Horses have played a huge part in our lives for hundreds of years. Yet how much do we actually know about them?
Animal welfare consultant Heather Pickett has written a special article for our animal sentience pages. It’s a fascinating read about horses’ behaviour, cognitive abilities (such as ‘thinking’) and welfare needs. Horses have remarkably complex social lives; with membership of a herd being of ultimate importance to them and sometimes roaming for up to 80km in one day. They are great diplomats, able to resolve many conflicts in order to keep the herd together.
Self reflection. Copyright Compassion/ Ed Posposil
Mares often form lifetime relationships, spending most of their time together. Their foals often become good friends too as a result. They have remarkable memory skills and have even been shown to understand that a 3-D image can be shown in a photograph. For example, horses had been trained to have a ‘favourite’ object (for example a soft toy or a frisbee), using treats as positive reinforcement. Then they were shown photos of a range of things, including their ‘favoured toy’, and more often than not they would choose the photo of that toy. In a similar experiment (Stone 2009), horses were found to be able to tell the difference between photos of people, even identical twins!
Domesticated horses are often kept stabled alone and fed on concentrated food that is eaten quickly, rather than grazing the whole day as they would do in more natural conditions. These factors sometimes lead to destructive behaviours such as weaving, biting the stable doors and pacing. The occurrence of these unnatural behaviours illustrates that horses, just like many other animals, need an environment that more closely fits their needs and fully takes into account their sentience and intelligence.
Download the full article Pickett, H. (2009) ‘Horses: Their Behaviour, Mental Abilities and Welfare’. animalsentience.com
Shorter version also available
Reference: Stone, S. M. (2009) Human facial discrimination in horses: can they tell us apart? Animal Cognition, Online first.
