Credit: Niki Marie Hansen
Horses harnessed as technology enabled the rise of human civilization by hauling heavy loads, opening new trade and migration routes across vast distances, and carrying warriors into battle on chariots and on horseback. But whenever horses broke down from leg injuries, equine biology usually dictated a death sentence despite the best medical care — something that is still true even in the modern world where machines have largely replaced horses in transportation, agriculture and warfare. Now a researcher hopes to finally improve the fortunes of our four-legged brethren by enabling the first generation of cyborg horses with artificial leg implants.
The idea of artificial legs for horses may not sound complicated at a time when human amputees can get robotic legs and when people have created clever prosthetic devices for animals as diverse as dogs, cats, bunnies and even sea turtles. Part of the problem is that any horse prosthetic leg must be strong enough to withstand up to 4,000 pounds of force for larger horses weighing about 1,000 pounds. Such weight can also easily lead to sores or chafing where the horse’s body puts pressure on the prosthetic limb without a more permanent attachment. That’s why Niki Marie Hansen, a Ph.D. student at the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine in Baton Rouge, wants to test the possibility of implanting prosthetic legs directly in the leg bones of horses.
“We’re just looking right now at whether an implant in bone with no cement and no osseointegration [connection between the artificial leg and living bone], is strong enough to withstand the forces a horse would put on it,” Hansen says.
