Knight (chess) ♞) Knight (chess) The knight (♘ ♞) is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight (armored cavalry). It is normally represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which begin on the row closest to the player, between the rooks and bishops. Colloquially it is sometimes referred to as a "horse", which is also the translation of the piece's name in several languages. Some languages refer to it as the "jumper", reflecting the knight's ability to move over pieces in its way: Polish "skoczek", Danish/Norwegian "springer", German "Springer", Luxembourgish "Sprénger", Slovene "skakač".
Evolution of the horse horse", "Orohippus" was not a true horse and did not live in the mountains. It resembled "Eohippus" in size, but had a slimmer body, an elongated head, slimmer forelimbs, and longer hind legs, all of which are characteristics of a good jumper. Although "Orohippus" was still pad-footed, the vestigial outer toes of "Eohippus" were not present in "Orohippus"; there were four toes on each fore leg, and three on each hind leg. The most dramatic change between "Eohippus" and "Orohippus" was in the teeth: the first of the premolar teeth were dwarfed, the last premolar shifted in shape and function