The Truth About Flying Horses

Do you remember the fairy tale about the levitating steed over the deserts of Arabia, the story of the enchanted flying horse in the One Thousand and One Nights? Anyhow, my dear reader, you probably do not believe in fairy tales. Do you? Levitating steeds and flying horses? You say. Nevertheless, you may rest assured, horses really can fly, at least for a short time. Artists in the past used to paint a horse at a trot with one foot on the ground. And in depicting full equine gallop they placed the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear, yet all still touching the ground. However, the fact is that the human eye cannot perceive precisely the fast motion of a horse at full gallop. So the answer to the thorny puzzle of whether or not trotting and galloping horses kept their legs above the ground, or in touch with the earth, came from the pioneering photographic studies of motion by Eadweard Muybridge. In the 1870s Muybridge settled this problem by recording the quick gaits of a galloping horse in a series of photographs, showing clearly all its feet off the ground and its legs collected under its body. Muybridge proved that a fast moving horse defies gravity, it is periodically airborne and momentarily hovers above the ground.