HORSE

The horse is my favourite animal. I love horses, because they are very fast and beautiful animals. Horses usually live in farms or in free spaces. They are mammals. There are horses of a lot of colours: brown, black, white, white and dark brown...and so on, and there are horses of different races too.The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today. Horses have got one peculiar characteristic : they are able to sleep both standing up ans lying down. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for approximately 11 months, and a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. They reach full adult development by age five, and have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years. The horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories: spirited "hot bloods" with speed and endurance; "cold bloods", such as draft horses and some ponies, suitable for slow, heavywork; and "warmbloods", developed from crosses between hot bloods and cold bloods, often focusing on creating breeds for specific riding purposes, particulary in Europe. There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, developed for many different uses. Horses are herbivores, they  usually eat grass, they are adapted to grazing. In an adult horse, there are 12 incisors at the front of the mouth, adapted to biting off the grass or the vegetation. Horses and humans interact in a wide variety of sport competitions and non-competitive recreational pursuits, as well as in working activities such as police work, agriculture, entertainment, and therapy. Horses were historically used in warfare, for riding and driving people, using many different styles of equipment and methods of control. Many products are derieved from horses, incluiding meat, hide, hair, bone, and pharmaceuticals extracted from the urine of pregnant mares. Humans provide domesticated horses with food, water and shelter, as well as attention from specialists such as veterinarians and farries. That is why I love horses.