No Neigh-Sayers: Live Horses Join First-Day Veterinary Students for Anatomy Lecture in Hungary 

Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)
Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)
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No Neigh-Sayers: Live Horses Join First-Day Veterinary Students for Anatomy Lecture in Hungary 

Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)
Dr. Péter Sótonyi, rector of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Hungary, shows the tongue of a horse during an anatomy lecture for first-year students, using a live horse, Monday, Sept 9. 2024. (AP)

A lecture hall full of first-year veterinary students in Hungary eagerly took their places for the first animal anatomy lesson of their academic careers, when two full-grown horses clopped inside and joined the class.

The rector at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Budapest, Dr. Péter Sótonyi, coaxed one of the animals onto a riser at the front of the hall and used a stick of chalk to draw onto the horse — from head to hooves — where its bones, organs and muscles could be found inside.

"This is their very first lesson, and the first time should be with a living animal," Sótonyi said of his students. "They shouldn’t first meet with a carcass, because they want to heal animals. They want to make animals better."

Sótonyi has used this unique method for introducing students to animal anatomy for around 25 years, and is convinced it helps them engage more directly with the subject matter than studying solely through books, charts and models.

Horses, he said, which are "particularly intelligent and honorable animals," are especially suited to the task.

"It’s a big animal and a lot can be demonstrated on it, and people are so amazed that the horse comes into the classroom and climbs up on the podium. This immediately gives the students a lot of motivation," he said.

The horses, provided to the university each year by the Budapest Police, stood calmly throughout the lecture, encouraged by occasional treats of sugar cubes.

In addition to marking the animal's body with chalk and colorful oil pencils, Sótonyi held up pieces from a model horse skeleton to their corresponding locations to provide a clearer visual representation of the horse's anatomy.

About halfway through the hourlong lesson, Sótonyi demonstrated the oral structure of one of the animals, reaching his hand inside its mouth to grasp its long tongue — and getting a gentle nip from the horse in return.

"What's wrong with you today?" he asked the horse to laughter from the students, many of whom stood up for a better view and snapped pictures with their phones.

Following the lecture, there were no long faces or neigh-sayers, but a room of excited future veterinarians. Noémi Tamaska, 19, said that she thought the lecture with live horses was useful for future retention of the information.

"It meant a lot to me that we could see on a living animal how a skeletal system is built," she said. "I think it’s easier to imagine, especially for visually-oriented people."



2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
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2 Private Lunar Landers Head Toward the Moon in Roundabout Journey

The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA's Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 15 January 2025. EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for US and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth’s dusty sidekick.
The two landers rocketed away in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the latest in a stream of private spacecraft aiming for the moon, The Associated Press reported. They shared the ride to save money but parted company an hour into the flight exactly as planned, taking separate roundabout routes for the monthslong journey.
It’s take 2 for the Tokyo-based ispace, whose first lander crashed into the moon two years ago. This time, it has a rover on board with a scoop to gather up lunar dirt for study and plans to test potential food and water sources for future explorers.
Lunar newcomer Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is flying 10 experiments for NASA, including a vacuum to gather dirt, a drill to measure the temperature below the surface and a device that could be used by future moonwalkers to keep the sharp, abrasive particles off their spacesuits and equipment.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost — named after a species of US Southeastern fireflies — should reach the moon first. The 6-foot-6-inches-tall (2-meter-tall) lander will attempt a touchdown in early March at Mare Crisium, a volcanic plain in the northern latitudes.
The slightly bigger ispace lander named Resilience will take four to five months to get there, targeting a touchdown in late May or early June at Mare Frigoris, even farther north on the moon’s near side.
“We don’t think this is a race. Some people say ‘race to the moon,’ but it’s not about the speed,” ispace’s founder CEO Takeshi Hakamada said this week from Cape Canaveral.
Both Hakamada and Firefly CEO Jason Kim acknowledge the challenges still ahead, given the wreckage littering the lunar landscape. Only five countries have successfully placed spacecraft on the moon since the 1960s: the former Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan.
“We’ve done everything we can on the design and the engineering,” Kim said. Even so, he pinned an Irish shamrock to his jacket lapel Tuesday night for good luck.
The US remains the only one to have landed astronauts. NASA’s Artemis program, the successor to Apollo, aims to get astronauts back on the moon by the end of the decade.
Before that can happen, “we’re sending a lot of science and a lot of technology ahead of time to prepare for that,” NASA's science mission chief Nicky Fox said on the eve of launch.
If acing their respective touchdowns, both spacecraft will spend two weeks operating in constant daylight, shutting down once darkness hits.
Once lowered onto the lunar surface, ispace’s 11-pound (5-kilogram) rover will stay near the lander, traveling up to hundreds of yards (meters) in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. The rover has its own special delivery to drop off on the lunar dust: a toy-size red house designed by a Swedish artist.
NASA is paying $101 million to Firefly for the mission and another $44 million for the experiments. Hakamada declined to divulge the cost of ispace’s rebooted mission with six experiments, saying it's less than the first mission that topped $100 million.
Coming up by the end of February is the second moonshot for NASA by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. Last year, the company achieved the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half-century, landing sideways near the south pole but still managing to operate.