Hi guys,
I was reading about horses yesterday
just found that horses get sunburn when their skin colour turns pink
I am wondering :-
are these… homework questions?
No sir,not homework questions
I just asked them out of curiosity
it’s okay, I was only wondering. When I was in school (in the United States) these were the sorts of questions I might be given to research at home.
It’s wonderful that you are curious and want to learn more.
also… even if it is homework, asking other people is still a good way to learn.
Sunburned skin turns pink because it’s inflamed, like all burned skin. The reason a horse with pink areas of skin is more likely to get sunburned is because that area is less protected from the sun than an area with dark pigment in it, like a black area. It’s like people- the paler someone is, the more easily they sunburn, and people with very dark skin are much more resistant.
As to why the skin is pink in the first place, it’s probably because the skin has pink pigment. Sometimes animals have pink areas because the skin is very thin there and is showing the blood vessels inside, but horses with pink areas don’t seem to be quite that shade. So I think that’s a pigment.
Horse skin is made of the same stuff as anyone else’s skin, I’d imagine. Skin cells, mostly.
I had an albino horse. In summer the skin on the muzzle would often peel due to sunburn. Also, in later years it developed cancer under the eye. Again due to sunburn on the exposed skin.
Here’s a website with info about horse skin structure - Anatomy of Your Horse’s Skin (horsehealthproducts.com). It’s a lot like human skin Human skin - Wikipedia. Most mamalian skin has the same basic structure. Other vertebrates have variations on the skin structure.
A small story about skin. In the mid 1980’s I worked with a man from Uganda (George Maiteki). At that time Winnipeg was ethnically diverse, but mainly white - lots of people from Eastern Europe. George and I worked a lot outside, and one day he commented on his tan. I was flabbergasted - I did not know that Black skin would tan. He laughed, and showed me his tan lines. I was so naive…
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