The Appaloosa horse
Appaloosas customarily have a mottled (or 'spotty') coat, pale sclera (the part of the eye around the cornea) and vertically striped hooves.
The background of this distinctive horse is not completely understood. There is evidence that spotted horses were living in a good many nations in Asia, and historians have found cave pictures which have been dated to 18000BC showing spotty horses that might be forefathers of the modern appaloosa. It is possible that the mottled coat was first a form of camouflage, much as the stripes on a zebra.
The modern-day Appaloosa descends from horses shipped to Mexico and the u.s. by conquistadors. These were passed on to the Indigenous people known as the 'nez perce', who cleverly turned them into the extraordinary horses that we know and love at the present time.
This wonderful horse was initially known as the "Palouse horse", although slowly the name was changed into the modern-day version, "Appaloosa".
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