How Horses Think

Article from May 2019 Horse Deals magazine.

With Dr Andrew McLean - PhD (Equine Cognition and Learning) BSc. Dip Ed.

How often have we said to ourselves; I wish I had known that when we learn something new and think back to how this new knowledge would have benefited the training of a horse we had in the past? Knowledge is everything in training a horse, especially if we have the feel to go with it. Most of us over the course of our riding lives have greatly increased our horse knowledge and think back with some regret about our early, inept attempts at training and riding.

Some people work out how horses think and react accordingly and much of what Dr McLean talks about in this brief article, many would have already worked out for themselves. However, it is a fact that the more we know about horses the better placed we are to train them in a humane and productive way. How horses think is a huge topic and Horse Deals approached Dr McLean who has a PhD in Equine Cognition and Learning with that very question. The following conversation gives some insight into how they think and more to the point how we should react as trainers to that thought process.

“I don’t think anyone knows how horses think, people just guess about it” begins Dr McLean. “Looking at their behaviour, sometimes we see a seemingly complex thought process, one that makes us assume certain things and the way we typically view it is through our own eyes. We can’t help but humanize the horse.

“It is difficult to know what processes are going on in the horse’s mind; thinking simply means how a horse processes information. They are very efficient processors, like all mammals and they have an excellent photographic style of memory. However, there is no evidence that a horse actually reflects on its memory. There has been a lot of research about this over the past 20 years and by and large, the jury is still of the same view that horses don’t show higher mental abilities as we do. We had to develop those abilities, as we were not the strongest or the fastest beings and we had to think our way to our evolution over the last couple of million years. We needed to have extensive ways of thinking back as clearly as possible, not just minutes, hours and days, but years. Humans had to learn to project and think ahead. How much animals can do? This is really the big question in animal behavioural science. It seems more likely that animals that are predators, particularly cooperative predators need that predictive thinking ability far greater than grazing animals that are more reactive in nature. Grazing animals need an excellent memory of events and places; they need to choose the ideal behaviour to perform at any given moment and remember where the best foraging patches are etc.

“How horses think is a complicated question, because to the untrained person, thinking covers a range of things including just pondering and I am sure horses can’t do that. They don’t wish, they don’t hope and they don’t imagine. If they did it would be completely unethical to ride them if they wished for another life. A horse lives in the moment. If you train it well and you do the best by the horse, you try to accommodate all its behavioural needs:

Its need for socialization.
Its need for constant foraging or at least 13 hours a day eating low-grade fibre.
Its need for space and movement.

They are really critical to a horse’s life and if they are denied, problems can set in and show up as stereotypical behaviour, such as wind sucking and weaving, which are indicative of poor welfare. Sometimes we cannot avoid stabling horses however we can improve that situation by not isolating the horse. We can have it stabled in a group situation where it can at least see and better still, touch other horses. During domestication, it is likely that horses have been selectively bred to cope better in the stabled environment, but they should not live in total isolation or be unable to exercise (riding is good for that).

“Another basic need is the ability to navigate within its behavioural world - how it gives and receives information that enables it to get what it needs. Clear, consistent training predicated on quiet cues is important for the horse’s mental health. The horse’s life has to be predictable and from their viewpoint, it has to be controllable. By that, I mean that they can make an aid switch off by responding to it. We need to recognize the importance of training horses to respond to light aids because if we constantly use forceful aids, it is bad for the horse’s mental health and welfare.

“If thinking means reasoning, then horses don’t think. Yet when we look at the way they navigate through their world and life and all of the mental processes involved, they are very complex and they have an excellent memory. Their navigational abilities are amazing, their memories of their home range and of faces are very good. But we should recognize and understand what a horse is and not pretend that it is something we want it to be; a human with four legs and a furry body. As trainers, we need to be educated to look for the details that horses see. They are stimulus bound animals (sensory-based thinkers) and their memories of the various stimuli (sight, sound, smell, etc) are amazing. Human memory can easily be corrupted, but horses have a very good memory, resistant to corruption by thinking and mulling over in the imagination. As a result of our seemingly ‘clever’ conscious mental activities, our powers of observation are not acute. Horses, however, are highly observant and will notice if something is slightly different, such as a bucket moved outside its stable door and they may shy at it. A line on the dressage arena that wasn’t there yesterday can make them spook. Spookiness is also more likely if the animal is insecure due to confusion in training, where for example one signal might have multiple meanings. Nevertheless, even after a number of years, a horse returning to a former home will react to things that were not there when he last lived there. This behaviour has all been adapted for evolutionary purposes.

“What we need to understand as riders and trainers is that a horse can’t be held responsible for something they did even a few seconds ago, because the chances are it was a reactive response and not a calculated one, so it won’t remember it. And our response will seem to the horse just a random act of punishment with no clear reason. That is what makes horses such wonderful animals, they don’t seek to make our lives worse, even if it seems that way sometimes. There are other reasons why they act the way they do. Revenge etc are acts of a reasoning mind and as already stated, a horse does not have a reasoning mind.

“Their behaviour is interesting too when riding and jumping them. If you happen to crash into a fence and the horse scrambles backwards out of it, it is less likely to jump that fence if asked again. If however the horse crashes through the fence and emerges on the other side, it is much more likely to jump it again. They are very good at remembering all the features of escape and retreat from something that hurt or made them afraid. So we need to learn and to understand escape behaviours. That is why for example, if a horse goes down in a float, you are best to get him up in the float and allow him to quietly walk out, rather than open the float and let him panic his way out, because he won’t go in the float again, or the race barriers, or the water jump or whatever if he has escaped in self-directed panic.

“What makes horses afraid of things is the simple fact that they do fast legs and distance away from something. If they swerve away from something just a little, it probably won’t be etched in their memory, but if they leap sideways and even run off, it makes a big difference, because now the memory is stored via their amygdala (part of the brain responsible for channeling fear and preparing for emergency events).

“When you study the patterns of a horse’s behaviour, how it learns to react to certain things becomes obvious. But generally we don’t apply that objective mind – instead, we people want to make the horse into something more human, but we would do it much more justice if we would see the horse for what it is. We get beguiled by clever things horses seem to do like the pony that opened its gate or stable door and then lets the others out as well. That is called operant conditioning. It fiddles with the latch with its lips and bingo the door/gate opens and freedom is the reward. And it is even more rewarding if it lets its mates out as well. That is not reasoning, it is operant conditioning, which itself is quite amazing. This nuzzling tendency is most often seen in ponies or breeds with a lot of their genes. As grazing animals in cold arid environments, they tend to be fossickers with their muzzles, flipping over rocks, etc to forage.

“Good horse people tend to have really smooth body language with horses, they don’t do sudden, unpredictable movements. But there is more to it, there is power in the way we touch horses and even some people with this power don’t realise it. The horse is very perceptive to touch and now attachment theory is an emerging area in science between humans and animals. Horses are very up there with that as are dogs. They are very attuned to it and through it, we can form very strong bonds with horses.”

Many people with a lifetime involvement with horses will be aware of much that was said in this brief article and have modified their behaviour accordingly. Some persist with methods that do not work. We want our horses to do our bidding, so it is in our own interests as well as theirs to understand how they think and how effectively and humanely to motivate them to work with us.

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