I’ve never known any other animal apart from horses to need to be fitted with shoes. Why is this? And is this phenomenon strictly exclusive to domesticated horses? What about wild horses, then? If wild horses cope without them, why can’t domesticated horses?
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It is less of a consequence of domestication and more of building roads.
Horse hoofs normally grow at about the same rate as they wear down under normal horse activity.
If you do things with horses that make them wear down their hoofs at abnormal rates you ave to help them.
A horse that doesn’t get to run much on anything but soft earth will need to have their hoofs cut similar to how a human who doesn’t wear down their fingernail by normal primate behavior need to cut their nails.
A horse that has to walk a lot on hard stone and concrete and asphalt and packed earth will wear down their hoofs faster and requires horse shoes to prevent them from wearing the hoofs too much.
Horses are evolved to spend their lives running though the Eurasian steppe not being confined to a paddock or walking all day on modern roads. We have to help them with that.
A wild horse (which is just a horse descend from domesticated horses that currently doesn’t have an owner) will do fine if it lives in the sort of lifestyle and environment it was originally evolved to live in.
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