Woman Leaps to Internet Stardom by Running and Jumping Like a Horse

A young Norwegian woman recently went viral online for her very unusual skill – she can trot, canter, gallop and even jump over obstacles with same form and cadence as an actual horse.

If, like me, you’re an incurable procrastinator who wastes hours everyday watching random things on the internet, chances are you’ve already seen Ayla Kirstine in action. A video showing her trotting and cantering like a horse went viral on Twitter last week, getting over 18 million views on that social media platform alone. Ayla is so good at what she does that, seen from afar at the beginning of the video, she actually looks like a four-legged animal, which a lot of people found uncanny.

Ayla Kirstine told Insider that she wanted to be an animal from a very young age. When she was just four, she loved dogs and wanted to be a dog herself, so when she later fell in love with horses, she just used the quadruped-like movement she had already learned. Asked how she stays injury-free, especially since landing on her palms when showjumping puts a lot of pressure on her wrists, Ayla said “I don’t really know, but I don’t have any pain in my body.”

Coincidentally, Ayla only started her public Instagram profile three weeks ago, and already has over 6,000 followers, thanks in no small measure to that viral Twitter video that is still doing the rounds. But while most people appreciate her talent for emulating a horse’s natural movement, some people have apparently been very critical of the young Norwegian, prompting her to contemplate shutting down her Instagram.

 

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“I wonder if i should delete my Instagram profile…” she wrote. “I do not know and do not intend to do it yet! So take it easy and calm down…”

 

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However, she later admitted that her reaction had a lot to do with her sensitive nature: “I’m so sensitive that I’m scared of absolutely everything!” Ayla posted. “Seriously, I thought I had got cancer in a mole just because I saw an advertisement that one could get cancer in the moles… There you have me…”

 

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Regardless of what she intends to do going forward, Ayla Kirstine, or Pferdemädchen (Horse Woman) as she has come to be known, will forever be a part of internet culture and her viral video has already achieved meme status.

 

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Another interesting thing that happened after Ayla’s “horsing around” went viral, was the surfacing of other videos of people cantering and showjumping. The Instagram account __jumping.like.a.horse__ is a prime example, but we also have Swedish girl Anna Salander, who six years ago gained notoriety for jumping like a horse. She was just 10 at the time.

 

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