How Many Ribs Does A Horse Have?

I was out riding my horse the other day, and usually, my mind wanders to all sorts of places while I’m out there.

This was my first time back out after I fractured a rib playing football, and it occurred to me that when I ride my horse,

I’m essentially sitting on its rib cage.

I’d learned during my treatment about how many ribs humans have, so now I was wondering about how many ribs horses have.

I had absolutely no idea, so when I got back, I decided to look into it.

So, how many ribs does a horse have?

Horses have 18, or sometimes 19, pairs of ribs; they have 8 pairs of true ribs and 10 pairs of false ribs. Sometimes, horses can also have floating ribs and these are often unpaired, occurring on only one side. So, horse ribcages can vary quite a lot!

The vast majority of humans are born with 12 pairs of ribs for a total of 24 individual ribs.

Horses have 18 pairs, typically, so 36 total ribs.

Ribcages can vary a bit, and certainly a lot more in horses than in humans.

So, let’s look at the question in more detail.

What is a true rib?

What is up with this distinction, then, between true and false ribs?

Well, it does not mean that you have fake ribs that aren’t doing anything, and the same is true of horses.

Humans do have false and true ribs as well, as do most mammals.

A true rib is the most important part of the ribcage, and these are the ribs that directly articulate with the sternum, via their coastal cartilages.

The sternum is the central bone in the ribcage which runs vertically down the front of your chest, which essentially hold the ribcage together.

In horses, the first 8 pairs of ribs are true ribs, and the ones that connect directly with the sternum.

Their essential composition is more or less the same; a long, thin, round bone connected to the spine at the top and the sternum at the bottom.

This is the main thing to remember about true ribs; they are the ones that connect directly to the sternum.

What is a false rib?

False ribs, as you might be able to guess, do not have a direct connection with the sternum.

In humans, this is the last five pairs of ribs towards the bottom.

In horses, they have ten pairs of false ribs after only eight pairs of true ribs.

In a horse, the sternum ends at the eighth pair of true ribs.

After this, all the ribs do not have any direct coastal cartilage connection to the sternum, but appear to simply hang loose, connected to the spine at the top but nothing at the bottom.

As I said, horses have ten pairs of false ribs compared to our five, simply because they have a bigger, longer ribcage.

So this is the distinction between true and false ribs.

They’re all ribs, and none of them are ‘fake’, it’s just about how they connect to the rest of the skeleton.

If they’re true ribs, they connect to the sternum and the spine; if they’re false, it’s only to the spine.

How many ribs does a horse have in total?

So, then, the average horse has a total of 18 or 19 pairs of ribs.

The first 8 pairs are true ribs, which have cartilage connections to the sternum underneath.

The next 10 pairs are all false, getting progressively shorter down the length of the horse’s body.

This is the average amount, though there is variation.

Many horses have individual floating ribs, which are not even paired.

They can also have floating paired ribs.

So, there can be a lot of difference, but in general I terms of individual ribs, a horse will have somewhere from 36-40 individual ribs.

This includes their true and false ribs, and any potential floating ribs that occur at the back.

Why do Arabian horses have one less rib?

Some breeds of horse have even fewer than the typical horse, and the Arabian horse is a good example of this.

If a horse has a shorter body length, as many do, there won’t be enough space or need for the same number of ribs.

You might think that they would have the same amount but, perhaps, scaled down.

But, no, smaller horses like Arabian horses simply have a smaller number of ribs.

Arabian horses typically have 17 ribs instead of the usual 18, and even have a higher tail bone which is also missing a bone most other horses tend to have.

The amount of ribs a horse has is really dependent on its size, then, as smaller breeds will have fewer and larger breeds are likely to have more.

Ribs are bit more complicated than you might imagine, then.

You have multiple types of rib bone that serve multiple functions, and in horses you tend to have a lot more variation between individuals than you do in humans.

This makes it hard to put an exact number on it, but the best rule of thumb is to say that horses have 18 pairs of ribs.