances into an omen that
Speaker 1: its owner would be master of the world. He brought
Speaker 1: him up with particular care and broke him in himself,
Speaker 1: as the horse would suffer no one else to mount him.
Speaker 1: A statue of the horse was afterwards erected by Caesar's
Speaker 1: order before the temple of Venus Genetrix.
Speaker 3: Ah 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 1: I guess maybe it has to do with with like
Speaker 1: the rearing and the breaking of the horse, that he's
Speaker 1: kind of like the mother of the horse. Maybe it
Speaker 1: means a female horse, And I'm not sure exactly why
Speaker 1: that particular temple interesting. So anyway, some illustrations, as much
Speaker 1: like the one we've discussed already, depict this as just
Speaker 1: a straight up monster horse with human feet in the front,
Speaker 1: which I love. But a more reasonable interpretation is that
Speaker 1: this was a polydactyl horse, much in the same way
Speaker 1: that you will occasionally find you you'll find, say, like
Speaker 1: a polydactyl cat, or of course polydactyl digits in human
Speaker 1: beings as well. I found an eighteen seventy nine paper
Speaker 1: on the general topic of polydactyl horses by o'thaniel Charles
Speaker 1: Marsh titled Polydactyl Horse's Recent and Extinct. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: numerous cases of extra digits in the horse have been recorded,
Speaker 1: and in nearly all of them, a single lateral hooflet
Speaker 1: was present on one of the four legs. In most instances,
Speaker 1: the occurrence was noted chiefly on account of its rarity
Speaker 1: and no record was made of the exact position of
Speaker 1: the extra hoofs with reference to the main digit, nor
Speaker 1: 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 polydactylely in this horse exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to be like the more likely interpretation.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting, I believe Marsh mentions this as well,
Speaker 1: that some accounts may have indicated that Alexander the Great
Speaker 1: horse Bucephalus was also polydactyl, in which case, if that
Speaker 1: was a you know, that was an idea already present
Speaker 1: that would of course inform either the selection or interpretation
Speaker 1: of a polydactyl horse for another great general. So you know,
Speaker 1: we have to take that into account as well. And
Speaker 1: again this general idea that if there's something strange going
Speaker 1: on with a with an organism, there might be something
Speaker 1: about it that is that is a beneficial importent for
Speaker 1: the receiving individual. I believe we touched on one of
Speaker 1: these stories regarding if not Caesar, another Roman emperor in
Speaker 1: pre in episodes over the last couple of years, and
Speaker 1: I don't think believe it was a horse. It was
Speaker 1: some other animal that was brought before the general and said, hey,
Speaker 1: look at this weird creature and there everyone was like,
Speaker 1: this is great. This means this means the campaign is
Speaker 1: going well.
Speaker 3: Okay, folks, we just had to take a second to
Speaker 3: dig this up because it was too good of a memory. No,
Speaker 3: this was something from our goats episode, right that we
Speaker 3: did last October.
Speaker 1: That's right, right, Yeah, this concerned a goat creature that
Speaker 1: was brought to Sola, and it was I think the
Speaker 1: main interpretation was like, yeah, this is great, this is
Speaker 1: a this is an omen this means that we're going
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, it made horrible sounds, et cetera. So go back
Speaker 1: and listen to that episode if you want the full
Speaker 1: story on that, and just goats in general. The cloven
Speaker 1: hoof as opposed to the horse.
Speaker 4: Hoof, that feeling when you find a goat man in
Speaker 4: a cave, and you know everything's going to be all right.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Anyway, back to Marsh here, Marsh noted that and I
Speaker 1: didn't look for other sources on this, but it kind
Speaker 1: of casually. He mentions that the indigenous peoples of the
Speaker 1: Americas were said to have described the horse when the
Speaker 1: Spanish arrived as the beast with one fingernail, which of
Speaker 1: course is rather correct as as we've been discussing. And
Speaker 1: then Marsh goes on to point out that there are
Speaker 1: two slender splint bones within the hoof, the remnants of
Speaker 1: two other toes belonging to the ancestors of the modern horse. Now,
Speaker 1: Marsh points out a few other key facts that I
Speaker 1: think are worth mentioning here. The fore, feet are the
Speaker 1: most affected when you look at a eltse in the
Speaker 1: records of polydactyl horses, it's almost always the four feet,
Speaker 1: and of course this would match up with the story
Speaker 1: of Caesar's horse. Also, the additional hooves or if you
Speaker 1: want to call them, toes, seem to generally amount to
Speaker 1: one or two, so you're maybe looking at three toes
Speaker 1: maximum on a four on a front hoof, though it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily an equal amount on both four feet, so
Speaker 1: like one there's a for instance, there's an account that
Speaker 1: he points to where an animal had two hooves on
Speaker 1: one and three on the other, so one extra on
Speaker 1: one four foot and two extra on the other four foot.
Speaker 1: Some of the horses, and this is English. This is
Speaker 1: not getting into you know, in any translations here, but
Speaker 1: in English, some of these were described as having eight
Speaker 1: hooves or the like, thus counting all of the hoofs
Speaker 1: on the animal. So this is just me. But I
Speaker 1: can imagine first of all, a three toed four foot
Speaker 1: reminding one of a human foot, looking at it and
Speaker 1: being like, oh, it's kind of like toes. Look there
Speaker 1: are three of them. I can likewise imagine some manner
Speaker 1: of telephone game deviation occurring when describing a horse and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: it had it had five toes. Well, what do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? Do you mean that it just has
Speaker 1: a single extra hooflet on one of its fore feet.
Speaker 1: That would be a reasonable case, I think, based on
Speaker 1: what I've been reading here. Or are you going to
Speaker 1: interpret that as oh, well, that means it has five
Speaker 1: hoofs or five toes to a foot something that is
Speaker 1: 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 1: Right, Yeah, that's so that's anyway, that's that's me thinking
Speaker 1: about it. Marsh wasn't didn't discuss that idea, but it
Speaker 1: just has me wondering if that's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that could be going on here as well. Now, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of recent accounts of polydactyl horse hoofs and photos.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can do an image search and you
Speaker 1: can find images of horses that have additional hoofs or
Speaker 1: hooflits or toes or whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 1: Most accounts I came across of in terms of like
Speaker 1: veterinary literature, dealt with congenital abnormalities that were at least
Speaker 1: in some cases surgically corrected. So yeah, this is I
Speaker 1: guess in the horse world. These are rare enough to
Speaker 1: be notable, but certainly not so rare that they're unknown,
Speaker 1: so it's not beyond the realm of possibility. It seems
Speaker 1: that yes, Caesar may have had a polydactyl horse, acquired
Speaker 1: a polydactyl horse or it's also equally likely that this
Speaker 1: is just all you know, legend building in order to
Speaker 1: build up the case that hey, Caesar is a lot
Speaker 1: like that guy Alexander the Great. Both of them rode
Speaker 1: around undeformed horses. 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 Brianna K. Mchorse 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
Speaker 3: basically the story that experts have long believed goes something
Speaker 3: like this, that the earliest horses were small, much smaller
Speaker 3: than horses today. They were sort of dog sized animals
Speaker 3: that lived in forested areas, and they had multiple toes
Speaker 3: per foot. So you have to imagine like small, little,
Speaker 3: you know, doggy horses that had at least three toes
Speaker 3: per foot I think maybe four toes on their front
Speaker 3: legs and three toes on their back legs. And then
Speaker 3: came some climate change about twenty million years ago. Some
Speaker 3: of these horses were living in previously forested habitats that
Speaker 3: changed into grasslands and plains. The disappearance of forest and
Speaker 3: the transition to grassland environments put different adaptive pressures on
Speaker 3: these herbivorous four legged animals. And you might imagine there
Speaker 3: could be a lot of different pressures there. But one
Speaker 3: example would be if you're not in a forest, if
Speaker 3: you're in a grassland instead, it is a lot easier
Speaker 3: for predators to see you. It's harder to hide, and
Speaker 3: so this could drive the evolution of larger bodies as
Speaker 3: a defensive adaptation. You need to make it easier to
Speaker 3: defend yourself. And it could also lead to selection for
Speaker 3: speed in order to be able to evade predators, and
Speaker 3: so the story goes. For some reason, this shift to
Speaker 3: becoming an animal that needed to be both big and
Speaker 3: fast caused the selection of the single toe for the
Speaker 3: contact point with the ground, as opposed to the previous
Speaker 3: version of this animal, which had had multiple toes per foot. Now,
Speaker 3: the authors of the study investigated this hypothetical evolutionary trajectory
Speaker 3: by analyzing leg fossils from twelve different times types of
Speaker 3: horses over evolutionary time, going back as far as fifty
Speaker 3: five million years ago all the way up to modern horses.
Speaker 3: And the researchers had previously investigated the different types of
Speaker 3: physical stress put on horse legs by various types of
Speaker 3: normal behaviors like trotting around, jumping, or speeding up into
Speaker 3: a run. And using this information about the physical stresses
Speaker 3: on horse legs, they created a model of how these
Speaker 3: activities would put stress on the legs of the horse
Speaker 3: and then tested that model against different forms of the
Speaker 3: horse's foot with different numbers of toes. And what they
Speaker 3: found was that when horses were smaller and also had
Speaker 3: multiple toes contacting the ground, the extra digits were actually
Speaker 3: important for carrying the weight of the body. Body weight
Speaker 3: was distributed across multiple toes, but as horses got bigger,
Speaker 3: the toes on the sides began to shrink and essentially
Speaker 3: disappeared as distinct digits, leaving only the single middle toe. Again,
Speaker 3: the middle hit in the ground as the single mighty hoof.
Speaker 3: This is the lone contact point with the earth now,
Speaker 3: so it seems pretty clear that this is the trajectory
Speaker 3: that happened over the evolutionary history of horses or horses,
Speaker 3: zebras and donkeys. But why did the side toes disappear?
Speaker 3: This study in particular does not answer that definitively, but
Speaker 3: in the New York Times article they interviewed the lead author,
Speaker 3: BREONN and Mchorse, 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 1: 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 range 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 1: Yeah, I mean especially with cattle, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times they do appear to be not moving a lot,
Speaker 1: 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 toad point of contact with the ground
Speaker 3: is part of that equation that is how the horse
Speaker 3: is possible.
Speaker 1: You know, I think this might touch on another reason
Speaker 1: that in literature and culture in general, there's less focus
Speaker 1: on how weird the hoof is and more just on
Speaker 1: like the majesty of the horse. Because yeah, watching like
Speaker 1: the sum total of all of this, watching a horse run,
Speaker 1: it's enthralling, Like it's it's hard to imagine, like riding
Speaker 1: along in a car and someone like saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: look over there, those horses in that field are running
Speaker 1: and being like, ah, I'm good, I don't need to
Speaker 1: see that. No, of course you want to see that.
Speaker 1: There's just something about it. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: how much of it is just the the majesty of
Speaker 1: the creature itself. How much of it is it's like
Speaker 1: the historical and cultural weight of horses. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they fascinated us. They've always fascinated us, you know,
Speaker 1: since time out of mind, since you know, before our
Speaker 1: ability to even scrawl them roughly on a cavern wall.
Speaker 3: I'm not even one of those horse people, you know.
Speaker 3: They're like horse people and then non horse people. I'm
Speaker 3: a 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 1: Yeah. I mean, and again, I'm not like if you
Speaker 1: asked me, hey, do you want to ride a horse
Speaker 1: this afternoon? I would probably say no, thank I'm good.
Speaker 1: I did it once. I'm fine. It's not my thing.
Speaker 1: But again, if you were to point out the window
Speaker 1: and say, hey, there's some horses running. Would you like
Speaker 1: to slow the car down and take a look at this,
Speaker 1: I would say yes, please, let's watch, because watching horses
Speaker 1: 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 idea is to get
Speaker 3: into about the evolution of horse hoofs. And also we
Speaker 3: want to talk about the invention of the horseshoe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because that is a key invention in the
Speaker 1: human relationship with the horse. And also I think understanding
Speaker 1: the horseshoe helps us understand the hoof a little bit
Speaker 1: more as well. In the meantime, if you have anything
Speaker 1: you'd like to ride in and share with us about
Speaker 1: the horse's or their relatives, anything in general about hoofs
Speaker 1: or horse like steeds in fantasy and science fiction, everything's
Speaker 1: fair game. We'll share that email address in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, you can also check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blur Your Mind and Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blur your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcast
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Mondays.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster
Speaker 1: fact episode, and on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns to just talk about a weird movie on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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