01/30/2024
Yes! Horses are so much more sensitive to the touch than people realize.
“Horses Have Thick Skin!”
…Is a phrase we often hear, to be able to withstand the whack of a crop or the jab of a pointy spur without pain. The truth is, the epidermis (outermost layer) of skin on a horse is thinner than that of a human, at 0.05mm for equines compared to 0.08mm for humans*. What this means is that they have fewer skin cells between the environment and sensitive nerve endings. They do not have the “padding” from pain that people assume.
So when perpetuating the myth of thick skin, what it really boils down to is an excuse for rougher, harsher interactions with the horse, as well as less consideration to things such as tack under the misguided belief that it doesn’t hurt them, or at least as much.
Just because an animal is presumed to have thick skin doesn’t excuse the relentless prodding of spurs, cracking of the whip or willfull ignorance on the importance of suitable equipment and training methods.
Beyond spurring and whipping, a cracked girth, lumpy sheepskin, wrinkled leather will also cause severe discomfort and pain to your equine partner. The partner you are solely responsible for ensuring is comfortable and safe.
Even something like the placement of the buckle of the girth can cause injury to the skin, delicate fascia, nerves and muscles, which will cause the horse to react to that pain by being girthy along with a slew of other behavioral symptoms.
Yet too often, the riders and owners try to tackle the symptom without ever considering that there is an underlying cause. Misinformation is abundant in the horse world, from thickness of skin to the importance of fitting equipment and postural correctness. It is our DUTY as horse men and women to challenge these myths and inaccuracies for the welfare of the horse.
*Disclaimer: The image used for this post was published by Dr. Lydia Tong as part of a research study completed in 2015, investigating the use of whips in race horses.
Dr. Lydia Tong has since completed a second study that revealed different results, finding no significant difference between the epidermal nerve counts of humans and horses and no significant differences between epidermal thickness of humans and horses for left side samples, meaning there is conflicting information regarding the difference in thickness of the epidermis between equines and humans.
However, the findings do support the original hypothesis, that the superficial pain-sensitive epidermal layer of horse skin is as richly innervated as human skin, demonstrating that humans and horses have the equivalent key anatomical structures to detect cutaneous pain. Thus, these observations must refresh old assumptions made about the capacity of the “thick-skinned” horse to experience pain.
This subject is like many other areas of the equine industry that require additional research. What we can learn from this however, is that horses do not have thick skin and have the same natomical structures to detect cutaneous pain.
The most recent study can be found under the title 'A Comparative Neuro-Histological Assessment of Gluteal Skin Thickness and Cutaneous Nociceptor Distribution in Horses and Humans' by L. Tong et. al
