The Horses Line of Sight

Today I’ll be writing more about the horse’s eyes, more specifically there line of sight, see rough diagram above of the horses line of sight. As you can see the horse can see nearly all the way around it’s self but has a blind spot behind and just in front of the face. Because of the blind spot in front of the face when you walk straight up to a horse you will disappear from the horses sight, most horses will move there head to keep you in there sight or perhaps step backwards to bring you back into sight.

If you approach a horse from an angle it will keep you in their view, this is also the way to approach a horse to show you are a friend. If you are far away from a horse some may turn their head to catch you with both eyes, you should be able to see where both eyes meet, on my diagram, when a horse uses two eyed vision it is binocular view.

Now if we return to the blind spot in front of the horses face. The blind spot is about six feet in front of the horse, but of course you have to take into consideration where the horse eyes are set on the horse. The blind spot can affect the horse when jumping as most horses must jump from the memory of the jump, so if they lose focus or become distracted in some way you may find your horse runs straight into the jump because they forgot when to jump. But with all that said the position of the horses head and the setting of the eyes can all play a part in it.

Anyway that’s it on the horses line of sight for now, I hope you found this interesting if so you can click the link to read one of my older posts with more about the horses eye.

Eye of the Horse

Don’t horses have such big, loving eyes? Well yes they do have big eyes maybe not loving but BIG! So big that the horse has the largest eyes of all land mammals. The horse’s eyes are set on the sides of its head this allows it about a 350 degree range of vision, with something like 65 of that being binocular vision and the rest being monocular vision, all this provides the horse with a good chance of spotting predators.

Horses have a high proportion of rods to cones in their eyes, they also have a tapetum lucidum, the tapetum lucidum is a layer of tissue that lies behind or in the retina, it reflects light back through the retina, this gives the photoreceptors more light, and improves low-light vision to the horse. But horses are not as adjustable to sudden changes in light, such as going from the paddock in to a dark stable.

Most horses have dark brown eyes, but that doesn’t mean they all have to have them, the most recognized different colour is normally blue, but horses can have hazel, amber, or even green eyes. Anyway that’ll about do it on horse eyes for now, maybe a bit more sometime later.

Thank you all for the comments on my last post.

Sherri, thanks for the link I am now following that blog, and yes they do some crazy things with their lips but it sure is funny to see.

Abby, that is why horses are great because they will almost always get on in the end, and yes it really is nice to see Pip and Murphy sharing with one another.

Autumn Mist, it’s good for Pip that they are all so good with him, when Murphy was put in with Niko and Madeline for the first time Madeline kicked Murphy, and knocked him on his side he couldn’t get up for a bit because she had winded him.