Rare Horse Colors and Unusual Patterns

Lacing

Lacing Markings
Lacing looks similar to dapples, but backward, or perhaps giraffe spots. It’s also called giraffe spots of cobwebbing. Some people think it’s genetic, while others think it might be some sort of scarring from skin infections. But, because some owners have had foals from mares that have had the same pattern on their coats, it’s probably genetic, caused by a recessive gene. It tends to grow year after year, and that too, points to genetic origins, as scars or healed lesions would probably lessen over time, not increase.

Sometimes really unusual coat patterns can happen that have nothing to do with genetics. Pinto markings are especially apt to create pictures on a horse’s coat that look like other things. I knew a horse that had a very precise silhouette of a person wearing a feathered headdress on its side. In Britain, a pinto pony foal was born with its own silhouette on its shoulder. There are horses with maps of countries or other animals. The phenomena of seeing an image in another random object is called pareidolia. And this has inspired contests in which digital image software users are challenged to create artistic pareidoliac images. Many of the unbelievable unusual coat markings are computer generated, so you can’t believe everything you see.