I’ve written a little bit about God’s creativity before (God’s Creativity – Fun Facts), and thought I’d talk about something specific this time, horse leg and foot anatomy.
Horses are fairly muscular, powerful creatures, but those proportionately hefty bodies are supported by slender legs that don’t even have muscles in the lower half! On top of that, they essentially walk on their fingernails!
A horse’s legs only have muscles about halfway down. The rest of the leg’s action is controlled by strong, stretchy, highly robust tendons. If you’ve ever seen a horse running or jumping in slow motion, it looks like their legs should break, but they don’t. Their tendons look like they should snap, but they don’t. Horse legs are really weird. They don’t seem like they should work, but they do. I’m just amazed at the creativity that went into making all that function!
The sole of the horse never touches the ground, yet is still an important supportive structure. The part of the bottom of the foot that does touch the ground is called the frog, and it helps the horse feel where its feet are placed, as well as being a built-in shock absorber in tandem with the plantar cushion inside. And it is built to be a pretty good shock absorption system considering how the rest of the horse is built!
The hard outside of a horse’s hooves is a little like our fingernails, and all the horse’s weight is supported on that. And it doesn’t even hurt! The hard outside also protects the inner workings of the foot, which are fascinating in themselves. I could spend forever on that, but I’ll spare you and let you look it up yourself if you want. But one cool thing is that because the lower leg has no muscles to help assist blood flow, the way the inside of a horse’s foot is built helps it pump blood back up its feet and legs!
The more I learn about anything, the more I see God’s vast creativity. And when it comes to things like horse legs, I see God has quite the imagination!