You may not know the name of the Uffington White Horse but you have likely seen it.   It's carved into the Oxfordshire hillside (Brits love to carve things into hillsides) and looks like a horse.

Except apparently there has been a recent to-do because the mystery critter might not be a horse at all, but instead a rather less majestic dog, says retired vet Olaf Swarbrick.

Uffington white horse oxfordshire

"Anatomically it's not a horse at all," Mr Swarbrick told the BBC.  "It's too long and too lean and it has a long tail - horses don't have a tail the length of that stylised creature at Uffington."

It's art, say proponents of the horse idea, not a literal representation of animal anatomy.  And it makes more sense to be a horse, since no one carves giant dogs into hillsides.   Though anyone who believes that because soil samples are 3,000 years old so that carving is 3,000 years old is likely to believe anything.