How Many Legs Does A Horse Have?

I was out in the field tending to my horses with my kids the other day, and they’re all at that stage where they just constantly question everything and are infinitely curious about everything.

That day, they started asking all sorts of questions about the horses, and one that seemed nonsensical at first was actually a really interesting question.

My son asked me, how many legs does a horse have?

Well, how many legs does a horse have?

A horse has four legs. Horses are quadrupeds, meaning two front legs and two rear legs. There is an old joke about a horse having five legs, ‘Jack and the five-legged horse’, in which Jack’s uncle asks how many legs a horse has if I call its tail a leg —the answer is still four!

There’s nothing all that complicated about it, then.

Horses are born with four legs, and calling their tail a leg doesn’t give them extra legs.

They only ever have four legs.

Some horses from legend have more, like Odin’s Sleipnir of Norse mythology who has 8. For the most part, though, horses are quadrupeds.

Let’s look at horse legs in more detail.

What are horses’ legs called?

Horses’ legs on the whole have no special name.

There isn’t any terminology related specifically to a horse’s extremities—even hooves are not unique to horses, though horseshoes might be.

Horse legs really share the same name that any quadrupedal creature does.

However, the individual parts do have some interesting names you may not be familiar with.

The whole, muscular back area of the hind legs is called the hindquarters—hind, of course, meaning behind.

The part of their legs which meets the buttock muscle is called the stifle, and the top part of the leg is called the gaskin.

Above the hoof you have the pastern, above that the fetlock (like an ankle), the cannon and the hock, which make up the lower half of the actual leg.

The front legs-or forelegs-have a couple of different words associated with them.

They are actually referred to as if they’re arms.

The top half of their forelegs is their forearm, and the top of the joint is the elbow.

Equally, on the front, horses have knees—joints which bend forward. The hind legs do not work in the same way.

Not many of these terms are totally exclusive to horses, but it does give you an idea of all the different names and terminology associated with horse legs.

Are horse legs actually fingers?

This is actually a more common question than you might think, and there has been an ongoing debate about whether or not horses have fingers for quite a while.

The simple answer is no, horse legs are not really fingers—they’re just legs!

They might be a bit different from ours, but they’re still legs.

Horses have extremities that can be considered akin to our fingers, but they are much more like toes or a foot than fingers.

The whole leg is certainly not a finger, since horses don’t even have hands to begin with.

Horses do not have fingers in any practical sense, as we would understand them.

They just have extremities that have a rough counterpart in our own body.

Why are horses killed after breaking a leg?

One thing about horse legs that many are familiar with from having watched big racing events is that horses, racehorses in particular, are often euthanized if they break their leg during a race.

Often, the same is true of many workhorses.

This is simply because there are not many treatment options available for horses with broken legs.

The average horse needs to support about 250 pounds on each leg, so it’s really important that every leg can take a full load.

Sitting out for a few months while the leg heals just often isn’t an option.

The horse would build up other problems over that time with the lack of exercise.

It is also often an issue of being as humane as possible. Horses that have broken one or more legs are going to be in tremendous amounts of pain, and there’s not much you can to do relieve it quickly.

For that reason, most are just euthanized.

Why does a horse have 6 legs?

Not to end on a sour note, let’s look at one other question that kids are often asking—why does a horse have six legs?

Because it has two legs at the back and forelegs at the front!

For whatever reason, jokes about how many legs a horse has abound, and are more common than you might’ve expected.

For whatever reason, then, there are plenty of jokes around about how many legs horses have.

They have four, though, despite Norse mythology and a lot of these famous jokes.

Horse legs are really important to their overall health, since a big animal like that has a lot of weight to support.

Looking after your horse’s leg health is really important, then, so you should always be careful to check them for any sign of injury.