After thousands of years of domestication, we’re still learning about the horse’s amazing ability to communicate – with horses, other species and even us humans.
Humans have developed an intricate relationship with horses over the past few thousand years, and many of us now live with horses as our companions as well as work alongside them in our daily lives.
Horses are social animals and when allowed to live socially they develop a clear hierarchy of rank, led by a dominant individual, usually a mare. Due to their social nature they form strong attachments to each other, developing friendships which last their entire lives.
In a research study, 23 horses were taught to look at a display board which contained three icons. The icons represented horses wearing or not wearing a blanket. The horses could choose between a “no change” symbol or symbols for “blanket on” or “blanket off.”
It took the horses an average of 10 days to learn to approach and touch the board and to understand the meaning of the symbols, but all 23 horses learned to complete the task.
To understand if the horses understood the meaning of their actions, they were then tested in various weather conditions to see whether they could use the board to tell their trainers about their blanket preferences.
The horses subsequently made their choices based on the weather. If it was wet, cold, and windy, they touched the “blanket on” icon; horses that were already wearing a blanket nosed the “no change” image. But when the weather was sunny, the animals touched the “blanket off” symbol; those that weren’t blanketed pressed the “no change” icon.
These findings have great welfare implications, as it provides us with an opportunity to give choices to horses about their daily life activities.
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