Horses May Be Smarter Than We Think

Many horse owners can be accused of anthropomorphism, whereby we attribute human characteristics and behaviour to animals. We see how our equines react to certain stimuli and interpret these behaviours to how we’d describe it, be it fear or confidence, curiosity or boredom. Ever heard the phrase “my mare is a diva?”

Turns out our horses are as smart as we think they are. In a newly-published study in Applied Animal Behavior Science, a group of equine scientists at Nottingham Trent University in England found that horses can plan, forge strategies and other cognitive abilities.

The purpose of the research was to increase knowledge about how horses learn, as improved understanding can not only be used as a training aid for riding or competing, but also so that they are treated more humanely and to improve their welfare.

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To achieve this goal, the researchers created a three-phase study for its group of 20 horses. In the first phase, the horses were given the task of touching a piece of card with their nose; when they did, they were given a treat. Sounds simple enough, but after that was successfully achieved the task was made more difficult.

Phase two involved giving a horse a treat when they touched the card when they light was switched off, but no treat if the light was on.

According to the paper, every horse struggled with this phase and proceeded to touch the card regardless of the light being on or off, even though they were only given a treat for the light being off.

In the third and final phase the team created a penalty for touching the card when the “stop” light was on, which was a “ten second time-out during which they were unable to play the game or receive a reward.”

The researchers discovered “a sudden and highly significant reduction in errors amongst all the horses involved, as they began to play the game correctly, only touching the card at the right point in order to receive their treat.”

What does this prove exactly? The equine researchers made the case that it wasn’t that the horses didn’t get the game, but the opposite was true, the horses completely understood it the entire time but had discovered a way to play the game without paying much attention. Think Candy Crush.

The scientists think this was evidence of “a higher level of cognitive processing” than previously thought, and that the horses actually switched strategies and altered their behaviour as soon as they understood that there was a danger of something being taken away from them, in this case the treats.

In the study, this approach requires the horse to “think into the future … and is very goal-directed, with horses required to focus on what they want to achieve and the steps they need to take to do this.”

This was something that the scientific community had previously considered to be beyond a horse’s cognitive ability.

“At first we found that horses would just keep touching the card over and over, as they probably realized they would still get a frequent reward with minimal mental effort,” said lead researcher Dr. Carrie Ijichi. “There was no cost for indiscriminate hitting, sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn’t. When we introduced a cost for their errors, however, they could instantly understand and play the game properly. Horses are not natural geniuses, they are thought of as mediocre, but this study shows they’re not average and are in fact more cognitively advanced than we give them credit for.”

Ljichi explains that this new evidence means that horses might be able to use “model-based learning”, a technique once considered too tough for horses.

“It’s fascinating because they have a very underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex which is what we typically credit with producing that type of thinking in humans. This means they must be using another area of the brain to achieve a similar result and this teaches us that we shouldn’t make assumptions about animal intelligence or sentience based on whether they are ‘built’ just like us.”

Louise Evans, one of the researchers from Nottingham Trent University’s School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences, expected the horse’s performance to improve once the time out was introduced. But how fast and significant the improvement was surprised her.

“Animals usually need several repetitions of a task to gradually acquire new knowledge, whereas our horses immediately improved when we introduced a cost for errors. This suggests that the horses knew all along what the rules of the game were.”