07/27/2025
Whorls are a time-honored method of judging a horse’s temperament & personality.
They may have started as superstition, there is science to back it up. Hair & brain are formed from the same fetal cell layer. Because they form at the same it makes sense that as a fetus develops the hair growing over the brain, & body, can shows signs of what is going on underneath.
Where the whorls are positioned tells us about the horse’s temperament.
🐴 If it’s HIGH, above eye level, the horse will be very smart, energetic, & outgoing.
🐴 To our RIGHT, as we face them, shows a right brained horse, reactive, emotional, sensitive.
🐴 BELOW EYE LEVEL should be an introvert, inwardly focused, slow to react, they need time to think things through, which sometimes gets them the reputation of being stubborn when someone tries to rush them.
🐴 A whorl on the LEFT SIDE IF THE FACE, again our left, means a left-brain horse. One who is confident & willful. The farther a whorl is from center the more pronounced the effect will be.
🐴 In the CENTER is the most common and doesn’t tell us a whole lot. It is neutral. With that type of whorl we need to look at the shape of the head, ear, eyes, all the other clues we are given.
🐴When we get 2 or more whorls it gets more complicated. They can show tendencies from 2 different brain types. Whorls that are stacked, 1 above the other, show a horse that is both an introvert & an extrovert. Switching between the two has earned these horses a reputation as being unpredicable.
Side by side whorls will be right brain, reactive & hot, as well as left brain, unreactive and confident.
These double swirls seems to give the ability to hyper focus. These horses are challenging & gritty & will not back down from a challenge. The side-by-side swirls give horses access to both sides of its brain in a flash, ‘wickedly fast thinker’ is a description often given to them.”
The more whorls the more interesting the horse, the people who have horses with 3 or 4 or more whorls have loved them.
Whorls can be in unexpected places on the face. Some have them on the sides of their jaws, cheeks & temples. Where there is a whorl there is some point of focus.
🐴 One on the cheek according to tradition & folklore is a sign of debt & ruin. Many with this whorl who have teeth issues. There is usually good reason for superstitions. Is it possible that without modern equine dentistry that the dental issues caused these horses to be bad keepers bringing debt & ruin to owners?
It’s not only the hair on a horse’s heads that can tell us about the horse but whorls found anywhere on the body.
🐎 Whorls should be nearly perfectly even from one side to the other. Whorls on the flanks, chest & crest of the neck are the most common. Whorls can be anywhere.
🐎 Sometimes they will have a random whorl on the side of their neck, the girth area, or withers. Whorls on the sides of the withers are known as a coffin whorl because, according to superstition, the rider of a horse with such a whorl will die in the saddle. If we look at things objectively we can find logical reasons why a horse with a whorl on its withers would be uncomfortable under saddle & cause them to be randomly explosive.
🐎 When whorls aren’t even from side to side a horse will often tend to curve towards the side with the whorl & have trouble flexing in the direction away from it. They will prefer leads in the direction of the whorl & have other imbalances. Sometimes instead of an obvious reaction they will simply be unpredictable, spooky or reactive. This is because they are unbalanced instead of any desire to cause trouble or be purposefully obstinate.
Horses are individuals. With thought & effort we can find the best ways to work with them no matter what whorls they have. A whorl isn’t a way to see if a horse is ‘bad’ instead, checking whorls is one way for us to gather clues. Those clues can help us figure out a horse’s temperament & suitability for both us & whatever discipline we want to pursue.
