Ponies Chillaxin' at the Beach

Photo: Barbara Gallagher

Everybody loves the beach, including horses! Here are some wild ponies of Assateague Island in Maryland and Virginia sunning themselves on the beach. According to The Dispatch, Pony patrol member Barbara Gallagher took this photo on a busy Saturday afternoon.

There are over 300 wild ponies on Assateague Island. According to local legend, they are descendants of a Spanish galleon that shipwrecked along the coast (others claimed that they were descendants of local colonial horses that got loose).

Photo: Bonnie Gruenberg/Wikimedia

Photo: Christopher Evanson/US Coast Guard/Wikimedia

On the Virginia side of the island, the horse population is kept in check through the Annual Pony Swim, in which volunteers called the Salt Water Cowboys round up feral ponies, drive them across the channel during slack tide and auction some of them off, before driving the rest back to the island.