🐴🌍Your Horse Can't Actually See the Food They're About to Eat?
- Natural Horse NZ
- Jul 15
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 17
🤯 For an animal that spends 12–16 hours every day eating, 365 days a year, the fact they can’t actually see the mouthful directly beneath their nose because of the position of their eyes just blows me away…
👄 Instead…
they feel it.
❤️ Now how incredible is that!
🎥 I’ve slowed this video right down because
I wanted you to see something we normally miss.
👀 Watch that top lip…
Look at it snuffling its way through the dead leaves looking for the fresh green shoots underneath. Every tiny movement is gathering information. Every leaf is being explored. Every mouthful is being assessed before it ever reaches the mouth. The horse is deciding what to eat through touch, not sight.
🌿 Their upper lip is called a prehensile lip and works through a remarkable combination of specialised facial muscles, thousands of highly sensitive nerve endings and feeling whiskers called vibrissae around the muzzle.
🙌 Now how good is that?
It’s almost like evolution gave the horse a handful of fingertips on the end of their nose, and it’s one of the most extraordinary evolutionary adaptations I’ve ever come across.
❤️ The reason this blows me away so much is because it supports everything I’ve been encouraging my clients and owners to do with their horses…
✨ It’s all about feel.
🐴 If evolution has given a horse an upper lip this unbelievably sensitive simply so they can choose the next mouthful of grass… just imagine how much sensory information they’re receiving through all their other senses, and through four incredibly sensitive hooves standing on the ground every single day.
👣 Now imagine what we’re taking away from an animal with a sensory system like that when we put shoes on them.
🐎 Or when we put a bit in their mouth.
💭 Everything you and I know about feel surely has to be magnified tenfold for the horse.
🌍 The more I study horses, the more I realise we’re only scratching the surface of understanding just how extraordinary they really are.
🐴🌍 Continue Exploring the Horse Evolution: Nature's Masterpiece Series
Explore the incredible adaptations that have made horses one of the most remarkable animals on Earth.
Featured articles include:
🧬 Horizontal Pupils
🫁 Obligate Nasal Breathing
🫀 The Heart and Breathing Connection
🦴 The Stay Apparatus
🩸 The Hoof Pump
👃 The Incredible Sense of Smell
...and many more fascinating adaptations to come.
➡️ Explore the complete Horse Evolution: Nature's Masterpiece Series
