An incident has occurred in Sheffield, UK where two horses were extremely reluctant to cross a rainbow pedestrian crossing.
The video has had the internet buzzing about whether or not horses can be homophobic or not. Others have thought that horses just don't like rainbows.
The rainbow crossing was in place for Sheffield Pride in 2020, which celebrates the LGBT community. Sheffield City Council has marked the occasion with a ‘Pride crossing’ in the city centre.
As you can see in the video below, the horses approach the pedestrian crossing but seem to be spooked by the bright pride colors and not keen on going anywhere near them.
So why don't horses like rainbow crossings? It is because horses have two-color, or dichromatic vision. In other words, horses naturally see the blue and green colors of the spectrum and the color variations based upon them, but cannot distinguish red. Research indicates that their color vision is somewhat like red-green color blindness in humans, in which certain colors, especially red and related colors, appear more green.
These horses are not homophobic at all, they are just very confused and wary of the surface that they are about to place their hooves on.
So next time you are riding a horse and you come to a rainbow crossing, cut your horse some slack, they are not a bigot, just really confused!