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This hand-colored lithograph by an unknown artist is based on English painter John Wootton’s The Byerley Turk, and represents one of the three English stallions of the 18th century that began the thoroughbred horse lineage.

Afghanistan, late 1800s; leather, wood, iron, white metal, cotton, and copper alloy. In the Central Asian game called buzkashi, players fight for control of a heavy bundle made from the carcass of a slaughtered goat. When necessary, riders hold their whips in their teeth to keep their hands free.

Riders of the Pony Express made quick transfers (within two minutes) at each station on their cross-country route. To speed things up, a removable leather mochila (Spanish for pack or pouch) for carrying mail, like the one shown here, was laid over the saddle. At each transfer station, the mochila was removed and slapped onto the saddle of a waiting horse. No mochilas used by the Pony Express have survived, but replicas were made for demonstrations like Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show for years afterwards.

Pioneering British photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) was the first person to freeze the movement of a running horse in a series of still photographs. He set up rows of cameras that snapped pictures as the horse moved past. In the gait known as the gallop, all four feet leave the ground, but not when the legs are outstretched, as you might expect. Instead, the horse leaves the ground as its hind legs swing closest to the front legs, as this photo shows (second row).

This skeleton of Lee Axworthy, the first trotting stallion to break the two-minute mile, was mounted by Samuel Harmsted Chubb, an anatomist and research associate at the Museum, during the first half of the 20th century. Chubb’s innovation of mounting skeletons in lifelike, natural positions revolutionized the presentation of these specimens in museums.

This wooden goblet with feet shaped like horse hooves is used by the Sakha people of eastern Siberia in a summer festival. Guests at the celebration share koumiss—a drink made of fermented mare’s milk.

This horse doll from the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in Florida will be on display in the American Museum of Natural History’s upcoming exhibition The Horse. The exhibition, on view May 17, 2008–January 4, 2009, will examine the powerful and continuing relationship between horses and humans and explore the origins of the horse family, which extends back more than 50 million years.

Some ten million years ago, up to a dozen species of horses roamed the Great Plains of North America. These relatives of the modern horse came in many shapes and sizes. Some lived in the forest, while others preferred open grassland. Here, two large Dinohippus can be seen grazing on grass, much like horses today. But unlike modern horses, a three-toed Hypohippus tiptoes through the forest, nibbling on leaves. A small, three-toed Nannippus, shown here eating shrubs, ate both grass and leaves. In the background are several other large mammals living at that time, including Procamelus, a camel relative; a herd of Dinohippus horses; Gomphotherium, a distant relative of true elephants; and Teleoceras, a hornless rhinoceros.