.jpeg "The horse's owner pointing to the bucket on the left side. Credit Oceane Leirhmann") |
| The horse's owner pointing to the bucket on their left side Credit: Oceane Leirhmann |
“It has been observed in earlier studies that horses with access to a pasture with other horses showed better learning performance and were less aggressive towards humans than horses kept in individual stables. Therefore, we wanted to explore whether horses’ social and physical environment affect their responsiveness to human indications,” says the lead author of the study, Doctoral Researcher Océane Liehrmann from the Department of Biology at the University of Turku.
The study involved an international research team comprising members from the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki in Finland, as well as the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) in France. They observed and analysed how horses responded to human cues based on their living conditions. Additionally, they examined whether horses reacted differently when given cues by their familiar owners versus strangers.
To conduct the tests, the researchers recruited 57 leisure horses that were privately owned and located in the Turku region of Finland.
During the study, the human informant, who was either the owner or a researcher, stood between two buckets with a piece of carrot hidden in each. An assistant led the horses to stand in front of the informant, who then moved toward one of the buckets, looked at it, and pointed to indicate that the horse should go to that bucket. The horse was released and had the choice of going to the pointed bucket or the other one. If the horse followed the human's indication and approached the pointed bucket, the informant rewarded it by opening the lid and letting the horse have the carrot. However, if the horse chose the other bucket, the informant caught the horse, and it did not receive a carrot. This process was repeated ten times per horse, and the researchers analysed how often the horses followed the human indication over the ten trials.
“Interestingly, horses living in groups of at least three individuals chose the pointed bucket more often than the horses living alone or in dyads. Similarly, horses living in pastures or big fields for at least 8 months per year followed the human indication more often than the horses living in stalls or small paddocks”, Liehrmann describes.
During the study, horses living in large pastures also tended to live in bigger groups, while most horses living in small paddocks were either alone or with only one other horse. So, it was hard to tell whether the results were influenced more by social deprivation or by the lack of space and enrichment.
“However, domestic horses living in larger groups may benefit from stronger cognitive stimulation. Indeed, having the choice of interacting with various individuals promotes complex social situations from which the horses can learn and improve their socio-cognitive skills. This may also explain why horses living in groups had better success in the task that involved communication with humans,” Liehrmann notes.
In addition, the researchers discovered that the horses' ability to complete the task was not influenced by the familiarity of the person giving the indication. The success rate was comparable regardless of whether the informant was the owner or a stranger. This finding is inconsistent with previous experiments conducted on the same group of horses. In an earlier study, Liehrmann and her research team found that familiarity with the handler could impact a horse's behaviour in novel situations.
“Our hypothesis is that the context may play a role when investigating the effect of human familiarity in human-animal interactions. In a more stressful environment, animals may rely more on a familiar human than on a stranger, while in a positive context, where animals already feel safe and benefit from a food reward, the identity of the interacting human may matter less”, says Liehrmann.
She adds: “Overall, our study shows that the living conditions of the horses had an impact on their ability to follow human indications. The living and social environments of horses are a challenge and open to debate in the equestrian world. These results support the idea that offering an appropriate environment to horses by providing access to pasture and the ability to freely interact with their own kind could contribute to the development of their social behaviour and extend to interaction with humans.”
For more details, see:
What drives horse success at following human-given cues? An investigation of handler familiarity and living conditions
Océane Liehrmann, Camille Cosnard, Veera Riihonen,
Alisa Viitanen, Emmi Alander, Plotine Jardat, Sonja E. Koski, Virpi Lummaa & Léa Lansade
Animal Cognition (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-023-01775-0
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