What are the dead skin things above the horses knee?
Becky, those are called “horse chestnuts”, and like the appendix and wisdom teeth in people, are a remnant of an earlier stage in the horse’s evolution. Horses are old animals- they have been on the Earth for many millions of years. The earliest known ancestor of all modern horses, called Eohippus or the “Dawn Horse” was alive and roaming the Earth during the age of the dinosaurs. This animal was about the size of a large Great Dane in height, it had forty four teeth in its jaw, and it was an herbivore, the way today’s horses are. Eohippus ALSO had 5 toes on each of its feet, rather than a single hoof. As the millenia passed, the world got colder and drier ( it had been mostly swamp and marsh, and very warm during the time of the dinosaurs) and there were periodic Ice Ages. Horses compensated for this by becoming bigger and faster animals, and over time, they gradually began to lose their extra toes until all that was left was the single hoof they have now. The first modern horses ( on
