posted 07-20-2003 07:07 PM            

I'm posting this message ONLY for the purpose of hearing from people anywhere in the world who have experienced anything similar to what I have or who have heard of anything similar. Because of the extreme weirdness of the animal oddity I have lived with, I have started to collect as much info as possible on similar events and/or animals who do or have done the same type of thing.
While you should post any comment you may have, I want to be sure I don't miss reading your information so, I ask that you send me a direct email of any information you may have to cville@Valkyrie.net and I will be sure to see your response and if needed, I will get back to you at your email address.

Let me begin by saying that I assure you I'm not a crack pot, drunk, idiot, liar or any of the many names I've been called. Every word you read here is the absolute truth.
Some of it is a little scary and for true horse people it is very hard to imagine or believe unless they know of events similar to those I describe. Very few do and thus
believe it just cannot happen. I can assure you it can and does all over the world. I
have also come to realize that many people just won't talk about the subject because they do not want to risk being thought of as many people think of me.

To give you some scientific information is the best place to start and I will confine this to HERBIVORES, which horses and many other animals are. The herbivore is said to be an animal that eats plant material, grain
and/or some fruit. In other words, herbivores
do not eat meat! As students of what we have been taught we take this teaching to heart and it becomes our belief and our beliefs are hard to shake. The problem is that science has proven that such a broad statement about such a broad group of animals is simply a GENERAL DESCRIPTION OR CLASSIFICATION. Most of the time when any animal eats anything out of its known food list, the animal is lacking something in its nutritional needs. Most animals will make every attempt to satisfy a given need and while it happens more often than we would think, we seldom actually see it happen. So,
we tend to think it doesn't or can't happen.
Just as there are strange people in this world who do strange things as we see it, there are animals, as individuals, that also do strange things. Not all horses, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats and other animals think the exact same as all the other animals of their kind. We all have seen animals with different temperments and abilities and this is common. This is where my story begins and as bizzare as it is, I once again state that every word is absolute
truth as I explain it here.

I have a six year old Morgan male horse that we got when he was just a young colt. This horse has always been fed a normal diet for a horse and the food as well as any and all suppliments fed have always been of the highest quality. My vet tells me that this horse is in the finest of health and is as fit as any horse can be.

Two years ago when the horse was only four years of age an incident took place that was just the start of what has now become a regular and normal behavior for this horse.
I had just opened the stall door to let the horse out into this small grassy pasture area to graze for a while. I noticed that a groundhog had found its way into the little pasture area and he was walking around and eating from the ground as one would expect.
Soon, my horse noticed the groundhog and he casually walked over to him and began sniffing all around the groundhog. This groundhog was around two feet in length and I estimated that it weighed around 15 pounds.
The groundhog seemed unaffected by the horse and just kept doing his thing in the grass.
Suddenly, my horse lowered his head and bit into the back of the groundhogs neck. The horse picked it up off the ground and began shaking it wildly. The horse then dropped the groundhog in the grass and while it was not dead, it was barely moving. Just then, the horse put his right front hoof on one of the groundhogs hind quarters. Then, the horse lowered his head and bit deeply into the soft underbelly of the groundhog. The horse tore out a large area of flesh and fully exposed all of the animals insides.
The horse reached in and got a large mouthfull and began eating. After a couple of bites I decided to go get the dead animal away from the horse. As I approached the horse he picked the groundhog up in his mouth and just pranced around with no intention of letting me get it away from him.
I went back outside the pasture area and when the horse knew I wasn't coming after him, he put the groundhog down on the ground and continued eating. In less than thirty minutes the horse had stripped most of the edible meat off the body and there was really nothing left but the bones and skin.
Naturally, I was shocked by what I had witnessed. I called my vet and he instructed me to watch the horse closely to be sure it was not ill from ingesting the groundhog.
He never got sick in any way and two weeks later we had another incident.
I had let the horse out in the same pasture area and on one side of the little pasture I had a small area fenced in for a few goats that I kept for my children. This fencing was just high enough to keep the goats in.
I was putting fresh water into the container for the horse to drink when I heard a goat give out with a baaaaahhhh. I turned and looked quickly. The horse had reached into the goat pen and had bitten into the back of the neck of a fairly good sized goat. This goat had to weigh around 100 pounds and like it was nothing at all, the horse pulled the goat up and out of the pen shaking it. I ran into the pasture area and the horse ran off with the goat in his mouth to the far end of this confined area. I walked that direction and the horse would not let me near. I just couldn't get him to drop the very much alive goat so I could get to it. He finally set the goat down and I was now just watching from a distance. The goat was standing still on its own feet when suddenly the horse lowered his head, reached in and put a deep bite on the goats throat. He shook the goat around and I could see blood from the goats throat and there was simply nothing I could do at that point. The goat was moving very little as the horse again dropped it to the ground. Once the goat was on the ground the horse began biting many times in the throat area and trying to rip out the throat which he finally did. He licked and licked the blood as it came from the goat. Then, the horse began making single bites all over the goats body. He then picked the dead goat up by the throat again and walked to the far section of the little pasture. He put the goat on the ground and began biting in the private area and the soft belly. He tore it open and began eating the soft insides of the goat including the intestines and all.
The eating went on for almost an hour and the horse managed to strip off most of the edible meat from the goat. For the next two hours the horse would pick the goat body up and walk around with it, then lay it down and try to find more to eat including the stripping of the goats skull or head. Finally, it was almost dark and the horse came to drink water and on his own he just went back into his stall for the night like he would always do. Only then could I remove the goat carcus from the little pasture.
My vet said he never heard of such a thing and again he urged me to watch for any signs of illness in the horse. There were none.
So, it is now two years later as I post this notice and in that time my horse has eaten many animals, most of which I now feed him myself two times each week. He has eaten mice, lab rats, several rabbits, goats, beef calves, snakes, fish and he even once killed and ate most of a full sized deer that had gotten into the small pasture area. A few things are clear in all of this. He will not eat any animals that are already dead nor will he eat any pieces of meat from anyones hand. He will only eat something he can kill and he will eat everything he kills.
It is ironic that while he has this violent side to him, he has never once attempted to bite or injure any human adult or child. He loves to be ridden and by all normal standards he is a great horse. He just has this thing about killing something and then eating it. Neither the vet or any of us can figure this horse out or explain why he does these things. My vet once expressed a bit of doubt at the many things I had told him so, I invited him out and he was able to see it for himself and all he could do was shake his head in amazement.

Since my many experiences with this horse I have had farmers tell me about cows they have owned that would eat meat sometimes and a fellow who raised sheep and goats told me that his animals seemed to desire flesh once in a while. I had received an email several months ago from a man in Africa who managed a large preserve. On this preserve there is a tribe of natives who believe that when you die, you must be laid out in the wild so that your soul can freely roam. They don't seem to care or respect the physical remains of a body. This preserve manager told me that it is a common thing for herbivores to eat the bodies of these dead natives as well as lions or any other animal scavenging for food. He said he has seen rhino, giraffe,
cape buffalo, ostrich, hippo, wildebeest,
zebra, gazzelle and even elephants eating the remains of these people. All of these animals are always portrayed as strict herbivores but the man has documented what he has witnessed over the years.

His opinion tends to make the most sense of anything I've heard. He believes that you can classify an animal based on what you know the bulk of its diet to be. But, he also says that in the case of the african animals it often is more a question of "easy opportunity" rather than what is always normal. He also indicated that he was sure these animals are not eating meat that often so it would be safe to say that it is somewhat of a rare happening. He even phoned me about a month ago to tell me of one of his latest sightings. He said he had been out nature walking and coming from a wooded area into the open was a large male giraffe carrying an adult dead man by the throat in his mouth. He followed the giraffe from a distance and after more than a mile walk, the giraffe met up with a few other members of his family. The man said there was another male who was not quite as large as the one that carried the dead man and he saw two females and two young ones. The big giraffe laid the body down on the side of a hill so as to make it more able to reach the body without lowering the head way down to the ground. The body was almost laid high enough up on the hill that the giraffe only had to lower his head a wee bit to reach the body. My friend told me that all of the giraffe family took turns taking bites from the dead body and that not much was left after about an hour. He kept watching and he said the other giraffe started to move off.
Then, the big giraffe opened its mouth wide and picked the body up by the head with the complete head in the giraffes mouth. The big giraffe then just walked off carrying the dead man's remians dangling from his mouth as he followed the rest of his family. My friend didn't continue to follow and he returned back to his compound.
He tells me that nobody there sees this kind of thing as strange because they see so much of it and consider it common.

All I know is, there is nothing common about it here and my horse is about as weird as I ever care to see. I do however, want to put together as much information as I possibly can get from around the world about anything relating to this topic.

Do not be afraid to contact me because all names are kept strictly confidential and will never be released to anyone nor will you get junk email showing up because you shared info with me. Nobody even needs to give their name if they would rather not. My efforts are for my own purposes and are in the line of what I must call scientific research.

I thank you for taking time to read this posting and should you have information for me or a story to tell that you have heard of, I invite you to email the info to me.
Email to cville@Valkyrie.net

NOTE: I'M NOT CVILLE COMPUTER NOR DO I HAVE OR REPRESENT ANY COMMERCIAL INTEREST!

Again, I thank you!

Sincerely.....cville

[This message has been edited by cville (edited 07-20-2003).]

[This message has been edited by cville (edited 07-20-2003).]