Source: Nature: "Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies"
Funding for the VITAL/Ready to Teach collection was secured through the United States Department of Education under the Ready to Teach Program.
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In this video from Nature, Cloud is a four-year-old bachelor who lives in a "group" of wild horses in the Arrowhead Mountains of southern Montana. Although he seems to live a carefree life as he rolls in the muddy water and plays with the other horses, he also has to face and survive the dangers with which he is confronted in nature. There may be conflicts with other horses. Lightening can also be a dangerous force of nature that can strike at any time, killing unsuspecting horses. Learn more about Cloud in the three part series of video segments including "Cloud Foal" and "Cloud – Age Two."
Download and ShareThe following Frame, Focus and Follow-up suggestions are best suited for elementary or middle school students using this video in an English language arts or science lesson. Be sure to modify the questions to meet your students' instructional needs.
What is Frame, Focus and Follow-up?
Frame (ELA) What are some of the ways an author can indicate the passage of time in a story?
Focus (ELA) How can we tell that there has been a passage of time in this video segment?
Follow Up (ELA) Characters can change over time in a story. What can cause or motivate a character to change? Discuss other texts you have read or experienced. Share how characters in these texts changed and what motivated or caused the changes.
Frame (SCI) What can stimulate living things to behave a certain way?
Focus (SCI) Watch for and identify some of the behaviors the horses in the segment demonstrate. What could be some of the reasons for these behaviors?
Follow Up (SCI) Organisms can react to internal and external stimuli through behavioral responses. Discuss what internal and external stimuli might cause different behavioral responses in animals, including people. In the example of the wild horses, what behaviors might be caused by hunger, fear, friendship, pain, lightening, or the presence of an aggressive stallion or a bear?
In early June, I’m once again relieved to find Cloud.
He’s in fine health even though he looks like a horse from the Wizard of Oz—dyed a ‘Cheeto’ color from rolling in red mud.
As a new four year old he’s entered his grunge phase. Does he think he might be more appealing as a dark horse like the others?
He is tougher. That’s for sure.
Cloud has grown up.
He greets a bachelor who’s with a yearling. This is strange… a yearling would normally still be with his band.
Later, I was sad to find out why he wasn’t. His band had been struck and killed by the lightning. . .his father…the mares and a foal.
The lightning killed another band stallion. His carcass had already been fed on. I could tell it was a bear from tracks left in the snow.
It could just as easily have been Cloud lying here at the top of the melting snowdrift. He had been fighting with this stallion on the day of the storm.
I can see the scars on his coat from fighting.
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