Here's an interesting study from the Journal of Heredity: as you might have noticed, horses with lots of white on the legs almost always have white markings on the face (i.e. four white socks and a blaze tend to go together). This study also notes that in Arabians, at least, chestnut horses are more likely to have large white markings than other colors. This strikes me as true for other breeds, when I think of horses I know with four white socks and a blaze, they are mostly chestnut, not bay, black or brown.
Extensive white markings are often a limited form of the sabino pattern - the giveaway is usually that the blaze on the face runs all the way down the lips and under the chin, or there is a white patch on the lower lip or chin in addition to the main blaze. The horse in the photo has that kind of facial marking. In addition, the four white socks of a sabino horse have slanting, irregular tops, rather than stopping in a horizontal line (the way a pair of socks does when you pull them on your own feet). The more sabino expression a horse has, the higher the socks go. See this entry for a very strongly marked sabino.
Only the abstract of the journal article is accessible to non-subscribers.
Photo: ninjapoodles on flickr
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