The strongest animals on earth are plant eaters. Every creature we’ve enlisted to do the work we couldn’t handle – the horse, donkey, elephant, camel, water buffalo, ox, yak – is an herbivore… whose huge muscles were built from plant protein, and whose strong bones got that way, and stayed that way, from grazing on grass and eating other vegetables.
The horse has long been considered livestock almost everywhere in the world. This does not prevent individuals from enjoying their horses as companion animals. It is estimated that horses have been domesticated long ago and used by humans for transportation, agricultural work and meat production for more than 5000 years. All of the nowadays known 200-300 different horse breeds descend from the Przewalski Horse, but have developed very differently through breeding and adaption to their respective habitat.
More than a sixth of the almost 60 million horses worldwide live in the United States (around 10 million), followed by Mexico, China and Brazil. The highest horse-to-human-ration anywhere in the world is in Iceland, which is home to the Icelandic horse, one of the oldest and purest breeds anywhere in the world, where you have around one horse for four inhabitants.
