Thumbelina: World's Smallest Horse

Meet Thumbelina - at 17.5 inches, she's the world's smallest horse. She might not become a champion show-runner in her lifetime - in fact, she is so tiny, she might have trouble jumping over a bucket.

All these things do not bother the miniature mare, as she has officially been recognized as the world’s smallest horse. The five-year-old has received her title from Guinness Book of Records when her owners realized she is not going to get any taller.

Her owners run a farm that specializes in breeding miniature horses, which are popular show horses and can reach a height of 34 inches when fully grown. But when Thumbelina was born, it was evident that she will never grow up to be like her mother; the foal weighed only 8 pounds (that’s a newborn baby’s weight) and grew up to be only 60 pounds, as opposed to the expected 250 pounds they can reach in adulthood. That would make her a miniature version of a miniature horse!

Size doesn’t bring her down, because feisty Thumbelina rules the farmland at the Goessling's Goose Creek Farm in St Louis. Mr. Goessling’s parents have been breeding miniature horses before, but they have never had one as tiny as Thumbelina, whose condition was attributed to dwarfism.