What purpose does the chestnut serve on a horses leg?

The early ancestors of the modern horse walked on several spread-out toes, an accommodation to life spent walking on the soft, moist grounds of primeval forests. As grass species began to appear and flourish, the equids' diets shifted from foliage to grasses, leading to larger and more durable teeth. At the same time, as the steppes began to appear, the horse's predecessors needed to be capable of greater speeds in order to outrun predators. This was attained through the lengthening of limbs and the lifting of some toes from the ground in such a way that the weight of the body was gradually placed on one of the longest toes, the third. It is presumed that the chestnut is the vestige of a long lost toe. It does offer a small amount of protection, from strike injuries from the opposite leg, when a horse gallops. It's positioning remains a quandary, however, as the splint bones which sit either side of the cannon bone are believed to be previous toes, and the horse also has an ergot at the back of the fetlock which is very similar to the chestnut. Neither are positioned in a way which proves that they are prehistoric toes...

What purpose does the chestnut serve on a horses leg?
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Reply:It used to be a toe...then they got hoofs...


Go to this site:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_o...
Reply:Horses back centuries ago use to have thumbs like us!!! I learned this at the academy i go to slowly they developed hooves and lost the thumbs there feet use to look like chicken feet
Reply:The chestnut serves no purpose to the modern horse we all know today. It has been left over from evolution, when the horse was a toed animal, the chestnuts were its little toe and the ergots it big toes, the other 3 toes formed the hoof. This is what I was taught when I was training and it makes sense to me.
Reply:None - I guess its kind of like wisdom teeth on humans...