Synonyms
Definition
Movement used by equine species to traverse their environment.
Horses belong to the order Perissodactyla, a group of odd-toed ungulate mammals, which are characterized by the enlargement of the third digit on each extremity (Bowling and Ruvinsky 2000). Horses fall under the family Equidae and the genus Equus. It is likely that horses, donkeys, and zebras all evolved in North America and spread when the Bering land bridge was open into Africa, Asia, and Europe (Bowling and Ruvinsky 2000). Why equids eventually became extinct in North America is unknown, but the last of them was perhaps exterminated by the first human inhabitants some 12,000 years ago (Bowling and Ruvinsky 2000). Wild horses survived into historic times. Unfortunately, both the Tarpan (E. ferus ferus) and the Przewalski horse (E. ferus przewalskii) are now either extinct or critically endangered. The extinction of the Tarpan came about when the last wild...
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References
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Piché, A., Halpern, R., Savallo, M.A., Granatosky, M.C. (2020). Equine Locomotion. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1003-1
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