A Horse Walked Into a Nightclub. Now Nobody Else Can.

A horse walked into a club — no joke.

And city officials in Miami Beach, Florida, were certainly not laughing Friday when they shut down the nightclub for creating what they said was a threat to public health and opened a criminal investigation into whether it had committed animal cruelty.

“This morning we heard about and saw an extremely troubling video of what can only be described as insane stupidity,” Mayor Dan Gelber said at a news conference Friday. “It was dangerous to this animal, it was dangerous to the public, it was inhumane. It wasn’t silly or sophomoric. It was outrageous.”

The order issued to the nightclub, Mokai Lounge, says the horse was paraded around the venue Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

Video of the episode shows a woman in underwear riding a white horse, which appears to slip and fall. As the horse attempts to regain its footing, the rider falls from its back. The horse then meanders through the crowd for a few seconds before the video ends.

The city order says that the footage shows that the horse was scared and concludes that the situation was an “actual threat” to public health and safety — enough to warrant the revocation of the lounge’s business license.

At the news conference, Gelber recalled his first thought after watching the footage: “What kind of idiot would do something like this?”

The city manager, Jimmy Morales, who issued the order revoking the nightclub’s business license, added, “I was disgusted and offended that any legitimate businessperson would think this was an appropriate action to take.”

Officials at Mokai Lounge could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday night.

The authorities would not discuss how the animal got inside the club, why it was taken there or other information about their investigation. But Melissa Berthier, a spokeswoman for the city, said in an email Saturday that the police had located the horse and had determined it to be “healthy and safe.”