Targeting Horses

 An emerging black market in horsehair is gaining strength.

“Horsehair theft isn’t the stuff of spaghetti westerns but a growing crime, with reports of people stealing hundreds of manes and tails throughout the American Midwest and several other countries." Source

A recent story has emerged in Australia with a horse owner investigating a farmyard commotion in the rural NSW town of Dubbo only to find her equestrian King Arab missing his entire tail. She said the horse seemed afraid of his stall but a subsequent search turned up nothing.

One Wyoming owner said

“I went out there one day to feed and my horses’ tails looked like they were cut. Some of them not very much, which to me is odd; they only cut inches off, but the ones that I really noticed . . . (were cut) probably 12 to 14 inches.”

Could there be more to it? One reader thinks so,

"something is out-of-whack here ... why would they only cut an inch or two off? If you're going to go to the "trouble" of engaging in such criminal conduct -- surely one would go ‘whole hog‘ and abscond with all available horse-hair. Something is fishy here. I prefer the paranormal hypothesis to be honest. The forensic factoids don't support the misguided criminal hypothesis in any particularly strong fashion." 

The incidents seem to go hand in hand with horse-ripping, or horse slashing, which is an animal cruelty phenomenon involving serious injuries in horses, often involving mutilation of their genitalia and slashing of the flank or neck. It has not been established, however, how often these injuries are caused by human cruelty. Investigations have shown it doubtful whether all 'horse-ripping' incidents can be ascribed to human acts. For the similar cattle mutilation, primarily a US phenomenon, UFOs, cults and animal cruelty have been blamed, but research showed there were natural or undetermined causes in the vast majority of cases. Source

Something to keep an eye on - an "ear to the ground". All is not well on planet earth.