Horse Plays Guitar
The first thing I thought of when I saw this video was El Kabong, the alter ego of the cartoon character Quick Draw McGraw. El Kabong made about the same sounds when he beaned a bad guy with his guitar. -via Arbroath
The Iron Horse
Phillip Valdez made this mechanical wonder completely of paper. I am sure it is a one-of-a-kind artwork. Link -via Boing Boing
Linus the Long Haired Wonder Horse
Have you ever seen a horse with such a luxurious mane? Linus the Wonder Horse was born in 1884, the result of careful breeding for long hair. Linus was exhibited with a circus act, with promotional materials declaring he was of the “Oregon Long-Haired Wild Wonder horse” breed. His mane was 14 feet long, and his tail 12 feet long! Read more about Linus at Environmental Graffiti. Link
Putting Animals in Their Place
Animals. They think they’re so special. Sure, they can fly, run at incredible speeds, and regenerate body parts, but do they really have to rub their talents in our faces all the time? Well, we at mental_floss have had enough. It’s time to put animals in their place. That’s right, crocodiles -call us when you learn to chew.
KANGAROOS CAN’T WALK
(Image credit: Flickr user Chris Samuel)
It’s no secret that kangaroos come fully loaded with super-strong legs. The marsupial’s powerful gait allows the creature to reach speeds of 40 mph over short spans. And it can travel incredible, marathon-length distances at speeds of about 15 miles per hour -that’s a four-minute mile! But don’t give those legs too much credit -the kangaroo’s long, thick tail also plays a significant part. The natural rudder counterbalances the animal’s body as it leans forward to cruise the Outback.
Such muscular gifts do come with some disadvantages, though. While the kangaroo’s long, flat feet and 3-foot tail are ideal for hopping, the combo is also the reason kangaroos can’t walk. The creature’s back legs are designed to move in tandem and don’t work well independently of one another. That means it’s hopping or nothing. The anatomical quirk also prevents the kangaroo from walking backwards. If the creature tried to back up, its thick tail gets in the way. And because those clunky feet have to move in unison, a kangaroo can’t maneuver around the appendage.
Not being able to walk may seem limiting, but it’s not a bad tradeoff considering the kangaroo lifestyle. The marsupial’s unique makeup proves especially helpful when it comes to self-defense; not only can the creatures outrun dingos and other hungry predators, but if cornered, a kangaroo will become incredibly acrobatic, using its large legs to kick while rising up on its tail for balance.
HORSES CAN’T VOMIT
(Image credit: Flickr user Gunnar Þór Gunnarsson)
When humans ingest a harmful substance, the body’s natural reaction is to expel the intruding toxin by sending it right back the way it came. Horses don’t have that luxury. The shortcoming is due to a strong band of muscle at the entrance to the horse’s stomach known as the cardiac sphincter. While the muscle will open up to send food down to the gullet, it won’t work in reverse.
more …
All Thoroughbred Racehorses Share A Single Ancestor
From Secretariat to Seabiscuit, it turns out that all thoroughbred race horses were all related. They shared a single ancestor in the mid 17th century, whose "speed gene" was a genetic aberration:
Emmeline Hill of University College Dublin led a team that analyzed DNA in 593 horses from 22 modern breeds, as well as museum specimens from 12 historically famous stallions. Modern genetics have become sophisticated enough that they could tell, with considerable precision, what the horses had in common.
"The results show that the 'speed gene' entered the thoroughbred from a single founder, which was most likely a British mare about 300 years ago when local British horse types were the pre-eminent racing horses, prior to the formal foundation of the thoroughbred racehorse," said Hill in a prepared statement.
Wildfire by Sebastian Kuntz
Image: i am sebastian/Flickr
Sebastian Kuntz created the image above for Sabath Media Design Agency's internal magazine. I suspect a bit of photoshoppery was involved. That, or magic. Maybe mostly magic.
Comments Off
Apprehension
Jay Koppelman submitted this shot he caught of a blue heeler in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico to NatGeo.
Sometimes it seems that there are two completely separate worlds that are in existence: that of the humans and the other, which belongs to the animals. In this photo the humans are definitely unaware of all the interaction that goes on in the animal world just feet away. I wonder what’s going through this dog’s mind.
It was selected as the Photo of the Day at National Geographic, where you can see a larger version. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!
Horse Rescued from Basement
A family in Elbert County, Colorado awoke to find their horse Summer trapped in the home’s basement.
Summer had fallen down a four-foot window well and landed in the basement, which was not constructed with a walk-out door.
“We thought of bringing her up the basement stairs,” Heap said. “But the stairs didn’t look safe enough to support her weight.”
A veterinarian sedated Summer, who sustained minor cuts and injuries in the fall, and a coring company was contacted to cut into the foundation of the home. The initial plan was to expose an area around a second window well, remove a portion of the foundation and create enough space to bring the horse out of the basement, Heap said.
When the crew had removed enough material around the window, Summer walked out on her own. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Elbert County Sheriff’s Office)
Sgt. Reckless, Korean War Hero
Sgt Reckless was a small chestnut-colored horse with a white blaze on her face and three white stocking feet who joined the marines in 1952. She was purchased at the Seoul Racetrack from a young Korean and was originally named “Flame “but became “Reckless,” after the nickname Marines had given to the recoilless rifle.She went through equine boot camp, learning to jump in and out of a jeep, how to take cover and carry loads of ammunition on a pack saddle. Later she also learned to string telephone wire. She was a true heroine at the re-taking of Vegas where she made 51 trips from the ASP to the gun sites that day, carrying 386 rounds, despite being injured by shrapnel. She transported more than 9,000 pounds of explosives! After the war a private company provided free passage for Reckless to travel to the United States. She was guest of honor at many events over the years and gave birth to four foals. She was promoted to staff sergeant in 1959 and retired on Nov. 10, 1960, with full military honors.
Reckless’ decorations included two Purple Hearts, Good Conduct Medal, Presidential Unit Citation with star, National Defense Service Medal, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, and Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, all of which she proudly wore on her scarlet and gold blanket.On May 13, 1968, the Corps lost a dear friend with the passing away of SSgt Reckless. Some reports state she was 19 and others say 20 when she was injured and had to be put to sleep.But, the legend of Reckless lives on.
Link - Via Metafilter
Comments Off Horse Calculus
Detail from the Darke/Holmes study
by Michael Berry
H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory,
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
The applications of mathematics can be bizarre. Soon after I arrived in Bristol in the 1960s, a senior colleague called me, saying that someone in the veterinary school needed help with mathematics — or was it physics? — and I seemed just the person to help. Cursing inwardly, I agreed to see the fellow. He was Peter Darke, a graduate student near the end of a Ph.D. studying horses’ hearts.
He showed me a paper by Gabor (Dennis Gabor, who invented holography) and Nelson1 and asked me to explain it. It took a while to understand. The idea is that a heart is like a little battery, pushing weak electric currents in a three-dimensional pattern round the body. The battery has a strength and a direction: it acts as a current dipole, represented as a little arrow — the heart vector. During each heartbeat, the vector (tip of the arrow) draws a loop – the heart loop — whose shape is a powerful diagnostic of health. Therefore it is useful to measure this loop, in a way that doesn’t involve killing the horse. Gabor’s paper gave the theory of a way to do that, inferring the heart vector by measurements of the electric potential on the surface of the horse. It is an ingenious application of Gauss’s theorem.
The Darke/Holmes study, which used the Berry approach to integrate over the surface of a horse.
Peter had spent three years preparing to implement this idea. He enveloped his horse in a coat he had made, of several hundred potentiometers, with electronics to measure the potential at each of them, fifteen times during each heartbeat, and he had arrived at the point where he had a huge file of all these measurements. But there was a difficulty: he knew only the most elementary high-school mathematics and so had no way to understand the formulas in Gabor’s paper. His specific question was: does the theory apply to a real horse, or only to an ideal cylindrical horse? Unlike the physicists’ mythical ‘spherical cow,’ this was real.
I learned that the formulas work for a horse of any shape, but they do assume uniform conductivity — a better approximation, apparently, for horses than for people. (Actually, it doesn’t have to be accurate: who cares whether the loop describes the real dipole inside the real horse? To be useful for diagnosis, it is necessary only that the loop be reproducible.)
The formulas involved integration, and Peter didn’t know what an integral was, so it was hard to explain how to add up all those measurements. A complication was that what had to be inferred was a vector, so he needed to know, at each point on the horse, the components of the perpendicular to the surface of the horse with respect to the three symmetry directions of the horse. After some discussion, we made a ‘cos-theta-meter,’ and I left him to it, and never saw him again.
Further detail from the Darke/Holmes study.
But a year later, I received two papers from him,2 reporting the outcome of all that arithmetic. To my surprise, he had indeed calculated fifteen vectors for each heartbeat, and thereby deduced the heart loops for several horses in different states of health. At the end of the paper were the usual acknowlegements to colleagues and funding agencies. For technical help, he thanked me; and for financial support, he thanked the Horserace Betting Levy Board (financed by racecourse gamblers).
The moral of this is that applications of mathematical knowledge can be unexpected; you may find yourself taking a surface integral over a horse.
References
1. “Determination of the Resultant Dipole of the Heart from Measurements on the Heart Surface,” D. Gabor and C.V. Nelson, Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 25, 1954, pp. 413-6.
2. “Studies on the Equine Cardiac Electric Field. I. Body Surface Potentials, II. The Integration of Body Surface Potentials to Derive Resultant Cardiac Dipole Moments,” P.G.G. Darke and J.R. Holmes, Journal of Electrocardiology vol. 2, 1969, pp. 222-234 and 235-244.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2010 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Cow Acts Like A Horse
You Tube Link
What happens when your parents won’t buy you a pony? If you are really resourceful you take one of the family farm animals and train it to act like a horse. Meet Luna the cow who acts like a horse.
Midnight’s New Leg
(YouTube link)
Midnight the miniature horse was born missing part of one leg, and then was so neglected by his owner that he was seized by authorities. The adorable horse was close to being euthanized when the staff at Ranch Hand Rescue came up with a plan to get Midnight a new leg. You have to watch this one all the way through -you’ll be glad you did! Link -via Gizmodo
The Science of Moving Pictures
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.
In 1872, Leland Stanford offered photographer Eadweard Muybridge $25,000 to perform an experiment. Muybridge wasn’t sure he could do it, but with so much money at stake, he took on the challenge.
When a horse is running or trotting, do all four hooves ever leave the ground at the same time? That was the basis of the wager that Leland Stanford, former governor of California and founder of Stanford University, made with some friends. This was the subject of much controversy in horse racing circles at the time. Most people believed that a horse always had one hoof in contact with the ground, but Stanford thought otherwise. Because a horse’s legs are moving so fast, it’s impossible to tell just by looking, so Stanford needed a way to slow down the movement so it could be studied.
In 1872, Stanford offered Eadweard Muybridge, a world-famous landscape photographer, $25,000 to find the answer. Muybridge had no idea if he could successfully set up and perform an experiment to settle the dispute, but he figured he’d give it a go.
THE EQUIPMENT
In most 19th-century cameras, the picture was taken when the photographer removed the lens cap for several seconds in order to expose the film and capture an image. The subject had to remain perfectly still during this time or the resulting photograph would be blurred. In order to capture very fast action like a galloping horse, the exposure time would have to be very short.
THE SHUTTER
Muybridge invented a fast shutter mechanism that relied on a small piece of wood with a hole drilled in it that slid past the lens. The wood was positioned so that a pin held it in place, covering the lens. When the pin was removed, gravity would cause the wood to drop and as the hole moved past the lens, the film was exposed for a fraction of a second.
more …
Comments Off Horse and Puppy
(YouTube link)
Herbie and Jabby have formed a mutual admiration society. Hang on, this just gets cuter as it goes! -via Buzzfeed
Visiting Cowboys Save City Horse From Drain
A carriage horse in Memphis, Tennessee had a wild weekend. The horse slipped on some manure and ended up stuck in a drain. Lucky for the horse some real cowboys were in town for a roping contest. The cowboys were able to slide the horse out of the drain using the manure like grease. The horse walked away without a scratch while one of the cowboys walked away covered in manure.
Laughing and pointing at Murrah, Johnson said, “He had the nice end of it. He had the tail!”
Murrah added, “Yea! I had manure from here all the way up to here.”
Stephanie Scurlock of WREG has more: Link
Horse with Hands Riding a Bike
Horse with Hands Riding a Bike is a one-subject blog, but it’s not a simple subject. What’s hard to draw? Horses. Hands. Bicycles. Put them all together for a true test of anyone’s drawing skills. Edward Carter did a good job with this one. Hero of Switzerland challenges anyone to draw a horse with hands riding a bike and submit it. Link -via b3ta
Zebra Crossing Zebra
When is a zebra not a zebra? When it’s a zebra crossing, but that’s only part of the story. A public safety advertising campaign in Russia hopes to draw motorists’ attention to pedestrians crossing the road by using zebras.
Only, police in the Russian capital could not get any zebras – so they painted black stripes on white horses instead.
They paraded the horses over crossings, forcing motorists to slow down and read road safety messages.
Thousands of pedestrians die in road accidents in Russia every year.
Perhaps they got the idea from a zoo in Gaza. Link to story. Link to video. -via Arbroath
Previously: The Only Zebra in Gaza
Hoof Painting
Cute Overload reader Alexandra R. sent in two pics of her family farm’s fashionable horses:
Who doesn’t love a little extra glam! These are pictures from our family farm in New Jersey. Our horses love being pampered! My horse Cuda is in leopard print, gold and blue stars and the tiger stripe pattern is my sister’s horse Gabriel
Horse Head Mask
Remember the mysterious Horse Boy that appeared in Google Street View? Here’s your chance to join in on the fun. Get thee a Horse Head Mask ($24.95) from the NeatoShop and wait around the street corner for the Google Street View car to drive by!
Link | More Gag Gifts and Pranks
Tiny Foal
At three days old, a pinto stallion at Tiz Miniature Horse Farm in Barnstead, New Hampshire weighted only six pounds and was only 14 inches tall. His was named Einstein.
His tiny proportions may be more suitable for a human baby, but they are tiny for a horse, even a miniature breed like Einstein.
Dr Rachel Wagner, Einstein’s co-owner, claims the Guinness Book of Records lists the smallest newborn horse as weighing just 9lbs.
Breeders say that unlike the current record holder, Thumbelina, Einstein shows no signs of dwarfism – he is just a tiny horse.
See more pictures at The Daily Mail. Link -via Fark
Old Spice’s Manmercials
[YouTube Clip] – via reddit
Old Spice has recently released a series of Manmercials, nonsensically funny 30-second ads for its new body wash, with the following messages:
"We’re not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it."
"Don’t smell like sunsets and baby powder. Smell like jet fighters and punching."
"What’s better than seeing a hot girl on a beach? Nothing. Nothing is better. Maybe nachos. A hot girl lying on nachos. But that’s impossible. "
Now that’s advertising! And by the way, I’m on a horse.
A Variable Horse-Drawn Trainer
Image: Kurtsystems
For centuries, people have trained race horses by making them pull heavy weights. But after Mehmet Kurt lost a horse due to overtraining, he decided to create a training vehicle that was safer and could be adjusted for individual training needs. Natalie Avon writes in Popular Science:
The horse isn’t pulling the four-and-a-half-ton, $427,000 vehicle. Rather, the vehicle keeps pace with the animal, and trainers fit the horse with equipment such as an electrocardiogram machine, oxygen masks and movement sensors to monitor its performance. They can then subtly regulate the horse’s speed for optimal training.
Link via Popular Science
How to Make a Horse Go Faster
After winning a horse race, the glory usually goes to the horse instead of the jockey. But the jockey makes a world of difference. A new study from the Royal Veterinary College in London says that how a jockey positions himself on a horse has a lot to do with how fast the horse runs. Bioengineer Thilo Pfau explains the physics.
Any “jockey-plus-horse system,” as the researchers call the racehorse-and-rider team, will start off essentially the same as any other: a combined mass of roughly 1,100 lb. (500 kg) of living flesh, with the horse representing about 87% of the total weight and the jockey making up the rest. One key to speed will be how lightly the horse can carry that 13% load. The investigators found that the horse’s back oscillates up and down about 6 in. (150 mm) throughout its stride, and fore and aft about 4 in. (100 mm). The jockey moves too — up and down through a cycle of 2.3 in. (60 mm), and fore and aft just 0.8 in. (20 mm). That small motion makes a very big difference.
“Whether the jockey is sitting in the saddle or not, the horse still has to carry his weight,” Spence says. “But by absorbing the jiggles of the horse, the jockey prevents the animal from having to make him go up and down with each stride. It’s the difference between the horse carrying a moving rider or simply a quantity of lead that weighs the same.” The crouched position the jockey assumes throughout pays an additional dividend by minimizing wind resistance.
In physics, however, nothing comes for free, and as the horse’s workload goes down, the jockey’s goes up. “The jockey’s legs oscillate in length while transmitting a vertical force,” the researchers wrote, “resulting in substantial mechanical work.”
That in itself should qualify a winning jockey as a champion athlete as well as the horse he rode in on. Link -Thanks, Alyson!
(image credit: Eadweard Muybridge)
Horse Couture: Dirndl Dress for Horses
Bavarian designer Hildegard Bergbauer usually creates dirndl dresses for women, but she has recently branched out to other species like cats, dogs … and even horses!
She said she was inspired to create the outfits by watching stage shows as a youngster. ‘The animals appeared on stage with little handbags and hats,’ she added.
‘It was a sight that I’ll never forget and an experience that has shaped me. The idea has gone down really well. People think it’s a lot of fun.’
Link | More pics at Oddly Enough blog (Photo: Reuters/Alexandra Beier)
Mustachioed Horse
I can’t grow facial hair even if my life depended on it. Thanks to weak genetics, the most I’ve ever grown were mere stubbles, even after a week or two of not shaving.
And I think most horses share my predicament (or luck, depending your point of view) except for this one: Alfie, a 10-year-old Shire cross, not only has a ‘stache … he’s also very proud of it!
The moustache may look somewhat incongruous given its fair colour compared to his black and white colouring and well-meaning staff thought he would rather be without it.
However Alfie clearly enjoys the look and groom Justine Greenslade said all efforts to clip it had been in vain. "He’s obviously rather proud of his facial hair," she said. "He runs a mile if he thinks we’re going to trim it."
Link (Photo: Eyecatch Pictures)
Supermodels of the Equine World
Photo: Julian Wolkenstein
We’ve featured the artwork of photographer Julian Wolkenstein before on Neatorama, but I couldn’t resist his latest artwork, a collaboration with hairstylist Acacio da Silva to turn horses into the supermodels of the equine world:
‘Each horse took around four hours to groom, with hair extensions being added by Acacio,’ he said.
‘Then, when they were presented in front of the camera, they would shake their heads, give a neigh and then ruffle up their hair.
‘To get them with their hair all set and standing to attention was a bit of a battle. But the horses loved the grooming.’
Mural Mosaic: Fantastic Mural Created From Hundreds of Original Paintings
Mural Mosaic is a project at the Town of Cochrane, Canada, where hundreds of original paintings by artists are combined into a giant mural.
The idea for the project came from artist Lewis Lavoie, who created the first Mural Mosaic by assembling scores of his own personal paintings into the face of Michelangelo’s David (previously on Neatorama here). Since then, he has created the master image and designate panels to individual artists (with some color and shape guidelines – but the artists are free to create as they desire).
This one above is their latest, "Le Cadeau du Cheval / The Horse Gift" (2008), which is composed of individual paintings of famous horses.
Link – via holeinthedonut
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by baweibel.
9(unknown*no*no*1)&guid=ON){kind=small}
