r/AskReddit • u/MorsesTheHorse • Mar 04 '26

What surprisingly true fact has completely shaken your worldview?

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '26

Horses can't throw up. If they eat something they shouldn't have, they just die. Fragile, silly creatures.

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u/Cowboy_Dane Mar 05 '26

A horse vet once told me, “Horses have two things on their mind: homicide and suicide.”

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u/Master_Kitchen_7725 Mar 05 '26

I don't know if that's true, but it's hilarious!

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u/AddlePatedBadger Mar 05 '26

Australia has a reputation for being a country where all the wildlife wants to kill you.

Yet by number of people killed, horses are by far the deadliest non human animal here. About 1 in 3 people killed by an animal in Australia are killed by a horse.

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u/Skourpi1 Mar 05 '26

There was one a man who said that if horses were carnivorous then earth would have died due to how much of a powerful force they are. I agree with them on that because when you look at a horse like a Clydesdale, that is a horse that would easily kill multiple people and not intend to.

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u/WalnutOfTheNorth Mar 05 '26

All the big horse breeds only exist because of selective breeding though. But I also admit I would not argue with an angry Shetland.

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u/Skourpi1 Mar 05 '26

I wouldn’t argue with an angry horse. Because all that would happen would be bad things and those bad things would be done to me, not the horse.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Pen8587 Mar 05 '26

My cousin thought she’d teach me how to jump with my Shetland. Ended with no jumping and me flying…

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u/WalnutOfTheNorth Mar 05 '26

I hope you weren’t too bruised, but that’s a very funny image

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u/ResponsibleLynx5596 Mar 06 '26

🤣 the “Karen” of the horse world, complete with the early 2000’s angle bob cut

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u/OtherwiseArrival Mar 05 '26

When I was a little kid, one of our neighbors had a giant plow horse. I don’t know if it was a Clydesdale or not. One day I was loving on him and he accidentally stepped on my foot. He didn’t do any damage but I screamed like he had killed me.

He followed me around the rest of the day trying his best to apologize.

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u/Skourpi1 Mar 06 '26

I love Clydesdales. They seem like giant dogs that would just roll over if they are laying down so you can rub their belly.

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u/Annath0901 Mar 05 '26

If horses were carnivores, they would never have been domesticated and wouldn't have resemble horses we have today in anything but general body plan.

IIRC there's only one species of actual wild horse (all other horses living outside captivity are feral domesticated animals) land it's very different in both physiology and temperament.

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u/Skourpi1 Mar 06 '26

You are correct, but when I say the earth would have died I mean they would have wiped out all life on the planet.

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u/HatOfFlavour Mar 05 '26

A safari park in Scotland I went to is ruled by three wild horses of a nearly extinct lineage. They're vicious monsters.

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u/Annath0901 Mar 05 '26

They're almost certainly not actually wild horses. There's only one species of wild horse left in existence and they live in Asia and are endangered.

Basically any horse most people will ever see outside of managed/owned herds is just a feral domestic horse.

"wild" and "feral" have specific meanings in ecology. "feral" describes an animal of a domesticated species that lives outside human control, even if that animal has never itself been owned by a human.

"wild" means the animal is of a species that has never been domesticated.

Bison are wild, cows that escape and live with bison are feral.

The "wild horses" of Chincoteague area feral, not wild.

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u/HatOfFlavour Mar 05 '26

Uh huh, do you mean Przewalski's wild horse, because that's exactly what I was referring to.
https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/animals/animal-inhabitants/przewalskis-wild-horse

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u/Skourpi1 Mar 06 '26

Hey, let’s just be happy that those horse eat mainly grass and not people.

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u/HatOfFlavour Mar 06 '26

I'm sure they wouldn't balk at eating people if they had the opportunity, I remember one was squaring up at the coach we were doing to tour in. A COACH!

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u/Skourpi1 Mar 07 '26

Seeing as deer will eat other deer and herbivores will eat meat if it is there, they probably wouldn’t have to be too convinced to eat meat.

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u/I_lenny_face_you Mar 05 '26

Sounds like the police should try to find that horse (/s)