For the most part, it seems like the only animals that do any real competitive jumping-over-things are horses. Sure, dogs, in agility displays, and humans, in hurdles, sometimes get in on the action, but when you say the words âshow jumping,â people tend to think âhorses.â But theyâre certainly not the only animals that can do it.
What do you know about rabbits? They like carrots, make funny little marble poos, have soft, long ears, and, of course, they can hopâso well that a few intrepid human types have harnessed that hopping power for sport and humor. Rabbit jumping started in Sweden in the 1970s with rabbit-owning clubs, which soon turned a weird little pastime into a fun competition; in the beginning, the rules were based on horse jumping rules, but were soon revised to fit a rabbitâs abilities. The Swedish Federation of Rabbit Jumping , the sportâs governing body, was founded in 1994 and since then has organized two championship meets each year. Competitions have four distinct categoriesâstraight course, crooked course, high jump and long jumpâwhich are all exactly what they sound like theyâd be. And thereâs evidence that rabbit jumping is becoming all the adorable rage: Now, both Finland and Norway have their own federations, while the U.S., Denmark, and the UK all host their own competitions.
Cows donât seem the most nimble of creatures, no matter what the nursery rhyme says. But that didnât stop Regina Mayer, a German teenager possessing remarkable tenacity. After her parents refused to buy her a horse, Mayer, then 13, started to train a calf on her family dairy farm . It was six months before Luna would let Regina ride her, but eventually, the unconventional pair worked up to jumping low fences; Luna is not the most graceful of jumpers, but she manages to heave her bulk over the fences at an admirable, if bovine, speed.
Llamas and alpacas donât seem like the type to go in for jumping over things at the behest of humans. But llama and alpaca agility displays are increasingly becoming a part of livestock shows, if only for the sheer enjoyment of watching something that looks like an adorable bucktoothed deer-poodle hybrid leap over a fence with a running human by its side. Itâs becoming a real thingâin the UK, for example, the Black Rock Llama farm tours agricultural shows with their âsuper llamaâ teams, exhibiting their animals' incredible agility skills on courses with jumps as high as three feet. Â
It makes sense: Zebras are basically striped horses (well, smaller, less easy to domesticate, and structurally weaker horses who havenât had the benefit of thousands of years of domestication ). When Zack the zebraâs owner, Sammi Jo Stohler, the Zebra Guru of Willis, Texas , caught him hopping five-foot fences to get out of his paddock, she thought sheâd give him a go as a show jumper ; he can now be ridden Western and English styles and can tackle fences of nearly three feet. Zack lives on a farm with Charlie, another zebra who has been trained to pull a cart, a zorse (horse-zebra hybrid) who can also pull a cart, and a zonkey (donkey-zebra hybrid) who can be ridden.Â
This is just an excuse to include a video of a cat hopping over a jumps course made out of broom handles and furniture. Because itâs cute and cats and the Internet.
Sheep can and do often jump, but theyâre not terribly trainableâtheyâre sheep, after all. That makes Hettie, the fantastic show-jumping sheep, fairly unique. Hettie made news in 2006 after her owners discovered her aptitude for jumping; theyâd been taking their Shetland ponies round a jumping course when Hettie sidled up and began jumping the fences along with the ponies. Eventually, Hettie could jump five fences in a row, and was working on clearing even higher fences. And though she may not have started a fad among sheep farmers for training their sheep to show jump, Hettie did inspire several terrible, pun-erific headlines involving the words âwoolly jumperâ (get it? Because a âjumperâ is a sweater⦠and theyâre made of woolâ¦). And we say fairly unique â because in 2013, Lavender the Ramâs ability to leap fences nearly three feet in height both saved him from the butcherâs block and earned him the title âwooly jumperâ in The Daily Mail and other British tabloids.Â
So, this isnât animals jumping over obstaclesâit's people jumping over animals. Seems somehow kinder, really. Plus, itâs unbelievable.
Itâs a rite of passage among the young men of the Zaraniq tribe on the west coast of Yemen to take a running jump at a row of six foot camels and sail amazingly, incredibly, over them .
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