Why are horses measured in hands and humans are measured in feet?

Answer 1

A hand is 4". The measurement was used because most people have not (historically) had easy access to measuring instruments. They therefore used body parts as the measure.

A long, long time ago, people didn't know how to read, and they had few tools. Measuring was done using body parts. Even Noah built the ark using cubits - a measurement that represented the distance between the fingertip and the elbow. Horses are smaller than giant arks, so they used a smaller body part. Some measuring is still done today using body parts. The hand is one, and fingers are another.

Answer 2

I think it is because years ago people got measured in feet they did this using their feet (the person obviously had to lie down when they did it), though when it came to horses they did it in hands because you can't exactly walk up a horse.

Answer 3

This carries back to early history. Obviously the tape measure is a relatively new invention, in older times measurements were not exact, but more estimated than anything else. You will find that most hands (in adults) have the same distance from one side to the other, measuring across the palm. Therefore this was the way that was adopted in anyone that dealt with horses. When buying and selling, it was and still is important to know the measurements of the horse in question. But this form of measurement was adopted as an easy and convenient way of relating the size of the animal, and it was a tool that was always available. It was simply adopted and was never dropped as it is convenient and for the most part accurate.

Answer 4

Horse height is measured because it might interfere with the selling of a horse because someone might want a pony for a small child and you wouldn't want to sell a massive horse to a tiny child.

Answer 5

It's just an expression. One hand equals four inches, a little smaller then the average person's hand. This is most likely where the expression comes from.

Answer2:

The use of hands to measure horses has been around for a long time. Four inches is supposed to be the width of a hand and in this way people were able to create a standard of measuring horses so that people would not be able to say their horses were bigger than they really were ,or lie to potential buyers and breeders.

Answer 6

A hand is the breadth of the human hand, now standardized at 4 inches. It

is also 10 cm.

Answer 7

The measurement is 4 inches per hand.

-Bailey Evanson

Answer 8

Because you have to use your hands to measure the horse. Have you ever seen a ruler long enough to measure a horse? Because I haven't.