Here’s the link:
http://www.videozer.com/video/q4rqhW
This was on TV over here last week. It was amazing. It’s a necropsy on a TB racehorse.
Terri
“GAP even made a good point about the heels”… :lol: my aren’t you sweet. I agree with parts of the rest of your post though. :winkgrin:
NO way is TB just about the “outside”, ie type and refinement. Anyone who says that doesn’t know their a$$cot from their elbow, and of course I’ve read that on this forum. lol
Without seeing the video I can tell you that TB’s athletic ability doesn’t just come from lung capacity, but that whole X factor/ large heart thing is pretty helpful too.
btw Terri, I just have to put you on ignore. Sorry but you just annoy the cr@p out of me.
Well look it no matter what you think of me, it was a good point and one that needs mentioning.
Yeah and completely agree with the last sentence!
Terri
Oh also wanted to mention. I so want to wrap legs up all the time now, LOL! But in always saying things like wraps won’t keep a tendon protected. Well yes, but if you can prevent a strike on the back of tendon, it truly helps. When that thing snaps, holy crap. But the tendon is also 30’s stronger than a steel spring. And my goodness can it do some stretching on that big body.
Terri
You really do need to watch the video; there is a good part about horse evolution and general anatomy and biomechanics that applies to all horses.
One statistic that I found almost incredible is that 12 Billion pounds are wagered on the horses each year. They didn’t say if that was worldwide or just UK; if the latter it’s even more amazing.
The show, after a bit of introduction, opens with talk about the dissection of Eclipse back around 1800 in front of his actual skeleton. They also show just a bit of the anatomist’s drawings and measurements. Then they take you into the dissection chamber and start breaking down various functions.
First major part is the biomechanics of the legs. They show how the biceps muscle is filled with tendon which makes it incredibly strong and then show how it flexes and then springs back to flaccidity to allow the front limbs to move with incredible speed. I thinks that’s where the biomechanics guy mentions that the tendon tissue is 30 times stronger than a steel spring. Then they remove the whole front leg and put it in a contraption that puts pressure on the lower leg similar to the pressures at the various gaits. When the fetlock is literally parallel to the ground, the horse would be galloping with tendons stretched tight and actually pulling the cannon bone into an arc shape. At that pressure, the show host nicked the back of the lower leg with a scalpel and the tendon literally exploded. They then do a computer reconstruction showing how the tendons and muscles work like a pogo stick. Next, I think, is the bit about the hoof; they say that concussion makes the whole hoof wall spread out and the heel, being younger tissue, spreads out the most to cushion the shock.
They have an evolutionary dude who shows how the horse went from several fingers to just one over 30 million years. And then they talk a bit about how human selective breeding mucks up evolution because it can breed in traits that would be detrimental to survival in the wild. The show kept mentioning that the TB, because of its very light and long legs for speed is at the edge of evolutionary viability. They said that 2 of every thousand break down in racing, and most of the breakdowns are fractures of these long, light bones.
Next major part is a visit to Coolmore and a view of Yeats breeding a mare.
Then they go into the breathing apparatus. They showed how the lungs run from the front of the chest all the way back to the croup. They inflated the lungs to show capacity, and talked about how the lungs inflate and deflate in accord with the stride, with the stomach and rest of the gut acting as a piston against the diaphragm to help force in more air. Then they showed how the soft palate can collapse to block the trachea. Seeing how that worked was very interesting. The breathing rate at high speed was given, and IIRC it was well over 150 times per minute, but I’ve forgotten the exact rate that they talked about.
The TB heart was compared to a cows heart. It is enormous in comparison–looked to be 4 or 5 times bigger. The heart rate goes from a low of 25 beats a minute resting up to about 225 beats per minute in extreme activity, so it’s pushing all the oxygen from the huge lung capacity into the bloodstream to oxygenate the muscles at hiher work loads. Then they showed the enormous spleen which acts as a reservoir to store red blood cells in less strenuous activity but is compressed and releases those blood cells into the blood stream at higher levels of activity.
I THINK that’s all that they talked about as far as anatomy and biomechanics are concerned.
Another thought that came back to me was that the adaptions for speed were compared to greyhounds and cheetahs, who are also built long and light. But the horse weighs half a ton or more compared to their 60 pounds or so.
GAP, you really ought to get over your distaste for dissection and watch the video. 
But if you can’t, does this summary do what you wanted?
Edited to add that the last expert they talked to (for about ten seconds) was Emmeline Hill, the Irish geneticist, who says they have found the genes not only for the difference between stamina and speed in the TB but also for the difference between racers who will be elite and those who will be “normal”. I’ll be interested in reading that paper when it’s published.
The theme of the program was “What makes a champion?”
I didn’t like letting myself down because someone else, who has never met me, really dislikes me. Rest assured I did not say anything about lung function equals athletic ability. Those who read my comments before I went to be can confirm. No need for ignore as I won’t be here anymore. I can’t even agree with somebody and have them not attack me.
All the best people
Terri
Take colic and laminitis out of the mix and the horse is a pretty amazing beast. God doesn’t make any mistakes but if given the chance I would have to ask him about the nerve that runs to the left side of the flap.
As an aside, I don’t really understand what you guys are fighting about.
Thank you vineyridge! Yes, excellent summary. Thank you for taking the time to type it out.
(Laurierace I just think a time-out is needed. :))
God doesn’t make any mistakes but if given the chance I would have to ask him about the nerve that runs to the left side of the flap.
Which nerve are you talking about?
The video is amazing and I didn’t find the disection gross at all. I find surgery hard to watch due to all the blood but there wasn’t a lot of blood in this. They take the intestines out and I was amazed at how clean they look. Huge pipes.
The horse is a pretty amazing piece of engineering. I had no idea they were standing on a “finger”. I had read about it but having it explained was much more ‘real’.
That was a fascinating show, thanks for putting up the link! (not for the squeamish though!)
OP the low heel, long toe has broken down more horses probably than anything else. Trainers still buy into this old wives tail despite scientific evidence to the contrary. If you look at some of these trainer listings you can see some horrid farrier work too (in addition to the lh, lt). Not sure if they are really that bad or just don’t care but I’ve seen horses that I wonder how they haven’t broken down already just because every foot is a different length, angle, etc!
The most amazing thing to me was how much tension the tendons and ligaments create and then the opposing forces placed on the Cannon bone and Sesamoids. With the tendons pulling across the Sesamoids and at either end of the Cannon bone basically drawing it like a hunters bow. Just amazing we don’t see more injuries vs less.
The whole time they were loading that leg and when you could literally watch the cannon bone start to bow… I was waiting for it to explode like a dry branch.
Thanks Viney for your explanations, I also have difficulties with dissection…
[QUOTE=back in the saddle;5859204]
Which nerve are you talking about?
The video is amazing and I didn’t find the disection gross at all. I find surgery hard to watch due to all the blood but there wasn’t a lot of blood in this. They take the intestines out and I was amazed at how clean they look. Huge pipes.
The horse is a pretty amazing piece of engineering. I had no idea they were standing on a “finger”. I had read about it but having it explained was much more ‘real’.[/QUOTE]
I don’t know what it’s called but the nerve to the left side of their flap in their throat runs all the way down their left foreleg and back up to the flap so is easily damaged by an injury to that left leg. The nerve to the right side does not go down the leg. That is why when you hear a horse has a partially paralyzed flap it is inevitably paralyzed on the left.
Thank you for posting the link Equilibrium, and viney, thank you for the synopsis (I can’t watch it either).
There was a documentary on NOVA a few years ago about Thoroughbreds (and except for the breakdown on the track) it was fascinating and also moving. I think it was called A Magic Way of Going.
To me, they are the crown of creation.
Terri, GAP - I have no idea what happened between you, but you are both valued members of this BB, and I know I am not speaking just for myself, we would miss you both very much…
I second the thank you for posting the link, Equilibrium. That was extremely fascinating and insightful. Turns out, the only time I had to watch it was while eating lunch-- good thing I’ve got a strong stomache! 
I need to go back and see if they offer a DVD or video copy for American devices. That would definitely be an invaluable addition to my library.
Hard to watch but fascinating. Thank you for posting the clip.
Yep. And doesn’t it take a weird route around the heart as well?
People have a couple similar nerves that just don’t make sense.
All because evolution is weird, and those nerves were originally “built” for fish and simple critters.
Fascinating documentary! I think the worst for me was the tendon… oh my! I could just imagine it breaking in a race. Really interesting and not gory at all. But I felt really bad for the poor horse that had to die to teach us this. Wonder why he was euthanized.
They said in the beginning that the horse was euthanized due to untreatable fractures (lower limb, I think?).
If anyone is interested in reading the paper that Dr. Hill referred to at the tail end of the program where her team identified marker genes for Elite and non-elite performance, it’s here:
http://www.equinome.com/publications/Targets%20of%20selection%20in%20the%20Thoroughbred%20genome%20contain%20exercise-relevant%20gene%20SNPs%20associated%20with%20elite%20racecourse%20performance.pdf
The one that they identified has a lot to do with how energy is produced.
It would appear that the TB really is different, since the genes they were using were found far, far more frequently in the TB than in other horse populations.
