Friday, December 11, 2009

Horses are Scared of Rabbits

At Northlands Park Wednesday several rabbits were in the infield. This spooked one of the horses, and he took a tumble, sending driver Debbie Manning to the track. She injured her shoulder. They are kind of tough to see in the video (it is just before the quarter), but here it is.




"I could see (Last Chance Buddy) get scared of the rabbit," explained Manning. "He jumped straight sideways."

Sometimes watching these horses on television as bettors we do not get an appreciation of how they are flight animals. If something is out of whack, they get scared. A laymen might say "to be scared of a rabbit as a 1100 pound horse? It does not make sense." Smart horse folks tell us that it sure does make sense.

That got me thinking about the classic Mythbusters episode where they tested the "are elephants really scared of mice" question. I was astounded at this piece. Quite entertaining, and I don't blame our equine friends at all for being scared of a bunny after watching this.

2 comments:

Stacky said...

Always love reading your blog, its more about the love of racing than the betting like the rest of us.
Recently I started to take notice of some of the truely beautiful race courses around the world be it the big spectacular types to the little regional courses in gorgeous settings. I was thinking of hunting down photos of some of the gorgeous race tracks around the world and wondered if you could suggest a few that you know of.
Cheers
Mike

Ann said...

WhoTheHeck,

If you get a chance, check out The Dresden File back in July this year (http://thedresdenfile.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html). There were a series of racetracks featured, each unique and spectacular in their own way. Good luck finding all the beautiful tracks.

Regards,
Ann

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