Guide
Horse
The horse is a large domestic grazer, and its droppings — the round, fibrous balls sometimes called road apples — are a familiar sight anywhere horses are kept or ridden.
Identifying the droppings
- Droppings are large rounded balls, dropped several at once in a loose cluster.
- They are full of coarse, undigested plant fibre — grass and hay pass through only partly broken down.
- Fresh piles are greenish-brown and fibrous, drying to a paler, strawy mass.
- Pastures, stables, farm tracks, and bridleways are the obvious places to see them.
In the field
Horses are hindgut fermenters, which is why their droppings are so visibly fibrous compared with the finer dung of cattle. A loose cluster of large fibrous balls on a track or pasture is unmistakably horse.
The main confusion is with other large grazers. Cow dung tends to be a wet flat pat rather than distinct balls, so shape alone often separates the two. Farmland and grassland context plus the domestic setting point to horse.
Game facts
- Class
- Mammal
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Habitat
- Grassland, Farmland
- Region
- Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, Oceania
- Typical adult weight
- 500 kg
- Typical body length
- 2.4 m
- Activity
- Active by day
- Social pattern
- Often in groups
- Conservation
- Not evaluated / domestic
- Puzzle photos
- 7
In the game
Horse can look close to other large herbivores in the grid, so read habitat and the domesticated context carefully.
Similar guesses
Cow Moose Donkey
Photo sources
Image credits are shown after each puzzle to avoid spoiling the answer.
- Horse dung in Gamla stan, Stockholm - hestemøkk på brostein - Holmstad 2015.JPGØyvind Holmstad · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Horse droppings City of London Cemetery, Newham, England 1.jpgAcabashi · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Horse manure J1.JPGJamain · CC BY-SA 3.0