One gait-keeper gene allows horses to move in unusual ways

ByEd Yong
August 29, 2012
2 min read

Icelandic horses can move in an odd way. All horses have three natural gaits: the standard walk; the two-beat trot, where diagonally opposite pairs of legs hit the ground together; and the four-beat gallop, where the four feet hit the ground in turn.  To those, Icelandic horses add the tölt. It has four beats, like the gallop, but a tölting horse always has at least one foot on the ground, while a galloping one is essentially flying for part of its stride. This constant contact makes for a smoother ride. It also looks… weird, like watching a horse power-walk straight into the uncanny valley.

The tölt is just one of several special ambling gaits that some horses can pull off, but others cannot. These abilities can be heritable, to about the same extent that height is in humans. Indeed, some horses like the Tennessee Walking horse have been bred to specialise in certain gaits.

Now, a team of Swedish, Icelandic and American scientists has shown that these special moves require a single change in a gene called DMRT3. It creates a protein used in neurons of a horse’s spine, those which coordinate the movements of its limbs. It’s a gait-keeper.

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