Talk:Equine anatomy

message: The fact in dispute is with the quote "[The vulva] lies dorsal to the rectum."  According to a University of Minnesota webpage describing anatomical locations and planes (http://vanat.cvm.umn.edu/anatDirections/), the correct anatomical location term would be "ventral."  So, to rephrase the quote in the article, "[The vulva] lies ventral to the rectum."  Any dispute as to whether this change should be made?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.158.168 (talk) 02:28, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just fix it and remove the tag, please.  On a horse that is standing up, the vagina is underneath below the rectum, so whatever the correct medical term for "below" is, use it.  The editor who put that in didn't cite a source, so hard to say if it was a source error or just an editing glitch.  Just remove that horrible tag! (grin) Montanabw(talk) 04:13, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reproductive System of the Mare

message: Hi Horse anatomy editors!  The following material is taken, verbatim from the Equine nutrition article, which I started, but another editor added onto in the digestive system section.  I think there is some good material here that isn't in horse anatomy.  I think it should be consolidated, and then I'd like to shorten the section in equine nutrition and just reference it to here.  Feel free to steal it and incorporate it into horse anatomy, and when I feel most if it is where it needs to be, I'll remove it from here and reduce the other article accordingly. Thanks! Montanabw 05:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible merge?

message: "A horse's teeth grow throughout the animal's lifetime"
The quote above is incorrect. It’s actually a common misunderstanding.
A horse’s teeth are only temporary rootless, which means that they grow for a period of time until they grow roots and stop. The incisors stop growing when the animal reaches about 12 years of age. The premolars and molars are also temporary rootless, but I don’t know when they stop growing.
The term “temporary rootless” is translated from the Norwegian term since I don’t know what term to use in English.
I’m new at Wikipedia so I would not try to edit the article at once, but I hope some one can correct it.
Greetings from Norwegian veterinary student
Grosvold 18:21, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See horse teeth and the anatomy section of horse someone got it right in one or the other of those sections, in that they phrased it that the teeth ERUPT continuously thoughout its lifetime, which is more accurate.  If you want to let me know which page has the phrasing "erupt," I can do the wordsmithing.  However, I have never heard of age 12 as when the teeth stop growing, so I am not certain you have it correct either.  I would suggest that someone get a source on this before we mess it up too much.  Montanabw 03:59, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And now I have fixed it.  See horse teeth for futher details. Montanabw 05:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

text: All I know is that horses still have teeth in their late 20's, I've known several. I know that a horse's baby teeth are replaced by adult teeth, but that is done well before age 12.  (At 12 months, some adult teeth may be forming?  Are you confusing months and years? Could this be a translation problem?) The adult tooth is, ultimately, only a certain length (i.e. I agree that they "erupt," they do not "grow" like a rodent.) and eventually they get quite short and some very old horses do "lose" their molars as the entire tooth apparently wears away, but I have never heard of anything special happening at age 12 years. If there is, well, that will be useful in horse teeth, where the topic is covered in detail.  Montanabw 16:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Horse teeth continue to erupt well into the 20's. And while the general contetion is that they do not truly grow (as happens in rodents and lagomorphs), there is some evidence that there is a small amount of true growth that can occur.  (I'll have to find the reference, although it's probably better to leave the terminology as "erupts" to avoid confusion.)  But, yes, generally speaking, a horse's teeth are as long as they are going to be once they are about 4-5 (the bumps on the underside of the jaw of a 4 year old are where the roots end), and there are roots present throughout this whole period.  The only (somewhat) rootless teeth are the 'caps' which are the deciduous premolars.--Getwood (talk) 00:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No disagreement.  My now-28 year old mare still has all her teeth, eats just fine, maintains her weight well, though she needs some major dental work about every 18 months to deal with some hooks she gets on her back molars.  Some horses seem to have better tooth luck than others, I had another horse that lost teth to the point she was on mush by about age 31 or so, it would be interesting if it has been established that some growth occurs.  Be quite interesting. Maybe check Horse teeth to see if it can be sourced a bit. Montanabw(talk) 21:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Teeth 

message: "elbow: the front leg equivalent to the stifle. The joint of the front leg that is right at the point where the belly of the horse meets the leg. This joint extends backward when a horse jumps an obstacle."
Is it not the fetlock and knee that extend backward when a horse jumps an obstacle? Does not the elbow bend  FORWARD when a horse jumps? Look at any picture of a horse jumping; if the elbow bent backward the knees would be under the barrel instead of in front of the chest as is the case in any picture. Thanks for any help or clarification!216.234.218.155 19:20, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article needs tons of cleanup, you're right.  If you can fix that, go for it! Montanabw 21:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  definition of elbow 

message: My dictionary says "Anatomy:The science of the structure of the body learned by dissection." Shouldn't this article be more correctly "Horse morphology" since that covers both the outer form and the inner structure, while anatomy is reserved for inner structure.  Just asking.....Roxithro 10:02, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the term anatomy is sufficiently broad to cover both aspects with respect to this article. The diagrams cover both and the text while focused on the outside does also discuss the internal morphology so to speak. I would recommend though that horse morphology be created and redirected here just in case we're missing readers. I expect most people arrive at this page through the root horse page though. WikipedianProlific(Talk) 12:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Edit/Update - in the interest of being bold I have created the page horse morphology and redirected it to this article.WikipedianProlific(Talk) 13:01, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Horse morphology/Horse anatomy 

message: A belated comment. The problem is not the term anatomy. The problem is limited definitions in some dictionaries (and some textbooks), and the failure to recognise this. 
The above-mentioned dictionary definition is not a complete definition. A more full dictionary definition will always spell out something along the lines that WikipedianProlific notes. That is, anatomy is a broad term pertaining to the structure of organisms. 
It is the case that the term 'anatomy' is derived from the Greek word  meaning 'to cut' or 'dissect', and is therefore linked, at its root, to dissection. And it is true that texts will mention this. However, as Gray's Anatomy (1973) states, anatomy is now used more broadly:
to perform an 'anatomy' was to make a 'dissection'; the two words are no longer synonymous. Dissection has remained a technique; Anatomy has become a field of study - a corpus of observations, still dependent upon technique, but capable of rational correlation among themselves and with other biological studies.
  
And, "anatomy may be the investigation of biological structure - in plants or animals - with no other motive than description of form".
The first definition in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary below, is consistent with the above-mentioned contemporary usage:
#The science of the structure of the bodies of humans, animals, and plants; a treatise in this field.
The dictionary of course goes on to give other definitions, including one consistent with dissection. But it logically starts out with the most general sense of the term, which is consistent with the point made in Gray's Anatomy, and the sense in which the term anatomy is used in this article. 
In contemporary usage then, anatomy, while acknowledged as derived from dissection, is commonly used as synonymous with the study of an organism's structure. So textbooks say things like: "Anatomy refers to the study of structure and the relationships among structures", and "Anatomy is a broad science", containing sub-divisions, including surface anatomy and various sub-divisions of internal anatomy, as well as various levels of anatomy, from gross or macroscopic (i.e. visible to the naked eye) to microscopic etc. The field is of course constantly evolving, so details change, but the general concepts remain stable.
So anatomy as used today by both professionals and lay people is not restricted to dissection of internal structures. It pertains to the study of structure, especially biological (but not exclusively, one finds the term used elsewhere). In contemporary usage, anatomy and physiology are terms for structure and function. Morphology pertains to structure, as does anatomy. So in some works, you find these terms used interchangeably. 
For example "morphophysiology" is just academic shorthand for morphology and physiology, or anatomy and physiology, or structure and function. In academic journals, compact jargon is typically used to keep the article within space limitations, and because the audience is expected to know what the term means, or how to figure out what it means, without spelling it out each time. 
Conversely, as Montanabw correctly says, the general public would tend to use the term anatomy. But there is nothing innacurate in using the term horse anatomy to refer to the overall structure of the horse, as any experienced biologist knows. And while biologists would use the term morphology more often than the general public, they would know full well the interchangeability of the term when it comes to discussing various organisms. Biologists looking for information on horses would also use the term 'anatomy', because they'd know damn well they'd find stuff under that, both in academic or general publications.
So in contemporary usage, when using the term anatomy, if no finer definitions are made, then by defaul it includes the whole structure of the organism, inside and out, at all scales. Why? Because the term anatomy is the broadest conceptual level of the use of that term. If one is specifically referring to a sub-use, such as say, endocrine, skeletal, muscular, neuronal, cellular, chromosomal, etc, one necessarily defines that specific use. 
At a glance, this article is looking good. The term horse or equine anatomy is not the least innaccurate or misleading. Leaving that terminology in place will cause less confusion than replacing it with the less publicly familiar term morphology, the use of which for its own sake (as opposed to using it in a useful context) adds nothing much to the article. Wotnow (talk) 03:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Anatomy and morphology

message: so... whats up with the first sentence of this article?
"The anatomy of the horse comes with a large number of horse specific terms."
This seems clumsy and kind of redundant to me.
::Anyone can edit.  If you want to improve it, feel free to give it a shot! Montanabw(talk) 17:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  clumsy opening 

message: Per a request from folks over at the Equidae article, would anyone object if we changed the name of this article to Equine anatomy? I'll leave this request here for 4-5 days, and if no one objects, I'll make the move.  This may result in a need to wordsmith the article a bit so that, if I may mix my methphors, the donkey people don't have a cow (grin), but I am willing to deal with that issue if need be. Montanabw(talk) 17:15, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think someone changed Horse conformation to Equine conformation.  When I created Equine nutrition, I think I started with that title (can't remember, it was a while ago.) You and I appear to be the only ones who care.  Be my guest if you'd like to do the move.  Montanabw(talk) 21:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we change the title?? 

message: Is the dock really just where the tail attaches to the rump? I thought that was the 'root of the tail', or 'root of the dock'? I rather think the dock is (some or all?) of the living part of the tail. That is why cutting it is called 'docking' and not 'tailing'. See e.g., Luxmoore. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:11, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: See rump (animal) and tail (horse).  Believe it or not, we once had a freakin' edit war over this.  (and hence, I am not going to literally get into a fight over a horse's rear end, lest all involved begin to resemble one. Sigh).  Both definitions are seen in various publications.  I happen to agree to with the "living part of the tail" definition, but for every chart with that, there is another that just points to the junction.  We probably need a "def 1" and "def 2" version on this.  Montanabw(talk) 19:14, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I put it in, doubting that anyone will care enough to war over it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dock? 

message: Under the listing of the different parts of the equine body, the article uses words such as "behind," "above," "between," etc which are ambiguous and confusing for anyone who's studied biology. The article should use the proper anatomical terms, such as superior, inferior, proximal, distal, medial, lateral, etc, instead of layman words. 
I know Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone, but these terms aren't difficult to learn, and it does wonders for those who are studying anatomy.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.49.37.133 (talk) 18:50, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, they make the articles quite difficult to read if you are a kid.  It's one thing when you are discussing specific anatomy, but in a general interest article, the vernacular is preferred, or else we have to define everything in every article, which is a challenge.  Montanabw(talk) 23:20, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proper anatomical terms 

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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110926224532/http://www.horsedata.co.uk/points_of_the_horse.htm to http://www.horsedata.co.uk/points_of_the_horse.htm
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I dont agree with the photo 2A00:23C5:FEA3:401:BC2D:E1B2:3A8:882 (talk) 18:46, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you be more specific? What don't you agree with? A specific point? The existence of the photo? OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 19:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  POINTS OF A HORSE