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Evolution changes the world constantly, carefully selecting the most useful and effective combinations.
Lots of animals used to look completely or partially different from their modern version, including horses.
Scientists claim that horses used to have more toes, not just hooves.
Long ago, the ancestors of today's horses had hooved toes instead of a single hoof.
Researchers studied animals like the Eocene Hyracotherium, which had feet similar to a modern tapir, with four toes in front and three behind, each having its own hoof and a foot pad beneath.
Unlike these early creatures, today's horses, zebras, and asses have a single toe on each foot enclosed in a hard hoof.
Scientists studied hoof prints and bones from modern and ancient horses to figure out what happened to the lost toes.
The research confirms that these extra toes were entirely lost during evolution, contrary to a previous idea that suggested they were still present within the hoof.
The experiment also reveals that the frog in a horse's hoof, which acts like a shock absorber, evolved independently and is not linked to the side toes of their distant relatives.
The scientists also noticed differences in the shape of the feet between one-toed and three-toed horses, possibly related to weight distribution or where they lived.