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The intelligence of the horse, long described in myth or anecdote, has been studied scientifically since the early 20th century. The worldwide popular craze for clever horses, one of the most famous of which is Hans le Malin, gave rise to a long-running controversy about the cognitive abilities of this species. The discovery of the Hans le Malin effect, followed by the development of ethological studies, has gradually brought to light a high level of social intelligence, manifested in the horse's behavior. The scientific discipline that studies equine cognition, at the crossroads of ethology and animal psychology, is cognitive ethology.

Although the ability of horses to become conscious has yet to be proven, their memory capacities have been recognized for centuries. Thanks to their wild herd lifestyle, horses also have advanced cognitive abilities related to the theory of mind, enabling them to understand interactions with other individuals. They can recognize a human being from facial features, communicate with them through body language, and learn new skills by observing a person's behavior. Horses are also adept at categorizing and learning concepts. In terms of working intelligence, horses respond well to habituation, desensitization, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning. They are capable of improvisations and adaptations to suit their potential rider. Understanding how the horse's cognitive abilities work has concrete applications in the relationship between these domesticated mammals and human beings, particularly in terms of integrating learning capacity, which can improve the horse's well-being, training, breeding, and day-to-day management.

The horse's intelligence is perceived differently in different cultures; while the influence of Christianity may, except for some medieval literature, lead to it being considered limited, it is more readily recognized among people who value animals as much as humans. This intelligence is portrayed in an anthropomorphized way in tales and legends about wise, talking horses, such as the Kyrgyz epic Er-Töshtük and the Russian tale of the Little Hunchback Horse, but also in novels, films, comics, and series for young people, as illustrated by The Black Stallion, Jolly Jumper, and Black Beauty.

History

The horse plays an important socio-economic role, working alongside human beings in work, combat, sport, therapy, consumption, and worship, but has long been little known for its own sake, with many myths and legends circulating about it. Humans were interested in this animal long before they domesticated it, as early as prehistoric times, and the horse inspired abundant written production from Antiquity onwards. Vanina Deneux-le Barh identifies a topos in all equestrian literature, both technical and literary: humans can teach horses to become valiant fighters. This implies that during their shared life with humans, horses must mobilize situational intelligence (or mètis; ancient Greek: μῆτις).

Many equestrian authors testify to their "desire to live with horses that are intelligent and committed to work". However, the horse has historically suffered a great deal of cruel treatment. The oldest known equestrian treatise (tablet dated 14th century BC), by the Hittite Kikkuli of the kingdom of Mittani, is an instruction manual for the training of chariot horses, characterized by "ruthless" selection.

Xenophon (430-355 B.C.), the first European author whose equestrian writings have survived to the present day, quotes the horse extensively in his works; he acknowledges this situational intelligence in the war horses of the city of Athens, and advocates refusing violence during their training:

"What a horse does by force it does not learn, and that cannot be beautiful, any more than if one wanted to make a man dance with a whip and a goad: ill-treatment will never produce anything but clumsiness and bad grace."

— Xenophon, On Horsemanship, Book IX

From the Middle Ages to modern times

Most medieval technical literature consists of treatises on hippiatry, or veterinary care manuals. Arab-Muslim civilization made a major contribution to knowledge of hippiatry, equine education, and training, notably thanks to the translator Ibn Akhî Hizâm, who wrote around 895, and Ibn al-Awam, who advocated the rejection of violence; the latter was also a precursor in the application of habituation methods.

There are anecdotal cases of horses portrayed as extraordinarily intelligent, such as the Catalan knight Giraud de Cabrières, who, according to the medieval English chronicler Gervais de Tilbury, is both refined and invincible at a race, capable of dancing, and even advising his knight and helping him in his victories by communicating with him in a secret language. This is also true of the English horse Marocco (born around 1586, died around 1606), nicknamed "The thinking horse" or "The talking horse", trained and shown in shows.

From the Renaissance onwards, the printing press enabled equestrian writings to be produced and distributed more widely. For the most part, these writings consisted of methods for obtaining obedience and maneuverability from horses. The Italian horseman Federico Grisone advocated physical punishment to obtain obedience from a horse that was too "clever".

With the development of philosophical disputations in France, Descartes' conceptualization of the animal machine clashed with that of Montaigne, who recognized animality as a source of intelligence and virtue. Antoine de Pluvinel, who had read Xenophon, recognized the sensitive nature, individuality, and psychology of horses, stressing the importance of "the brain". François Robichon de La Guérinière (1733) admits a form of intelligence in hollow horses, in that there are vicious and indecisive ones. According to Sophie Barreau and zootechnician-sociologist Jocelyne Porcher, he was the first "to break with brutality and seek the horse's cooperation rather than its submission".

In the 19th century

From the 19th century onwards, numerous equestrian treatises recognized and praised the intelligence of horses. People who came into contact with horses daily noted their ability to communicate and their sensitivity. The preoccupation of the time with animal intelligence was illustrated by the organization of numerous shows featuring horses, which became an extra in circus shows in the mid-19th century, notably at Victor Franconi's circus, inaugurated in Paris in 1845. In 1868, the Spanish writer Carlos Frontaura remarked on the "great intelligence" (gran inteligencia) of the horses pulling the Parisian omnibuses, through their initiative.

François Baucher wrote a one-and-a-half-page entry for the word "intelligence" in his Dictionnaire raisonné d'équitation (1833), in which he declared that he had "always believed" in the horse's intelligence:

"The horse has a perception as it has sensation, comparison, and memory: it, therefore, has judgment and memory; it, therefore, has intelligence "

— François Baucher, Dictionnaire raisonné d'équitation

The reasoned education promoted by Baucher consists in allowing the rider to speak to the horse's intelligence. The zoologist Ernest Menault also recognized "the signs of intelligence" in the horse, albeit through poetic declarations rather than scientific demonstration. Gustave Le Bon was one of the first to take an interest in horse psychology, with his 1892 equestrian treatise recognizing the horse's intellectual qualities.

According to Porcher, zootechnicians in the 19th and 20th centuries applied the animal machine hypothesis to horses, based on the ideas of Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon, denying that this animal could think, suffer, or even have consciousness and feelings. Social pressure held back the researchers for a long time, as they feared that their discoveries would be poorly received, the idea of the animal machine being easier to defend in a context of "industrial exploitation of farm animals". T. B. Redding reported in 1892, in the magazine Science, on a societal opposition between those who attributed intelligence and reason to the horse, and others who considered it to be purely instinctual.

Moreover, common sense has perpetuated false beliefs; one of the most "preposterous", according to equestrian journalist Maria Franchini, is the belief that the horse's obedience stems from the fact that it sees humans as seven times taller than they actually are, propagated at least from 1898 onwards.

The worldwide popularity of "Learned Horses"

Until the middle of the 20th century, the question of animal intelligence was analyzed through ontological comparison with humans. In 1901, French military veterinarian Adolphe Guénon published a comparative psychology study entitled L'Âme du cheval, in which he described the horse's "rudimentary brain". From the end of the 19th century onwards, there was a worldwide craze for intelligent animals. These "calculating" horses were provided with specially manufactured equipment (cubes, sticks, boards, etc.), and showed great patience in "reproducing their feats".

Manifestations of the "learned horse" craze

• Beautiful Jim Key presented as an attraction at the 1904 World's Fair.
• Entrance to the attraction around Beautiful Jim Kay.
• Hans the Clever performing with Karl Krall in 1909.
• The mare Lady Wonder, photographed in 1940 for Life magazine.
• Sign photographed in 1952, indicating Lady Wonder's ability to read minds.

Several journalists published articles devoted to the horse's intelligence, including C. Mader, who in 1904 challenged the equation of this animal with a "living machine"; Remy de Gourmont, who in 1912 noted the craze surrounding this question in a context where, until then, "horses had never passed for being particularly intelligent"; and a writer for The New York Times, who in 1913 published an article asking whether horses could "think".

The case of Hans le Malin (Kluger Hans) in particular illustrates this interest. This black horse, bred in Germany, became an international star at the beginning of the 20th century, as he seemed to have advanced cognitive faculties in calculation, and answered complex arithmetical questions by kicking his hoof on the ground:

"Crowds flock daily to the inner courtyard of Griebenow Street in northern Berlin, where his master puts him to work, to witness the extraordinary performance of the one who would henceforth be known as 'Hans the Clever'."

— Vinciane Despret, Hans: the horse that could count

Belgian philosopher Vinciane Despret highlights the lengthy scientific debate that ensues, surrounding the question of whether or not horses possess conceptual intelligence. German psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrates that Hans "cheats" because he can't calculate; in fact, he interprets human body language very finely to know when to stop stamping his hoof, giving rise to the conceptualization of the Hans le Malin effect.

Beautiful Jim Key is another example of a "learned horse" who became very popular in the early 20th century. The case of the mare Lady Wonder led to a lengthy controversy surrounding the possibility of telepathic messages between humans and horses, with some individuals believing until the 1970s that horses were endowed with telepathic talents.

Implications of the Hans le Malin case for equine cognition research

Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal points out that the validity of the scientific principle known as Morgan's canon ("We must never interpret an animal action as the exercise of high-level faculties if it can be interpreted as the exercise of lower-level faculties") is illustrated almost perfectly in the Hans le Malin case. According to Porcher, Morgan's canon had a lasting influence on research into animal cognition.

Frans de Waal notes that the results of the experiments on Hans the Evil were interpreted at the time in such a way as to belittle his intelligence, whereas these results demonstrate his exceptional ability to understand human body language. This is also underlined by ethologist Léa Lansade, who points out that at the time, and up until the 1960s, an animal had to develop the same capacities as human beings (calculating, learning sign language, etc.) to be considered "intelligent", whereas these capacities were of no use to it.

The Hans le Malin affair had the effect of making subsequent studies of animal cognition much more rigorous in their protocols. Deneux-Le Barh points out that "experimental sciences try to avoid any intrusion of the mètis of the individuals studied".

Research was dominated by behaviorism throughout the first half of the 20th century, before splitting into two currents, with ethology on one side, and cognitive animal psychology on the other. These two currents gave rise to cognitive ethology.

Highlighting the cognitive faculties of the horse

The behaviorist hypothesis that the horse was a "machine" reacting to stimuli has become completely obsolete, thanks in part to Maurice Hontang's book Psychology of the Horse published in 1954, then to more recent scientific work. The first studies in equine ethology are those of Pearl Gardner, which date back to the 1930s. The horse was initially tested by pressing a mechanism that gives it access to a food source (as a laboratory rat can be), then these test conditions were made more complex by the addition of visual discrimination tasks, before a diversification of learning, for example by the addition of mazes (maze test).

It has now been proven that horses do not simply obey "pre-programmed routines" but also demonstrate real intelligence through cognitive processes that they implement themselves. The number of scientific publications on animal intelligence has been increasing since the 2000s, when the discipline of cognitive ethology included horses among its subjects of study.

Knowledge still incomplete

The psychologist and doctor in neuroscience Michel-Antoine Leblanc noted in 2022 that there are still many unknowns in the knowledge of the mental faculties of the horse. Scientific publications are few, especially until 2005. In addition, many were only anecdotal observations or speculative interpretations.

Horses are less studied than other species, particularly in comparison to Primates, who have benefited from Jane Goodall's work. Among domestic animals, the dog is often the reference species studied for its intelligence. In 2016, Lauren Brubaker and Monique A.R. Udell pointed out that there are seven times more studies on rat cognition than on horse cognition. Among the questions raised, whether or not horses access consciousness remains open.

The first book devoted to the intelligence of horses at work was published in French in 2023 by Éditions Quæ. Jocelyne Porcher explains that work relationships constitute a privileged field for observing the intelligence of animals, but that this field has long remained underinvested by researchers.

Definition of horse intelligence

Michel-Antoine Leblanc points out that historically, the question of horse intelligence has given rise to both varied and contradictory answers, and that there is no simple or unambiguous answer or definition. For historian and journalist Stephen Budiansky, describing horse intelligence involves first defining what intelligence itself is, because this definition varies greatly throughout history. Jocelyne Porcher and Sophie Barreau point out the importance of the originality of behavioral responses to define intelligence, and to differentiate it from the simple result of conditioning. Instinctive behaviors of horses are sometimes wrongly described as "intelligent", for example, the fight against biting insects, or adaptation to climatic conditions (seeking coolness by taking refuge on a ridge line, etc.).

In modern acceptance, intelligence is defined as the ability to solve problems, relate elements to each other, and assimilate new information, rather than the demonstration of a good memory. Jocelyne Porcher reminds us that horses have "the intelligence that researchers are willing to give them", insofar as it is these same researchers who define the experiments and the conditions of the experiments concerning their cognitive capacities. Researchers are therefore judges and parties, as human beings, when they evaluate the cognition of the horse in comparison to other species of mammals.

Because of these difficulties of definition, some researchers such as Michel-Antoine Leblanc and Léa Lansade prefer to describe the cognitive processes of the horse without evaluating intellectual performance. Leblanc refuses to attempt to measure an equivalent of IQ in the horse and also refuses to define whether this species is "more" or "less" intelligent than other animal species, such as the dog and the cat. The horse having evolved from herbivorous and prey animals unlike the dog and the cat, its cognition and behavior raise unique scientific questions.

Intelligence studied through interaction with humans

Among domestic animals, horses occupy a unique place in that their modern domestic lifestyle differs greatly from the wild lifestyle on the one hand; on the other hand, they are often intensively trained to perform tasks in the field of sport, work, or companionship, learning things that they would not have been led to learn outside the domestic space (for example, a movie horse can learn to simulate death). The horse is not only trained to ignore its natural tendency to flee from situations that frighten it but also to communicate and cooperate with another species, the human, which could be assimilated into a predator. Authors such as Alexis L'Hotte, François Baucher, Aloïs Podhajsky, and Nuno Oliveira relate intelligence at work and affectivity:

"Two living beings who are asked to collaborate harmoniously must understand each other to achieve a result"

—  Aloïs Podhajsky, L'équitation

According to the results of a survey by sociologist Vanina Deneux-le Barh conducted in France among 800 people working with horses, and published in 2021 and then in 2023, professionals in the equestrian world describe their horses as "partners". They recognize in their horses situational intelligence and the ability to "adapt" and take "initiatives". The emphasis on mental qualities goes hand in hand with the difficulty of the work required of the animal.

Equestrian professionals interviewed for this study also emphasize the importance of rewarding horses to encourage them to cooperate, and thus develop their intelligence. Horse intelligence can be a reflection of the intelligence of the person training them, especially if that person effectively uses conditioning and positive reinforcement techniques to train each animal in a way that best matches its natural inclinations.

Examples of mobilizing horse intelligence through interaction with humans

• Learning the Spanish step with the help of a stick to give directions..
• Training two circus horses in Russia.
• Training a horse using clicker conditioning.
• Training a young horse alongside an older, more experienced one.
• Training a young horse for cattle work.
• Mounted Cadre Noir horse, jumping a table.
• Japanese horses trained in freedom.

The results of the work between humans and horses make it possible to highlight "the investment and intelligence of horses in the activity", Vanina Deneux–Le Barh describes communities of practices that allow the "recognition of subjectivities and intelligences".

" Driving, dressage, western riding, and so on, are disciplines that require not only exceptional mastery of each movement but also a synthetic and immediate understanding of the messages of the driver or rider"

— Maria Franchini, De l'intelligence des chevaux

The horse's intelligence is manifested here through isopraxis, its ability to perceive every movement of a rider in a very subtle way. Finally, the various studies conducted on equine cognition highlight that the horse's degree of familiarity with humans or other partners plays an important role in the manifestation of its cognitive faculties.

Conditions of experience and limits

Like any mammal, the horse constructs its representation of the world from the information transmitted by its senses. However, the horse experiences the world differently from a human being. Any assessment of its intelligence must take into account its perceptual capacities.

Horses are not always scientifically tested in experimental conditions appropriate to their species. Budiansky and Leblanc point out that the tendency to compare the intelligence of one species to that of another is subject to many cultural biases, and suffers from failure to take into account sensory perception capacities or object manipulation capacities. For example, the horse is perceived as "less intelligent" than an octopus, or compared to a three-year-old child. The octopus is very often cited as an example of an intelligent animal; in comparison, equines such as the horse do not have a body adapted to the manipulation of objects:

Another recurring limitation in these studies lies in the lack of consideration of the emotional state of the horse, a stressed or suffering animal obtaining less good results. Ethologist Martine Hausberger and her team emphasize the importance of living conditions and respect for the well-being of the horse, poor living conditions result in poorer cognitive performance.

Many studies conducted up until the early 2000s did not take into account the horse's potential prior learning, carried out before the research experiments.

Anthropomorphism, long considered "sacrilegious", can be occasionally useful when it comes to comparing the cognitive abilities of horses to those of humans, in order to better understand them. However, it would be wrong to systematically apply a human equivalent to horses' behavior, by attributing complex emotions and reasoning to them such as jealousy or the premeditation of a malicious act.

Factors influencing cognitive performance in horses

Leblanc also points out that manifestations of intelligence can vary greatly within the same individual and the same species, for example with different appetites for social relationships or abstraction. There is no evidence that horses that are dominant in the social hierarchy of their group are, in one way or another, more intelligent than the other members of their group. Young horses show more investigative behavior, with more interactions on the test devices than older horses, which could give young horses an advantage in a learning context. In addition to age, a lower hierarchical rank also seems to be among the factors that promote learning, in particular thanks to reduced neophobia.

Breed differences

There are very few comparative studies of horse intelligence by breed, with Budiansky postulating that the Quarter Horse may be superior to the Thoroughbred, a hypothesis that is consistent with Lindberg et al., who suggest that so-called cold-blooded horses (ponies and draft horses) learn conditioning tasks more quickly than warm-blooded horses (such as the Thoroughbred and the Arabian). In 1933, L. P. Gardner concluded that the Belgian Draft horse was a faster learner than the Percheron.

Many old and recent works present the Arabian as a more "intelligent" horse than other breeds. This is the case, among others, of The Illustrated Horse Management by Edward Mayhew, published in 1864:

"The Arab horse is undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most intelligent specimen of its race."

— The Illustrated Horse Management, preface p.VI

French veterinarian Alexandre-Bernard Vallon (1863) considered oriental horses such as the Arabian and the Barb more intelligent than those of "common breed". Maurice Hontang points out that the Arabian and the Thoroughbred are selected on "love of fighting" and competition, which could explain their psychological differences.

The Horse's Brain

As in all large mammals, the horse's brain is a "conductor" of its nervous system, managing all perceptions in order to allow the animal to respond to them. The encephalon, longer than it is wide, has an ovoid shape and has many tight gyri. A series of experiments tend to conclude that the right cerebral hemisphere is more specialized in communication signals, while the left cerebral hemisphere is more specialized in the categorization of stimuli.

The weight of the brain of an adult horse is about 510 grams; however, this weight relative to that of the body is not a significant element in measuring intelligence. The encephalization coefficient is 0.9%.

Cognitive abilities of horses

As riding instructor Nicolas Blondeau points out, a horse has learning and adaptation abilities comparable to those of a human being. Training allows it to acquire know-how. Horses demonstrate intelligence in solving a certain number of daily tasks, including searching for food and managing social organization. Discriminative learning is important to assess in order to understand horse cognition, because it provides information on its abilities at the species level, and allows us to learn more about other cognitive domains.

The ability to learn conspecifically (by observing other horses) remained unknown for a long time, before being demonstrated in 2008.

Horse Problem Solving Performance

Domestic horses, which live in an artificial environment that inhibits their instinctive behavior while learning unnatural tasks, are generally more adept at solving complex problems than wild horses.

According to Budiansky, horses are not particularly good at problem-solving. Most carnivores, as well as monkeys, perform better, especially when it comes to avoiding obstacles placed in their path. He hypothesizes that this average performance stems from differences between carnivores and herbivores like horses. A herbivore is not used to anticipating the reactions of its prey. However, for veterinarian Robert M. Miller, the horse is "intelligent enough to be able to choose quickly between two evils."

Ethnologist María Fernanda de Torres Álvarez believes, on the contrary, that working relationships allow the horse to mobilize its intelligence to seek concrete solutions to carry out the task asked of it. She cites the example of Camargue horses ridden by volunteers for cattle work, who can correct their rider's mistakes by themselves to catch fleeing bulls. Beginner riders are typically given a mature horse that can correct their mistakes by itself. Similarly, Camargue horses ridden on treks by complete beginner tourists know how to anticipate the mistakes of these novice riders. For María Fernanda de Torres Álvarez, the horse's intelligence is expressed here through its freedom to find solutions to problems by itself.

Horse Performance in Maze Tests

According to Budiansky, horses perform respectably, but not brilliantly, in most maze tests. These tests typically take the form of a "T" or "Y" shaped maze with two choices, one leading to a dead end, and the other to access to food, water, or social contact with other horses, without the horse being able to see in advance what is at the end of either branch of the maze. The learning performance of horses subjected to this test is comparable to that of tropical fish, octopuses, and guinea pigs. In the experiment cited by Budiansky, after five trials, 20% of the horses still made a mistake in the exit.

Maria Franchini cites the maze test as an example of bias: rats perform better than horses, but rats are subterranean species accustomed to moving in enclosed environments, whereas, in the wild, horses live in large, open outdoor spaces.

Memory

The excellent memory of horses is one of the few findings that is a consensus among both 19th-century horsemen and modern researchers. In 1892, the sociologist Gustave Le Bon wrote:

"The fundamental characteristic of the horse's psychology is memory. Not very intelligent, it seems to have a representative memory far superior to that of man"

— Gustave Le Bon, L'équitation actuelle et ses principes

In the equestrian world, there are many stories about the memory that horses keep of people who have mistreated them, to the point of remembering it several years later. However, Michel-Antoine Leblanc notes that scientific work has long been few and far between and that the consensus around the excellent memory of horses was based on collections of anecdotes.

Dr. R. M. Miller hypothesized in 1995 that horses have excellent memories based on their evolutionary history, but did not support this with evidence. In 2009, a study by Evelyn Hanggi and Jerry Hingersol provided the first evidence of long-term memory in horses, with complex memories (memories of learning rules and elaborate mental tasks) that can go back as far as ten years. Horses also remember the people they encounter in their care and work, and past interactions with those people, both positive and negative. Ethologist Marthe Kiley-Worthington reported teaching two horses about two hundred different words that they had trained since they were foals.

When horses visited an arena every day in which new objects were placed, they suggested that they remembered very well having already examined the same object during the day, but re-explored the same object from one day to the next.

Regarding short-term memory, the horse is in the average range of other mammalian species such as the donkey, cat, and dog, with an ability to retain information for at least 30 seconds. Its short-term memory is excellent for exploring new objects. On the other hand, its working memory is poor, with a limit of about twenty seconds. Lansade explains this by the absence of the need to mobilize it in a herbivorous grazing animal.

Spatial visualization

Despite misconceptions about poor visual perception, horses have eyesight adapted to their life in the open, although they do not see very clearly and their color perception is dichromatic. They also have good spatial visualization skills, which seems logical since horses rely heavily on their sight during social interactions. Their ability to find their way demonstrates access to a sort of cognitive map of their environment.

Horses perform very well on spatial (three-dimensional) visual discrimination tasks, notably better than on discrimination of 2D objects (such as patterns on colored backgrounds). There is no scientific basis for the myth that a horse must be presented with the same object once in front of its right eye and then in front of its left eye before it can identify it since part of the optic nerve fibers from each eye are connected to the opposite cerebral hemisphere.

Hanggi cites numerous examples in which horses have noticed the movement of objects in their environment. Their marked reaction when an object has been moved demonstrates an ability to identify changes in their visual environment. These visual discrimination abilities apply both to concrete objects such as toys, doors, or buckets, and to more abstract objects such as figures and striped patterns. In contrast, an experiment on object permanence gave very poor results, suggesting that horses are not able to transpose the movements of an object that is invisible to them.

Maria Franchini hypothesizes that some horses perceive insects and other small living animals in their path; she cites the example of a mare who avoided trampling live insects but trampled dead ones. Finally, many anecdotes from riders speak of a strong sense of direction in horses; according to psychologist Sara J. Shettleworth, this sense of direction probably also relies heavily on memory.

Counting and Categorizing

Horses are capable of solving advanced cognitive problems that involve categorizing and learning concepts. Researcher Evelyn Hanggi has demonstrated the horse's ability to assimilate the relational concept of size, by classifying objects of different sizes. The horse can discriminate complex patterns such as certain geometric shapes, and in particular, distinguish a triangle.

The study of horses' ability to count echoes the case of Clever Hans; it is difficult to know whether horses have any real counting ability. It is suggested that they can count one apple from two and two from three, but not four apples from six. They would therefore be able to "count" up to four.

All these studies also demonstrate that the horse can access a mental representation and perform simple counts.

An ability to improvise?

Based on practical experiences, Doctor of Theatre Studies Charlène Dray postulates that show horses are capable of improvising on stage without expecting a reward, as long as they have exploratory objects placed at their disposal. Several riders who work with show horses agree, however, that these animals are not aware of creating an artistic emotion.

Shelly R. Scott cites a similar practical experience, this time a horse race for which neither the horses nor their riders had been prepared, so both improvised to manage this race.

Social intelligence of the horse

Many studies have highlighted the horses' high social intelligence. According to Lansade, in about ten years, scientific work on the social cognition of horses towards humans has led to very important discoveries, particularly at the end of the 2010s. Their results prove that the horse "has a rich and complex representation of the individuals with whom it is in a relationship". These results also make the horse a good candidate for studies on the theory of mind. These social learnings are part of complex learning.

The wild lifestyle of the horse involves living outdoors in groups and learning between members of this group. This social learning between horses is influenced by hierarchy, with horses learning more readily from a dominant member of their social group than from a subordinate member or a horse outside their group. Visual social communication, which predominates in horses, is however more difficult to study than in species that communicate by sound. The horse can experience emotional contagion from watching a film.

In the context of working with humans, the horse naturally seeks to cooperate, regain calm, and avoid conflict situations. It is capable of interpreting human body language, deciphering human emotions, and thus attributing mental states to humans. Maria Franchini cites the example of the horse's ability to differentiate a human gesture that is beneficial to it because it aims to kill an insect that has landed on it, from a human gesture aimed at hitting it, in the face of which it rebels or tries to flee. According to an Icelandic study on two groups of 22 and 24 horses, horses exposed to a prior visual demonstration by one of their peers did not obtain better results than control animals in solving spatial diversion tasks in a maze, with social learning failing in this case.

Recognition of other horses and humans

Horses can recognize individual humans around them (and recognize each other) from the simple sound of a voice or facial features. An experiment has highlighted their ability to discriminate faces in photographs or films, and to make the link between a face seen in a photograph and the real person. Their ability to recognize human faces is very fine since horses are able to differentiate between photographs of twins. They also can remember familiar faces that they have not seen for six months, and recognize them in photos. It seems that the recognition of faces by horses is holistic (they recognize each face as a whole), as in humans. Lansade insists on the "impressive" aspect of this discovery because it is a question of interspecific recognition: in comparison, a human even accustomed to seeing cows every day could have difficulty in differentiating each of the cows he encounters, while most of the horses tested are capable of distinguishing human faces without making a mistake, and in a few days.

Horses are also able to differentiate between human voices, and to make the connection between a voice heard only through a loudspeaker and the voice of the real person when they hear it. They associate voices with past experiences related to them, whether those experiences are positive or negative. They recognize emotions expressed by humans based on facial expressions and vocalizations and react accordingly.

Finally, horses have an intermodal mental representation of their peers and humans, associating their faces, their smells, their voices, and their expectations in terms of past experiences. Horses deprived of one sense probably still have the capacity to recognize people, by appealing to their other senses.

Interspecies communication

Horses can communicate interspecifically with humans if they feel the need to do so. They can attract attention to gain access to a food source, including by using their gaze, and possibly by making physical contact. The horse is the second domestic animal species, after the dog, in which this ability has been demonstrated. It is suggested that horses are more interested in humans if they hope that humans can provide them with access to food and that the training technique used influences interspecific learning abilities, with the application of ethological principles leading to better results.

A study has uncovered a "symbolic communication primer" between humans and horses, giving horses a way to communicate their preference to wear a blanket or not. According to the 2016 study, horses can learn the meaning of symbols through positive reinforcement (one symbol for getting a blanket, one for staying put, and one for getting the blanket removed) and then communicate their preferences to a human using those symbols.

In its interspecific communication, the horse can take into account the point of view of a human being: when faced with two people, only one of whom knows where food is hidden that is inaccessible to it, it will spontaneously ask for help from the person it knows is capable of accessing this food source. This ability, considered complex to acquire, has long been attributed only to large primates and dogs.

Experiments on their sensitivity to human pointing (pointing at an object containing food with a finger) led to the conclusion that horses value the pointing gesture, but not whether they interpret it as a communicative signal addressed to them. Four different pointing methods were used: horses excelled in all pointing tasks except for distal dynamic-momentary pointing, which is much more cognitively demanding than the other pointing styles.

Horses are sensitive to human attention and prefer to approach a person who is watching them while feeding them, rather than one who is not. Young horses do not appear to be particularly predisposed to pay attention to human attention, implying that they undergo later learning to use these attention signals.

Interspecies learning

Horses can learn new skills simply by observing humans.

In one experiment, humans showed horses how to press a button to open a feeder, while another group of horses was not shown a demonstration; a few horses learned to open the feeder through observational conditioning, but most animals learned socially from observing humans to determine where and how the opening mechanism should be manipulated, applying individual trial-and-error learning to reach the food.

This ability to learn interspecies may explain why domestic horses can learn to open their stall door or even to operate the handle of an electric fence.

Reputation attribution

The horse can attribute an emotional valence (a reputation) to a human based on its own experience but also based on its observation of the interaction between an experimenter and another horse. Lansade explains this ability through the fact that many horses react to the arrival of a veterinarian, even if it is a veterinarian they have never seen before, which seems to testify to an ability to recognize attributes particular to this profession (such as clothing or a smell) and to associate them with past experiences. In the experiments cited by Lansade, horses remember up to a year later having been groomed by a person who gave them a pleasant, or on the contrary unpleasant, experience, to the extent that they adopt characteristic facial expressions even before this person begins his grooming. Horses are also able to recognize on film a person who provides a pleasant or unpleasant experience to one of their peers, and then interact with these people by taking into account the information received in the films.

Applications of knowledge of equine cognition

A horse is led throughout its life to learn new skills, whether for its survival and adaptation to its environment or for the use of human beings. From its uses for war, through agricultural work, and nowadays for sports and leisure, learning is sought, breeding and selection practices do not erase their necessity. The entire horse industry is based on the learning of this animal under human control.

There is a wealth of literature on the different ways to train horses for riding, as well as a wide variety of training methods that can be applied to them. The horse's social intelligence is even used in so-called "equicoaching" sessions, the aim of which is to allow humans to "reconnect with their emotional intelligence".

Learning, however, is a complex and multifactorial process, including time commitment, with horses responding best to short, frequent sessions. Other factors to consider include genetics, motivation, and the horse's mood. Each animal's individual temperament appears to play a role in its learning abilities, with a less emotional, calmer equine learning more quickly. Personality may also play a role in determining how a given animal responds to various experiences.

Understanding the horse's cognitive abilities allows for concrete applications to better integrate its learning capacity, thus facilitating relationships between horses and humans, which can improve the horse's well-being, training, breeding and daily management:

However, many horses continue to live in conditions that are unsuitable for their needs and cognition, in stalls without social contact, in darkness, in dust, and without mental stimulation. The use of inappropriate punishments also remains frequent, with theoretical developments not necessarily accompanied by changes in practices.

Responses to conditioning

The often overused notion of "conditioning" refers to the association between a stimulus and a response (to the point of giving rise to habits), and does not imply that the conditioned subject is comparable to a machine. Simple conditioning can be voluntary (a classic example being the training of circus horses) or involuntary, such as horses that become agitated and neigh at mealtime because they have associated a specific time or a noise in a food storage room with the imminence of their feeding.

A series of practical experiments show that horses respond very well to simple forms of learning such as classical conditioning (or Pavlovian conditioning) and operant conditioning. These results are logical since these techniques (rewarding or removing a constraint after a successful exercise) are commonly used by humans to train horses to perform the tasks they expect of them. Reinforcement can be positive or negative. At the beginning of reinforcement learning, the horse is unaware of what is expected of him, and gives random responses; it is the consequence of his response (reinforcement or punishment) that allows learning.

Examples of positive and negative reinforcement and punishment in horses

• Positive reinforcement: the horse receives a reward in the form of food immediately after exhibiting the desired behavior.
• Positive punishment: This horse feels the unpleasant pressure of his halter behind his ears because he does not follow the movements of the man holding the lead rope of his halter.
• Positive punishment: a horse that touches this fencing tape will receive a mild electric shock, dissuading it from doing it again.
• Negative punishment: this grooming, a pleasant moment for the horse, can be interrupted if it exhibits undesirable behavior.

In practice, horse professionals use negative reinforcement more frequently than positive reinforcement.

The use of chaining can also be useful, for example, to teach complex movements such as the curtsy, step by step. Regardless of the reinforcement method used to train a horse, it is important to apply consistent techniques over the long term and to avoid mistakes during the learning process, particularly because of memory capacities. Lansade cites the example of a horse that knows how to get rid of its rider by leaping over and that "will never forget that it has mastered this technique"; the only way to extinguish this type of behavior is for the horse to discover that "it no longer has the desired effect". The conditioning response also implies that "any bad start permanently compromises the future".

Positive Reinforcement Learning

Of all the operant conditioning techniques applicable to horses, the most effective is positive reinforcement, even when applied to horses that bite. However, this effectiveness depends a lot on maintaining a link between the desired behavior and the reward: the reward must be given very quickly after the successful completion of an exercise. At first, an incomplete response can be rewarded (for example, a simple weight transfer on the hind limbs in a horse learning to back up). Then, increasingly complete responses are required before rewarding (in the case of backing up, this can be one step back, then two steps back).

When positive reinforcement learning is mastered, rewards are rare, but it is important to solicit this learning from the horse regularly, to avoid its extinction.

Care must be taken not to reward unwanted behaviors inadvertently; a classic example is that of the horse that taps on the door of its stall out of boredom, which a person comes to punish by raising their voice at it until it stops tapping. In the horse's perception, having managed to attract the attention of a human can be experienced as positive reinforcement, increasing the probability that it will tap on its door again to attract attention.

Negative Reinforcement Learning and Punishment

Negative reinforcement learning in horses should never involve intentionally inflicting pain but rather temporarily placing them in an uncomfortable situation (for example, making them feel the pressure of a halter behind their ears) until they voluntarily change their behavior to regain the feeling of comfort (in this example, following the movement of the person holding the lead rope of their halter). Negative reinforcement appears to be very effective in training foals, but it also increases their stress response. When negative reinforcement occurs spontaneously (such as a horse touching an electric fence), it can result in long-term memory of the experience. This is why some horses panic at the sight of a syringe: they associate the sight of the syringe with the pain of the subsequent injection. If a horse's defensive behavior is associated with the termination of a request (e.g., a request to remain calm during an injection or clipping), then the animal learns that its defense results in the cessation of the request, and may become uncontrollable by humans. Horses thus come to systematically adopt threatening behavior towards their veterinarian.

According to Australian researchers Paul D. McGreevy and Andrew N. McLean, the misuse of negative reinforcement can lead to learned helplessness or neurosis. It can be difficult for horses to make a connection between the behavior being punished and the punishment. If they are whipped after refusing to jump an obstacle, they may not associate the blows they receive with refusing to jump an obstacle and may develop an aversion to the show jumping grounds, or even to being ridden or to the person who punished them. A horse can also become "jaded" by harsh and incoherent stimuli, making them insensitive to more subtle cues from a potential rider. This means that before punishing a horse, it is always necessary to question whether there has been a bad cue.

Trial and Error Learning

Horses are also capable of learning by trial and error, such as those who discover the use of large balls (initiate a gentle shock on the side of the ball) after unsuccessfully trying to jump on it, who learn how to operate an automatic waterer, or who accidentally discover how to open the door of their stall after playing with the latch. In the latter case, if the horse discovers its freedom of movement and access to food, positive reinforcement follows, which increases the probability that it will try to open the door of its stall again.

Responses to Non-Associative Learning

Horses also respond well to habituation and desensitization, which are two forms of non-associative learning.

Habituation

Habituation is a learning process that is very common among all animal species, which allows the horse to filter perceptions in its environment by no longer assimilating them to potential dangers (for example, plastic bags flying or ropes floating above its head). The response to the stimulus will gradually disappear. This learning is important for the foal or adult horse placed in a new environment, allowing it to get used to noises, to being touched by humans, and to the sight of unusual objects. For example, having the horse listen to the sound of a clipper beforehand at the time of feeding greatly reduces its fear reaction when it is clipped at the neck and poll.

An extreme form of habituation based on imprinting has been tested in foals, called "behavioral imprinting," which involves intensive handling immediately after birth, with fingers inserted into natural orifices (mouth, ear, and anus), supposedly in order to produce horses that are easier to train and handle as adults. Its intrusive nature and conflicting results have led many scientists to discourage it. Some breeders use it to accustom the foal to the presence of humans and dogs at a young age.

Desensitization

Desensitization involves regularly exposing the horse to a stimulus that triggers a reaction in it until the reaction extinguishes. A classic example is opening an umbrella, which generally triggers a stress reaction with an increase in heart rate; after about ten repetitions of opening the umbrella, the desensitized horse generally no longer has a stress reaction.

The opposite of desensitization, namely sensitization, can be the result of mistreatment, an example being a very strong reaction of a horse to a person who has already caused it pain in the past.

Controversies and preconceived ideas

PhD in animal behavior biology Evelyn B. Hanggi and sociologist Vanina Deneux-Le Barh highlight the perpetuation of beliefs that attribute limited abilities to horses, postulating for example that they react only by instinct or respond only to conditioning, without demonstrating cognitive abilities. One of the most frequently used fallacious arguments would be that intelligence is incompatible with being ridden or mistreated by humans, even though mistreatment also exists between human beings, without being caused by reduced intelligence.

These false beliefs still exist in professional equestrian circles. The results of the Deneux-Le Barh survey (2021) show a great ambivalence in the perception of intelligence in horses at work, with some breeders and users believing that the response to conditioning is only a reproduction of behavior, even though their speech reveals the horses' mètis. Leblanc cites as an example many riders who "deny any intelligence in the horse", and who at the same time attribute complex mental processes to it, through anthropomorphic sentences such as "he did it on purpose to annoy me". Linda Kohanov testifies that according to the American cowboys she met, the horse is not intelligent enough to recognize its name. The equestrian journalist Maria Franchini also testified, in 2009, to often hearing mention of very low intellectual capacities in horses, whether in stables or major media.

Memory and empathy capacities are, on the other hand, better recognized in professional circles, for example through stories that demonstrate the adaptation of horses to a disabled public (equine therapy).

Invited to the show La Tête au carré on October 3, 2007, geneticist Axel Kahn maintains that horses have much more limited intellectual capacities than octopuses, primates, and cetaceans, citing the example of a mirror test during which horses attacked the mirror placed in front of them. Maria Franchini deplores that this statement during a popular show could have given rise to preconceived ideas. Leblanc points out that the mirror test alone (or the Gordon G. Gallup test) may not be sufficient to affirm or not that a species has access to self-awareness. He cites the study by Paul Baragli and his colleagues published in 2017, in which horses subjected to the mirror test showed clear signs of distinction between what they saw in the mirror and a real animal, but no signs that could lead to the conclusion that they recognized themselves in this mirror.

Horse intelligence in culture

Mythology, legends and tales

Some stories from mythology, legends, and folktales describe horses as extraordinarily intelligent. The Scythian epic includes many fabulous horses, including the kokcwal, aquatic descendants of the horses of the sea god capable of understanding human speech. Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great, is described from Greek sources to the Alexander Romance as "very intelligent" like his young master, in particular, because he too understands human speech. In the Turkish epic of Er-Töshtük, a folk tale from Kyrgyzstan, the horse Tchal-Kouyrouk warns his rider Töshtük in these terms: "Your chest is broad, but your mind is narrow, you think of nothing. You do not see what I see, you do not know what I know... You have courage, but you lack intelligence". The psychopomp powers of the horse are superior to those of man.

Medieval Christian literature includes many "extraordinary horses" with intelligence and human qualities. Professor of medieval literature Francis Dubost cites the examples of Bayard, the horse of the lai of Lanval, and the song of the Aliscans. Even the horses of the pagans are of a formidable intelligence, to the point of being able to fight independently. The medievalist Michel Zink also notes in this literature the presence of faithful horses that "demonstrate an intelligence that exceeds their nature", citing as examples in La Chevalerie d'Ogier, the Broiefort d'Ogier, and the Marchegai d'Aiol.

Italian ethnologist Angelo De Gubernatis identifies a mytheme, the transformation of a fool into an intelligent and wise man, parallel to the transformation of a worthless nag into a noble horse:

"The hero's horse, like the hero himself, begins by being ugly, deformed and unintelligent, and ends by becoming beautiful, brilliant, heroic and victorious"

— Angelo De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology

De Gubernatis cites among other examples the Russian tale of the Little Humpbacked Horse, in which a small horse gifted with the faculty of flight repeatedly saves its rider, and wisely advises him:

The Dogon tale "Why Doesn't the Horse Speak?" explains that in the past, horses spoke with people, but that an ungrateful and lying woman took advantage of the advice of a clever and clever horse without thanking him or telling her family what he had done for her, and that in retaliation, all the horses stopped talking to human beings, preferring to neigh.

The Mahi tale (central Benin) entitled Destiny tells of an orphan abandoned by his brothers who meets three horses that are destroying his crops, spares them, and obtains their help to seduce the princess he loves.

In the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification, these tales correspond to the ATU 531 type tale, "The Intelligent Horse." Their theme is also found in the Norwegian tale Dapplegrim, in the Sicilian tale Lu cavadduzzu fidili (the loyal horse), in the Guatemalan tale of the "Bad Combadre," or in the medieval Jewish tale "Joḥanan and the Scorpion," one of the seven stories from the Sefer ha-ma'asim.

Religious and cultural particularisms

Professor of religious studies Judy Skeen notes the importance of questioning the "concept of human domination over nature" to go beyond the vision of animals as "mere functions or resources for humans", and to no longer start "from the principle that human beings have more value than others", to "measure intelligent life by other criteria than human intelligence". She highlights an opposition between the perception of the horse's intelligence according to the Christian tradition, which gives greater value to human beings than to horses, and according to other traditions such as the beliefs of the Native Americans, who more easily recognize animal intelligence, for example through prey-predator relationships.

Christianity

According to historian Éric Baratay, the refusal to recognize animal intelligence was taken up by the majority of Christianity in the West on the basis of Platonism and Aristotelianism, in order to value Man while devaluing and inferiorizing animals.

Through Germanic pagan beliefs, historian Marc-André Wagner also highlights a progressive demonization of the horse, aiming for Christian decision-makers to put an end to the cults that were given to it. He mentions, in particular, the fight against hippomancy, which led evangelists to contradict the pagans who attributed the power of divination to the animal itself, by maintaining that it is the Christian God who expresses himself through the horse. Wagner cites as an example the Vita de Columba of Iona (7th century), in which the Irish saint's horse lays its head on his knees and begins to weep, guessing its imminent death:

"To this crude and irrational animal, in the manner he chose, the Creator revealed in a manifest way that his master was going to leave him."

— Adamnan von Hi, Vita S. Columbae, III, 23

In Ladakh

According to S. C. Gupta et al., Tibetans in the cold and arid region of Ladakh believe that the intelligence of their small local Zanskari horses enabled warriors to excel in local wars in the 18th century.

In Mongolia

According to anthropology lecturer Gregory Delaplace (2015), the Mongols consider horses as companions and recognize their intelligence (uhaan), but also their ability to perceive and feel the invisible, which does not depend on their intelligence. The Mongolian historian Françoise Aubin cites as an example the expression used in Mongolian to ask what is the best gait for a horse, "ene jamar erdemtej mor' ve," which literally means "What is its science?" or "What is its art?".

Literature, Film and Television

The satirical novel Gulliver's Travels (1721) features noble, rational, and intelligent horses, called the Houyhnhnms; according to literature professor Bryan Alkemeyer, its author Jonathan Swift may have intended to push for a reevaluation of the definition of humans and their supposed superiority compared to animals. The Mearas imagined by J. R. R. Tolkien, which include Grippoil, Gandalf's mount, are a type of highly intelligent horse, capable of understanding human language, who are said to be descended from Nahar, the horse of Oromë.

Professor Sylvine Pickel-Chevalier and Dr. Gwenaëlle Grefe identify an archetypal model of the horse in children's and youth literature and youth cinema, which they call "horse-love", and of which representative examples are the cultural productions around The Black Stallion, White Mane, Black Beauty, Running Free, the novels, films, and series of My Friend Flicka and War Horse, and the films Spirit and Whisper.

In this type of scenario "focused on the story of mutual love between a human protagonist, usually a child, and an equine", they note that the horse, "elevated to the rank of the hero of the epic to the point of sometimes becoming its narrator", is distinguished by physical and behavioral characteristics, including intelligence. However, the description of the horse's abilities is often tinged with anthropomorphism.

"After all, maybe the stallion didn't enter the park and is hiding in some corner of the city? ... But no! Black is much too intelligent to stay in the streets!"

— Walter Farley, The Black Stallion

In his children's book The Learned Horse (1991), Laurent Cresp tells the story of an intelligent horse who lives in Istanbul, and who wishes to be treated like a sentient being.

In comics, Lucky Luke's mount, Jolly Jumper (created in 1946), is depicted as the most intelligent horse in the West; he is able to speak (and even have a philosophical discussion), count, write, play chess, and fish alone. The American television series of the 1960s Mr. Ed, the Talking Horse features a horse that speaks only to its owner who is fond of drink; the intelligence of the horse actors has been highlighted.

Notes and references

Notes

1. This is particularly the case of Henry Blake, in his work "I speak to horses... They answer me."
2. The hypothesis of a human assimilation to a predator from the point of view of the horse is controversial. Hominids are not a family of mammals known to have large predators.
3. This book was reprinted around ten times at the end of the 19th century.
4. The notion of mytheme was defined later by Claude Lévi-Strauss.
5. When Constantine imposed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians represented only 4 to 5% of the total population of the Empire (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians: Religion and Religious Life in the Roman Empire from the Death of Commodus to the Council of Nicaea, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1997).

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See also

Bibliography

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