Did horse feet evolve for endurance travel at the trot rather than speed at the gallop?

Fight or flight. Run or be eaten. We were all taught that horses evolved to have single toes because they were the prey of predators. A single hoof made them one of the fastest animals on earth. The successful survivors were the fastest ones, because they could outrun lions and tigers and bears. But a new group of researchers published an alternate point of view on April 12, which we share thanks to the University of Bristol in England. According to the authors, they weave "together information from equid evolutionary history, foot anatomy, and locomotion, which provide the essential background information that informs our novel proposition". They suggest that horses' feet evolved for efficient trotting during grazing, rather than for speed to evade predators. But isn't it possible that the single toe aided both survival gaits?

Off Topic Video: Slo-mo beach gallop--with a twist

It's no secret that the Hoof Blog is known almost as widely for launching unusual horse-related videos and commercials as for hoof-related stories. You saw the Budweiser Clydesdale ad here first and now you're seeing the new--and slightly weird--Citroen commercial.

The what?

Equine Gait Analysis: The Ghost of Muybridge's Racehorse Gallops Again

A vaguely-familiar and yet ghostly horse and rider gallop through the streets of Palo Alto, California in this trailer for next week's Palo Alto International Film Festival. Why this particular horse and rider? Because Stephen Jobs wasn't the first genius to live in Silicon Valley. The first one made his mark with horses' hooves.

Legend has it that it all started on a bet.

The year was 1878. A wealthy industrialist named Leland Stanford believed that there is a point in a horse's gallop when all four hooves leave the ground.

His opponents called him mad. Artists and sculptors argued that time does not stop and even if it did, how could something as heavy as a horse defy gravity?

They believed that one foot had to stay in touch with the planet at all points in the horse's stride. Horses didn't fly.

But how could you prove it? Or disprove it?

A funny thing happened on the way to proving what happens to horses' hooves when they gallop. From the pudding of that proof that resulted, the motion picture industry was born.

Equine gait analysis was born in Palo
Alto, California in 1878.

To prove he was right, Stanford imported English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who had been experimenting with making the mechanism we now know as the camera shutter.

Back at that time, every photo required a long exposure, which is why you often see blurred photos. Cameras had no shutters. The photographer merely removed the lens cap and replaced it when enough light had entered to expose the sensitive plate. If you were posing for a portrait you had better hold your breath.

And galloping horses? Trotting horses? Their legs were just a blur in old photos, and even the word's finest painters had it all wrong when they depicted horse limbs at different gaits.

Muybridge set out to use science to prove that Stanford was correct. He set up twelve cameras connected to trip wires that crossed the horse's trajectory. Muybridge was anything but an overnight success with this method: he and Stanford struggled with experiments for five years until they mastered the method of stopping motion.

But they still had to be able to stop it in just the right phase of the stride in order to prove their point.

On the day of reckoning, horse racing fans and the curious press assembled at Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm in Palo Alto, California to see what Muybridge's results would be.

The series that made history that day was captured of a trotter hitched to a two-wheeled cart; the suspension phase of the trot was clearly illustrated.

All four of the horse’s hooves were off the ground at the same time. Victory was Stanford's.

Watch a horse gallop. Is it any wonder it took thousands of years for someone (and science) to figure  it out? This is a still from the video of Occident.

It was a trotter that day but the galloping racehorse is the image most closely identified with Muybridge.

It sounds obvious to us today, but it was not obvious back then. Muybridge's flying hooves were the first recorded movement in visual history.

Studying Muybridge is something that film history students do. Equine gait analysis students do it, too. Animation students still use his frames as blank canvases for their own horses. The galloping horse and its flying hooves have become an icon.

And this week, their ghost gallops through Palo Alto again.

Note: the special trailer for the film festival was made with the assistance of French animators who would like viewers to know that there was no post-production involved.

To learn more:
June 15, 1878: Muybridge Horses Around With Motion Pictures (Wired Magazine)
Muybridge animal locomotion  collection at the University of Pennsylvania

Click to go to order page and PayPal link. We'd love to send you this poster.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.  

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Poetry in Motion: The Japan Racing Association Captures the Simple Beauty of a Galloping Racehorse...in a Commercial

I think if I could just keep this YouTube video on a continuous loop and keep watching it, I'd have no problems keeping stress at bay. There is something very relaxing about watching these Thoroughbreds stretch across the black-and-white frame of this film, as the lovely music plays.

It's not real, of course.  This is a sort of "greatest hits" reel of slow-motion galloping horses from a series of Japan Racing Association (JRA) commercials; someone has kindly edited the slo-mo galloping sequences together for us.

I'm quite often asked for slo-mo galloping clips that do not have distracting backgrounds so for all of you who have asked, here you go. I see footage like this and can only hope that Disney did as well when shooting Secretariat (which will be out a month from now, as a matter of fact).

The original JRA commercial was quite nice and it dovetails with the melancholy I feel each September when Saratoga is over and the Breeders Cup isn't really here yet. Thank goodness for the World Equestrian Games this year.

And, for those of you like me who want to know such things, here's how they filmed the horses galloping (and the rest of the original commercial):

I've always been a fan of the rousing instrumental musical equestrian commercial genre made famous and perfected by Rolex, but I think the JRA has done something very special here. It's a commercial that conveys a reverence for horse racing and horses.

Imagine that.

Indulge yourself by watching the gallopers as many times as you please. I know some of you will be able to use these horses in your teaching. Be sure to thank the JRA the next time you see a representative at a conference. They do wonderful things.

PS As a post script, I am really happy to see that this article has been near the top of the most popular posts on this blog for the past month or so. I'm not the only one who likes it! Or, someone is watching it over and over and over again! Thanks again to the JRA.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

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