Response to Queries regarding Deadly Equines
Dear Friends,
CuChullaine O’Reilly of the Long Riders’ Guild here.
Thank you for having taken the time to raise such interesting points about the on-going Deadly Equines project. I have responded to some of your insightful thoughts below.
“But it has caught the eye of cryptozoology…….”
What I find interesting is that the concept of Deadly Equines has aroused the curiosity of both the cryptozoology audience AND the sceptics at JREF, with participants from both camps having published excellent questions and observations regarding equine diet and behaviour.
While this willingness to investigate the basic premise is laudable, it is in contrast to the antagonism expressed by main-stream equestrian media.
For example, as my book explains, America’s leading equine veterinary magazine, The Horse originally reported on the topic of meat-eating and killer horses in 2002. Though they initially did accept reader’s questions, the magazine and its veterinary expert arrived at no conclusions regarding dietary deviance or equine aggression.
Perhaps you will appreciate the irony then that when the Long Riders’ Guild Academic Foundation concluded its nearly ten-year research project into these twin topics, we offered all of the research, documents, files, maps and images connected to the Deadly Equines project to the editor of The Horse. Our application to donate the information was never even acknowledged.
Sadly, this editorial reaction is all the more important when one considers that other corporate owned publications have refused to alert their readers to a book which provides dramatic evidence that horses are omnivores, which are capable of incredible savagery.
Nevertheless, a vibrant international dialogue is underway thanks to people like you.
“the idea of horses being omnivores is not supported by anatomy (they lack meat-eating teeth).”
The modern equine mouth provides a clue. It is an intriguing fact that in addition to the flat herbivore teeth residing there, horses have canine and wolf teeth. Conical canine teeth are used on meat, not plant life. Oddly enough, these canine teeth are shared with humans, not carnivores.
The jaw of a modern horse can move side to side, to chew vegetation, or front to back, to consume meat. Once again, humans also have this adaptable mandible capacity.
Horses digest their food in one stomach, rather than in several, as cows, camels and sheep do, with the equine digestive system making use of a single stomach, intestines, cecum and the colon, much like another omnivore, the human.
Researchers have now concluded that large mammals, including ancient horses, also altered their diets as their climate changed. Both of these new findings contradict a common assumption that species maintain a dietary niche.
Thus, like their human riders, horses possess teeth, jaws and digestive systems which would allow them to be omnivorous.
“Well it was published on Truth Day, when only the truth may be published or printed, so it must be true.”
In fact the book was not published on April 1st. It did not appear until several months later, as important last minute evidence delayed the release. This included discovering that in 1939 a German expedition to Tibet filmed horses being fed blood, evidence from the Lord Chamberlain of Bhutan that horses belonging to the king of country ate yak meat and tiger’s fat, and an offer by Kazakh tribesmen to sell a meat-eating horse to a modern explorer. So whereas it would be fun to think that Flicka had pulled an April’s Fool joke on the staid horse world, the truth is a bit less exciting.
“Horses are herbivores.”
The book, "Deadly Equines" opens with a quote from Professor Stephen Jay Gould. He said, "The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question."
Let us keep that thought in mind when we consider the word "omnivore," which the dictionary defines as "an animal or person that eats food of both plant and animal origin."
An animal that eats food of both plant and animal origin?
When the book was published the known list of meat which horses had known to have consumed included: Antelope, Beef, Birds, Chicken, Fish, Goat, Hamster, Horse, Human, Moose, Offal, Onager, Polar Bear, Rabbits, Seal, Sheep, Whale, Yak. Since then the list has grown.
In the first 72 hours after the book was released, the Guild received news about horses in Arabia who consume raw camel meat, American horses who devour live crayfish, the BBC filmed horses eating fish on the beach of an English island, and Mariwari horses in India enjoy consuming goat's head soup.
In the last few days the Long Riders' Guild has also received messages from horse owners who wrote to state that their animals consumed barbecue goat (bones and all), scavenged crabs off the beach, bit baby lambs and then consumed the blood, not to mention eagerly devouring enough different types of human cuisine to fill a cookbook.
And we have just been informed of a horseman who a few hours after completing his reading of the book, offered his horse a pound of raw ground beef mixed with his grain. The horse eagerly ate it.
Thus, despite the commonly held belief that horses are strict herbivores, new evidence suggests that the equine digestion system is more robust than suspected and that horses are capable of enacting omnivorous behaviour with no ill effects.
“any time you think you understand the system, you realize that life has a whole new bag of tricks.”
I couldn’t agree more.
There is a cultural disagreement regarding the horses diet, with North Americans and western Europeans on the one hand, versus Oriental equestrian cultures on the other. In fact, as the book explains, there are equestrian cultures which predate the founding of the United States that have long known about the horse's diverse dietary capabilities.
This problem is compounded in the west by the fact that millions of people have become out of touch with the natural world of horses. The result is that first-hand knowledge regarding dangerous equine behaviour and dietary deviance has been replaced with a fairytale view of horses which portrays them as helpless, grass-eating victims.
Thus, the problem with clamping a modern definition on horses is that it all too often reflects only our nation of birth, our limited knowledge of horses as they apply to our personal experience and that of our friends, and a lack of appreciation for the tremendous amount of historic evidence which may not be known to us.
As Professor Richard Bulliet, of Cornell University points out in the book, modern humans tend to harbour an idealistic mental image of the horse as being a spiritually pure and innocent creature, akin to the unicorn. The notion of horses devouring meat or killing other animals shatters this idealized image.
“I understand that stallions can also be aggressive…..”
Yes, stallions can certainly be aggressive. Yet as the book clearly explains, equine aggression is not restricted to sex, geography, climate or historical time period.
The frightening French mare, Lisette, killed and consumed a Russian officer during the Napoleonic campaign. And only yesterday we received news of an American gelding who in 1958 routinely hunted, killed and consumed small birds. Because “Freight Train” repeatedly attacked humans, his owners forced him to wear a wire muzzle. This is significant because this gelding is the first horse, of any sex, to exhibit the behaviour of both a meat eater and a man killer.
Therefore, extreme equine aggression is not restricted to stallions. It is an anomaly which appears throughout history, often resulting in the death or disfigurement of humans.
“….it is possible that Eohippus was an omnivore, given the nature of clawed animals of that size and as a forager/scavenger this would have made sense.”
Until recently belief in what is known as “Cope’s Law” stated that a steady sequence of ever-growing animals represented the single evolutionary pathway from which the modern horse developed. “Our modern horse is the direct descendant of a small animal which flourished 60 million years ago, called the Dawn Horse,” states a modern book on equine evolution.
Scientists now realize this notion is incorrect. Modern horses did not evolve as the specific goal of ancient equids. In fact several species of ancestor horses might have co-existed, in a manner similar to that wherein Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man also co-inhabited the planet.
Just as the scientific concepts regarding the evolution of the horse’s body size have changed, scientific questions should now be aimed at the horse’s diet.
Additionally, researchers have now concluded that large mammals, including ancient horses, also altered their diets as their climate changed. Both of these new findings contradict a common assumption that species maintain a dietary niche. By studying the carbon and oxygen isotopes incorporated into mammalian tooth enamel, scientists are attempting to determine the diets of fossil horses.
“My whole life I was told that horses cannot digest meat based proteins. That it will kill them to try, even small amounts. Strangely though when dissecting the gut this did not come up, but the horses gut is no where near as efficient at digesting plant based protein as other herbivores - only one stomach and a one way digestive system that does not easily allow the escape of gas. This along with the wolf teeth suggests they may have been omnivores along the way.”
One of the encouraging developments which has occurred since the book’s release is the influx of more unsolicited evidence and the arrival of startling possibilities. For example, a Swiss Long Rider suggested a breath taking idea.
Modern domestic horses are reputed to have an inefficient digestive system.
A part of this problem is connected with the fact that most horses do not chew their grain ration slowly and carefully masticate it. All horsemen have observed un-chewed grain which has passed through the horse's digestive tract and can be seen in the faeces.
Because of this danger, cavalry manuals warned the mounted trooper to always water the horse before feeding grain, so as to reduce the chances of grain becoming impacted in the horse's intestines. Thus, large amounts of un-chewed grain, lodging in the equine intestines, could become impacted, ferment, and cause fatal colic.
Could it be that if a horse is fed meat, which needs careful chewing, it would pass through the equine digestive system without impacting? Evidence would seem to suggest this is a possibility. Just as diet is a contributing factor to human diabetes, it has been suggested that the increased rate of equine laminitis may be linked to the higher sugar content found in modern grasses. Might there be an undetected link in a modern horse's grain favoured diet and the risk of incurring colic? Could colic be reduced if horses were fed more protein and less grain?
The French appear to be considering this question. They are currently selling a meat based horse feed for six Euros a kilo.
“But actually hunting and killing? I have never seen that in a horse except in defense.”
While the occurrences are rare, evidence demonstrates that equines can shift their traditional role and become, as one horseman stated, “Predators by choice.”
In 2002 the Long Riders’ Guild Academic Foundation learned of a disturbing case which originated in the United States, wherein a horse killed another animal and devoured its prey.
The horrified horse owner described a “bizarre and frightening” episode wherein a horse grabbed a goat, shook it to death, and began devouring it. A few minutes later the witnesses observed other horses approach the dead goat, who began consuming the flesh and drinking its blood.
“They all grabbed some part of the goat with their teeth and literally tore it into pieces with all the tugging and pulling. The one who had killed the goat had the biggest part of what was left…. Soon, two little colts less than three months old came over to what was left of the goat and they took some bites and just stood there chewing and eating…. My friend and I were absolutely stunned over what we had just witnessed.”
There is other dietary evidence of this nature in the book.
Yet again, we return to this point. Just because we have not personally witnessed horses eating meat, or killing other animals, doesn’t rule out the increasing likelihood that they can.
“As for defense, the first line of defense for horses is paying close attention to what's around them, and fleeing at the very first sign of something suspicious.”
What the book points out is the existence of the equine exception. Such an idea is strongly contested by the multimillion dollar horse-whispering industry, which encourages the mistaken assumption that the horse is consistently a timid grass-eater who is terrified of predatory humans.
Do horses run away? Of course. Yet contradictory evidence also demonstrates that they are capable of chasing and attacking black bears in Colorado and forcing a mountain lion in New Mexico to retreat.
“Horses were used in war for a reason. And that reason is not that they were docile, peaceful animals who avoid harming other living things.”
Correct. Otherwise they’d be training Jersey cows at the Spanish Riding School, wouldn’t they?
There are several episodes which demonstrate the extreme danger of provoking a horse during the heat of battle.
Baron de Marbot left an astonishing narrative of the man-killing horse he rode during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812. This mare, Lisette, became infamous in France when she disembowelled her groom.
Despite her savage nature, Baron de Marbot was mounted on the murderous mare at the battle of Eylau, which occurred in Prussia in February, 1807.
The Baron recalled that when surrounded by Russians trying to kill him, it was Lisette who saved the wounded French soldier’s life.
“…she sprang at the Russian and at one mouthful tore off his nose and all the skin of his face, making of him a living death’s head, dripping with blood. Then, hurling herself with fury among the combatants, kicking and biting, Lisette upset everything in her path. When a Russian officer tried to hold her by the bridle she seized him by his belly and carrying him off with ease, bore him out of the crush to the foot of the hillock where, having torn out his entrails and mashed his body under her feet, she left him dying in the snow.”
“Horses were used in battle because they are fast and maneuverable, not because they would ferociously attack any living thing.”
Having studied horses on four continents for forty years, I can personally attest to the inaccuracy of this statement. While many of the primary source material found in my book is rare, or difficult to obtain, anyone can rent the excellent and exciting film, The Horsemen. Starring Omar Sherif and Jack Palance, it was shot in Afghanistan in 1971 and presents the most accurate depiction of the savage equestrian game known as buz khazi. This competition requires the male riders, who are all mounted on savage stallions, to fight for the possession of a dead goat. The film clearly depicts Omar Sherif’s stallion attempting to seize his rider’s human opponent by the leg and unseat him. Having ridden in buz khazi games myself, I can assure you that the stallions have no hesitation in attacking human opponents, as and when it suits them.
“Some horses were highly trained to do leaps and kicks in battle, with the idea of causing the enemy to back off.”
This is one of the most cherished equestrian myths prevalent in the western equestrian world.
During the 16th century King Ferdinand of Naples sent one of his equerries to Hungary to introduce the new dressage methods to the royal court of King Matthias. The Hungarian monarch sent the Italian dressage master back with this message.
“With the horses we trained ourselves we defeated the Turks, subjected Serbia and vanquished all before us, honourably by means of our own horses. We have no desire for horses that hop about with bent hocks in the Spanish fashion; we do not want them even as a pastime, still less for serious business. What we want are horses that stride out and stand firm when required,” he rebuked his fellow monarch.
Nor was the futility of asking horses to enact acrobatics lost on equestrian historians. In the mid-1970s England’s greatest equestrian historian, Anthony Dent, wrote, “If the gambades and the bounds, which cost so much painstaking time to teach the horse, were justified in terms of their utility in close combat, why were they not practised in concert with swordsmanship? Why were there no competitions in loading a pistol while one's horse did the levade, or firing it while he executed a capriole? The answer is the military side of it was really an elaborate pretence.”
“I hope no one gets the impression that horses in battle run the enemy down, biting and slashing and attacking them on their own.”
In fact, that is what did occur on occasion.
The Long Riders’ Guild Press publishes more than 300 books in eight languages. One of the most remarkable is entitled, "They Rode Into Europe - The Fruitful Exchange in the Arts of Horsemanship between East and West." The Hungarian author, Miklos Jankovich, uncovered evidence of a unique equestrian battle which ties in to this reader’s remark about polite war horses.
According to Jankovich, in 1589 a mounted duel to the death was held in Hungary between Aga Ibrahim, a champion of the Turkish invading force, and his Hungarian opponent, Istvan Pisky. The Turkish challenge read 'fight with weapons and teeth.' Each man rode a 'pugnacious' stallion which had been specially trained to inflict bodily harm on his rider's opponent.
With soldiers from both sides in attendance, the Turkish horse began savaging the European rider so badly, that the Hungarians rushed in to save their man. The result was a massacre, from which very few of the Turks escaped.
Before I close, I would like to urge the readers of the JREF forum to appreciate the fact that the motto of the Long Riders’ Guild Academic Foundation is “Science, not Superstition.”
Science is mankind’s one truly global culture, whose common vision transcends all differences of nationality and faith. However, as equestrian wisdom has declined, ignorance and superstition in that field has increased. The result is that we are witnessing the rise of an age of equestrian disinformation, one where a trusting public can graze on nonsense packaged to look like fact.
The worst danger is the increase of hocus-pocus horsemanship. These people, who peddle various equestrian superstitions over the internet and in expensive clinics, urge a departure from rational thought and embrace emotionalism instead. The cumulative effect is the emergence of a 21st century horse world which is in danger of being overwhelmed by equestrian superstition and is infected by various equine personality cults, all of which threaten to undermine the intellectual integrity of serious equestrian science.
Though none of these smooth talkers has got a horse to walk across a bed of hot coals, the latest example of shamanism are the horse whisperers who have incorporated the concepts of NLP into their unlicensed operations and are now busy telling a naïve public that horses have right and left brains.
Thus, I would urge the JREF readers to further investigate the equestrian world. While you won’t find Bigfoot, you will quickly discover such gems as “Jedi Horsemanship” and “Water Hole Rituals,” just to name a few.
I would like to conclude by quoting Galileo, who said, "I believe there is no greater hatred in the world than the hatred of ignorance for knowledge."
While none of us have resolved the mystery of the horse, it is thanks to stimulating conversations such as these that a vital new international dialogue about these incredible animals is underway. Thank you.
