The use of human-given cues by domestic horses, Equus caballus, during an object choice task

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.02.015

Animal Behaviour

Volume 79, Issue 6, June 2010, Pages 1205-1209

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.02.015 Get rights and content

Selection pressures during domestication are thought to lead to an enhanced ability to use human-given cues. Horses fulfil a wide variety of roles for humans and have been domesticated for at least 5000 years but their ability to read human cues has not been widely studied. We tested the ability of 28 horses to attend to human-given cues in an object choice task. We included five different cues: distal sustained pointing, momentary tapping, marker placement, body orientation and gaze (head) alternation. Horses were able to use the pointing and marker placement cues spontaneously but not the tapping, body orientation and gaze alternation cues. The overall pattern of responding suggests that horses may use cues that provide stimulus enhancement at the time of choice and do not have an understanding of the communicative nature of the cues given. As such, their proficiency at this task appears to be inferior to that of domestic dogs, Canis lupus familiaris, but similar to that of domestic goats, Caprus hircus.

Section snippets

Subjects

A total of 34 domestic horses from four locations participated in this study. Of these subjects, 28 (11 females and 17 gelded males) completed the initial warm-up phase and took part in the test trials. Ages ranged from 3.5–38 years ( $\bar{X} + SE = 13.16 + 1.54$ ). Subjects were privately owned, riding school horses or were rescue animals kept at a horse sanctuary. Horses kept at private yards or the riding school had daily interaction with humans; the horses at the sanctuary were checked once a day but

Results

There were significant differences in the horses' ability to use the five cues (χ₄² = 13.887, P = 0.008, V = 0.316). Horses used the marker placement (K = 26, N = 28, P < 0.0001) and pointing cues (K = 23, N = 28, P = 0.001) to choose the correct bucket but not the tapping (K = 16, N = 28, P = 0.572), body orientation (K = 16, N = 27, P = 0.442) or gaze alternation cues (K = 17, N = 28, P = 0.345; Fig. 2). Post hoc analyses revealed that there were significant differences between the ability of subjects to use the marker cue

Discussion

Horses were able to use the pointing and object placement cues spontaneously to choose between objects but did not use the tapping, body orientation or gaze alternation cues. As such the ability of horses in this respect appears inferior to that of domestic dogs (Miklósi & Soproni 2006). Horses have previously been shown to use subtle cues such as gaze and body orientation when determining the focus of human attention (Proops & McComb 2010); however, they were unable to use these cues in the

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the members of staff at the Albourne Equestrian Centre and the Sussex Horse Rescue Trust and to the owners of the horses at Woodingdean and Stocks livery yards for their support and willingness to facilitate this project. We also thank Catherine Nice for her help with pilot data collection. This work is supported by a quota studentship from the BBSRC (to L.P., supervised by K.M.).

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The use of human-given cues by domestic horses, Equus caballus, during an object choice task

Section snippets

Subjects

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgments

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