Can Horses Think Through Problems?

Do horses have the capability to think through a problem, like unlatching a gate?
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Q. I am writing a paper in my agricultural ethics class on the treatment of horses, and one of my discussions deals with the equality of horses to humans. My roommate and I were debating whether horses have the capability to think through a problem–something like unlatching a gate. I’m having trouble finding research on this specific problem. Do you know of any research that has been done in this area?

Eric


A. Your question is at the heart of a field of academic study known as animal cognition. Just how do animals process information from the environment around them? How complex are their mental images or conceptualizations of situations? Over the last few years the systematic study of animal cognition has become one of the hot topics in comparative psychology in general.  While it’s not easy to find much scientific research on the horse, there is a little older work and some that’s fairly recent.

Early work on horse cognitive and learning abilities included classic studies of perception, simple pattern discrimination (triangles, squares, circles), maze learning, and memory.  There is a great article published in 1990 by Cindy McCall, Ph.D., who is now at Auburn University (Journal of Animal Science, Volume 68, pp. 75-81). That paper reviews the work with horses up until 1990

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Sue M. McDonnell, PhD, is a certified applied animal behaviorist and the founding head of the equine behavior program at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine. She is also the author of numerous books and articles about horse behavior and management.

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