Do Horses Have Arms? (Answered!)

While out tending my horses with my son the other day, we got into a conversation about what exactly is the strict definition of an ‘arm’.

Don’t ask why—this is just the kind of conversations we like to have!

In any case, he was trying to suggest that you could call the forelegs of any animal an arm, since they are the equivalent of our arms—just serving a different function.

Well, I wasn’t sure about any of that, but nonetheless, I did decide to look into the question.

So, do horses have arms?

No, horses don’t have arms by any ordinary reckoning. While their forelegs and back legs don’t necessarily act in exactly the same way, they are all limbs used for movement. Our arms are not for movement for manipulating things in the environment. Horses do not have arms—they are quadrupedal, four-legged.

You can come up with your own interpretation of a horse’s limbs if you really want to, but the simple answer to the question is that no, horses do not have arms.

They have four legs, used purely for moving around.

Let’s look into this further.

Do horses have legs or arms?

Horses, categorically, have legs.

They have four legs, two on the front and two on the back.

Any animal that walks on four feet is considered to have four legs, and its forelegs are never called arms.

Doing so would obfuscate the meaning of the term arms, so let’s quickly establish a useful distinction between arms and legs.

Legs are how a creature locomotes.

They are how they move from one place to another place.

Horse, clearly, use all four of their extremities to walk around—even unable to really walk on their hindlegs at all, unlike other, smaller quadrupeds.

Arms are an extremity not used primarily for movement but for manipulation of the environment and for gripping.

Obviously, we use our hands to manipulate objects and grip things.

Other primates are similar, and use their upper arms primarily for interacting with things.

They may walk on them occasionally, but they are only supports to the back legs.

So, with this distinction in mind, it’s easy to see why horses do not have arms but legs.

They have four extremities which they use exclusively for locomotion and nothing else.

Still, the question is asked of how many they have. Let’s look at that quickly.

How many arms do horses have?

Again, by strict scientific definitions, they don’t have any arms.

They have four legs.

Again, remember the term quadruped—meaning, having four legs.

If you really wanted to, for your own purposes, you could think of their forelegs as their two arms.

Again, though, they don’t really do anything with their arms that could be considered manipulation of the environment, and they certainly don’t have gripping fingers or hands.

So, horses do not have any arms—they have four legs.

What about hands, though?

Is it possible for a creature with no arms to have hands?

Do horses have hands?

You will probably not be surprised to hear that no, horses do not have hands.

Again, arms and hands are about gripping and manipulating things.

If a horse wants to grip or manipulate something, it will have to use its mouth.

This is the only way it can grip something.

Scientifically defined hands are actually extremely rare in the animal kingdom, and one of the reasons that we have been so successful and built such complex societies.

Our hands are able to manipulate to such a minute degree that we were able to build tools and civilisation.

Hands, as such, are only really found in other primates.

Do horses have toes?

Yes! Horses do indeed have toes, although it can be hard to think of a hoof as one giant toe.

But that is what they are—each hoof is one big toe.

So, in that way, horses have four toes.

One hoof on each foot.

They don’t have arms or hands of any kind, and you may never have thought of their hoof as a toe—but that’s what they are!

It’s more like a giant, hard toe nail, than an actual toe.

But it is, nonetheless, a toe.

This is the final nail in the coffin of the question of do horses have arms—you can’t have toes at the end of an arm!

Horses have four legs, then. It’s as simple as that, and there’s really no need to make it any more complicated.

The simplest way of looking at it is that legs are for movement and propulsion, arms are for manipulating and gripping.

Though you might look at any two mammalian skeletons as simply being stretched out versions of the same thing, when it comes to our arms and a horse’s legs, there simply is no comparison.

Horses do not have arms, no matter what anyone says.