Killer Horses
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 1st, 2011
Can the supposed even-tempered equines be meat-eaters? Are they misunderstood? There is a new book out that challenges your notions of My Friend Flicka!
Have you heard of Deadly Equines?
There is widespread belief in a warm and comforting story which states the horse is a gentle herbivore. What if a Rosetta Stone had been found to unlock the dark secrets of the horse’s past?
An international multi-million dollar industry serviced by horse whisperers, glossy magazines and popular culture preaches that horses are meek prey animals who fear predators. What if evidence demonstrated horses have slain lions, tigers, pumas, wolves, hyenas and humans?
Contemporary writers have successfully airbrushed murderous and meat-eating horses out of literature. What if Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes and Steve McQueen provided artistic evidence to refute that claim?
Thanks to global equestrian amnesia, the crucial role played by horses in recent history has been lost to mankind. What if testimony revealed meat-eating horses had been used to explore the Poles and photographs had been discovered of Tibet’s blood-eating horses?
Deadly Equines is a revolutionary departure from equestrian romance. It is a fact-filled analysis which reveals how humanity has known about meat-eating horses for at least four thousand years, during which time horses have consumed nearly two dozen different types of protein, including human flesh, and that these episodes have occurred on every continent, including Antarctica.
Various sources of corroborating data, including legends, literature, cinema, news stories, scientific reports and eyewitness accounts are presented for the reader’s investigation. None of these items had been hidden. They were ignored, misinterpreted or, in some cases, censored.
The result is the first exploration of the horse’s hidden history, an alternative equestrian world populated by forgotten facts, overlooked evidence and astonishing stories. Amply illustrated, and containing a map of occurrences, this study challenges the reader to develop a new understanding of the horse, one based upon reason, not fantasy.
Deadly Equines was published this Spring by The Long Riders’ Guild Press. Actually, are we to deduce something from the publishing date? It is April 1st, 2011!
Thanks to Chad Arment for the news.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
This makes me think of the Greek myth of the Mares of Diomedes, 4 horses that ate human flesh. I’m guessing that myth will be in this book.
I’ve seen a doc on television once, a Mysteries magic and Miracles episode I think, where it showed that some deer populations on tiny Scottish isles hunted and killed birds in order to chew their bones to get certain vitamins or such that they couldn’t get from the native vegetation. Cows are also said to chew bones for similar reasons.
I know of one horse from family stories that ate burgers. Perhaps the legend is real. However I would like to investigate this book to make sure it isn’t something akin to world weekly news or that satire “a natural history of the unnatural world”.
Horses can be dangerous, but meat-eaters? Horses have flat, grinding teeth, not tearing fangs and a long digestive system designed to extract as much nutrition out of plants as possible – carnivores have short digestive tracts. Sometimes animals will eat unusual things in the event of severe nutritional shortfalls, but this sounds very far-fetched and sensationalist to me.
April Fool?
Many herbivorous animals will take in meat on occasion. There are accounts of deer, cows, hippos and even elephants eating flesh.
Kelpies! 🙂
Horses are beautiful animals but they are not to be toyed with. They can easily brain a person, dog or bear with their hooves and you are taught from a young age to NOT approach them from behind.
I recall Alexander the Great had a horse that was known to be a killer I think his name was Bucephalus or something along those lines. And I do remember a documented event during the war where an elephant killed and consumed part of a human, supposedly it was to get at the phosphorus in her bones. And both Alicia and Hapa are correct, many wild animals will chew on bones in order to consume minerals that they need but aren’t found in a strictly herbivore diet. Zoo and farm animals tend to have these ‘vitamin powders’ added directly to their feed.
this is blowing my mind…. when i was a kid i thought that i had watched a t.v. show on the Lippizaner stallions that briefly mentioned that they had been, not presently necessarily but in recent centuries, fed meat to make them more aggressive and intelligent.
I have tried to find mention of this as an adult but found none so i chalked it up to a mistaken memory. I wonder of this book will clear that up? hehe
“Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes and Steve McQueen … provide ….evidence”. Intereting line-up, and last time I checked, one of them was a fictional character who has during his career battled Martians, so that should be interesting evidence!
Sherlock Holmes also teamed-up with a certain English noblemen who was also the ruler of a group of sentient West African anthropoid apes…
Agree with flame821 – horses are powerful animals, and are to be respected. They CAN easily kill a human with just one kick, and can also savage nastily with their choppers.
In the late 70s – early 80s, I was a thoroughbred horse racing nut. As I learned about these beautiful animals and their colorful history, I came across stories about certain stallions that were downright dangerous animals, and had to be handled with extreme caution. Bold Bidder, a son of Bold Ruler (who is most famous for siring the great Secretariat) and Foolish Pleasure were well known for their quite nasty dispositions.
On a personal note, I can relate the following: In my 25+ years in the motor fuels/heating fuels business, I delivered fuels to almost every kind of business imaginable, and to more than a few horse farms. One rather large standardbred farm was entered and exited through a horseshoe shaped drive which took me and my fuel delivery truck past three separate paddocks. The fuel tanks that I filled were not far from the first paddock. Whenever I parked my truck there to drop the fuel, the horse in that paddock would RUN to the far end of his enclosure and stay there till I was gone.
However, I would have to drive my truck past the next paddock in order to pick up payment at a barn on the opposite end of the ‘horseshoe’. When I did, the horse in that paddock would aggressively follow my truck as I drove past with his ears pinned back, lunging toward my truck viciously trying to savage the truck as I drove by. Even though I was quite safe up in my cab, I always found this to be quite unnerving – this was one guy who was not to be messed with!
So while I agree that horses can be dangerous, the part about them being carnivorous is tough to swallow [no pun intended]. I don’t doubt that there have been instances of this sort of behavior, but such are probably aberrant and isolated.