True, we don’t really know what’s going on in a horse’s mind, but experts can make educated guesses based on their behavior. Dog researchers and owners might say that dogs “like” going on walks and “dislike” getting their nails cut. We can’t truly know what the dog feels about those activities, but there are many external signs that allow us to infer how they feel. I was assuming that people who work extensively with horses would have similar experiences and would have a sense of what they like and dislike doing.
I opened this in GQ rather than IMHO because I wanted replies from people with extensive horse experience. In IMHO, it would be more from anyone who had an opinion about horses (or animals), even if they’ve never been around them.
If they removed every “animal intelligence” and “how did this evolve” thread, they’d lose at least a third, if not half, of all threads.
I believe every one such thread gets us a little closer to understanding a difficult topic that no one else really seems to try to give a through treatment of. Well, at least not since E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology, which seems roundly hated, if not actually discredited.
I do not know. My guess: they are playing. My horse will boss around a giant rubber ball in much the same way.
Side note – I grew up riding with a lady who just won the AQHA Amateur Select Cutting Championship. I mean, she was riding a Shetland Pony at the time we rode together, it was a looong time ago. Select is I believe an age category (over 50 I think). It is still an amazing accomplishment. She is a Nevada cattle rancher now.
Here is the clip for those who are curious about what cutting horses do.
It’s not a myth that horses have working brains, can solve simple problems, and have preferences.
But you raise a good point about anthropomorphizing.
One notable thing about domestic horses is that they are very trainable. They can be taught to do things by rote, after which they can faithfully duplicate required motions. The story upthread about the horse insisting on doing a lesson correctly is not a rare thing - at the horse farm I worked at we had to take more than one horse out of the line-up for those wanting testing to move from the beginner rank to the next level of training because many of them learned how to do the test perfectly, regardless of the skill of the rider. One horse had to be removed from all testing because he had memorized every single test - you could stand him out in the ring by himself, no rider, and say “begin advanced test” or whatever and he’d do the whole thing, on his own, without needing human directions.
But the thing to remember is that, despite a couple thousand years of domestication, horses spent millions of years being wild horses. They are smart in areas that are relevant to being horses, not so smart in many areas important to people. Things like remembering where food sources and water holes are in a large landscape, and being able to navigate, are very important to herd animals that constantly move/migrate over large areas, so it’s not really surprising that horses are good at that.
Back to the firehouse and its horses - no, I don’t think the horses give a damn about firefighting. They have been taught to take certain positions when a certain noise occurs and, being good rote learners, they do that. Whether or not they learn to go to where they smell fire (sort of an iffy suggestion, given that horses fear fire) or just follow the directions of the humans is a different question, and I tend to lean towards “follow directions”. They’ll stay in open stalls of their own accord because that’s where they often find food and water, and they feel safe there (in fact, one of the problems with getting horses out of a burning barn is that the terrified horses will go into the stalls and want to stay there, because they associate them with safety). They’ve also been taught to stay there. And all the rest of the horses in the herd are doing that. Horses respond well to peer pressure.
All that said, horses really are individuals and vary in both temperament and intelligence. Police horses, for example, are selected to remain calm under circumstances that would leave most horses in a screaming, shaking panic. Some horses more readily follow the directions of a human than other horses, some even actively refuse to obey. Some are better at learning things than others. Some horses probably do enjoy doing tricks for attention and/or treats. Others just want to be largely left alone and will put forth the minimum effort they can get away with.
So there is a selection bias. Horses used by cowboys are going to be the ones capable of cutting a cow from a herd with minimal direction. Horses that either can’t or won’t do that will be used for something else. Huge draft horses are, of course, selected to be docile and obedient because you really would not want an ill-tempered, aggressive, untrainable creature the size of a Clydesdale. Just too damned dangerous, and if they seem to enjoy hauling stuff even better. Horses used for eventing sports are going to be more alert but require more direction than the docile trail-ride horses used by tourists that have to be able to tolerate clueless humans - horses that are lazy are best for that, because they are less likely to put the effort into being jerks. Horses used for stunts on TV and movies are going to be horses that are really good at learning tricks and routines and performing them when signalled to do so.
The draft horse that is adept at dragging huge loads, obedient to voice commands, knowing how to get going, turn, stop, and cooperate with other horses hitched to the same load is not any more or less intelligent than a horse taught to do tricks on cue for a camera.
For darn sure, if a horse doesn’t like something he’ll let you know - if he doesn’t lay his ears back, bite, kick or otherwise engage in actions showing his displeasure he might just set his four feet down and refuse to move, at which point you realize once again this animal a lot bigger and stronger than you are.
One of the more amusing horse-training videos I’ve seen was that showing the training of a young Clydesdale - the young horse is hitched to an older, more experienced, and clearly stronger stallion aiding in training. They come to a river and the young horse decides nuh-uh, he’s not doing this, and plants all four feet and stops. The stallion just sort of momemtarally twitches his head towards the other horse… then keeps going, physically dragging the younger horse into and through the river to the other side, four furrows on the bank leading to the water showing where the stubbornly planted hooves plowed through the dirt. Another horse being trained that day was more cooperative, simply continuing alongside the stallion and going through the water without pause.
So… yeah, some horses will be more willing to go on a trail ride than others because horses have different personalities. ** Kayaker’s **horses show signs of enjoying going riding with humans they know. Other horses not so much, especially if the humans involved are clueless tourists that give unclear or contradictory “orders” because they haven’t a clue how to properly ride, may kick their sides, pull on the reins harshly which is very uncomfortable for a horse’s mouth (or even injurious), or otherwise make things unpleasant for the horses that are expected to put up with this crap without complaint (“complaint” in this case being things like bucking off the human, or scraping them off when passing a tree, or side-stepping in a manner that results in an unbalanced rider falling off). Frankly, some of those horses are saints.
I don’t know anything about horses, but horses are social animals, and they form a hierarchy just like most social animals. When horses get together they pretty quickly figure which horses are boss over which horses.
So horses like being boss horse, and when you’ve got a cow you can boss around it makes you feel like a boss.
Horses live in groups with a social hierarchy. When we use horses for “cutting” cattle in herds we’re probably exploiting behaviours that horses use to show dominance in their own herds, just as when we use dogs for herding we’re exploiting behaviours their ancestors used for hunting. Being dominant is usually preferable to being submissive, so being able to dominate/boss around cattle probably does feel good to the horse on some level.
Play also tends to incorporate behaviours animals use for adult living, and even adult mammals seem to continue to engage in play behaviours even after they’re grown up, both when training their young and also just sometimes “because” (meaning, we can’t point to a reason).
So, my guess (since I can’t actually get inside a horse’s head) is that this sort of things feels satisfying to the horse for multiple reasons, and the horse has been taught that this is something you do. Champions, of course, would be horses to whom this sort of “play” has particular appeal.
I have spent my whole life training animals. In the real world of animal trainers, you might listen to them and think they are anthropomorphizing, but here is the difference – they are going by observation of what animals actually do, and they need to accurately attribute motivations and be extremely acute observers, if they are going to be effective trainers. In my experience, animal trainers are far more likely to get it right about what animals are really like inside than casual pet owners OR researchers in a lab. They are with animals asking them to do complicated things in complicated settings, all day long.
Animals are a lot MORE like human beings than people who think of them as bundles of mechanical reflexes imagine, but they are a lot LESS like human beings than people who think of them as furry children imagine.
Animals – at least dogs and horses, the two most intelligent common domestic animals – play, love, hate, get angry, think things are funny, form deep attachments, mourn, worry, learn quite complex things, get neurotic, and they also sense the world in ways we can’t really grasp because they see, hear, and especially, smell, quite differently than we do. They don’t do abstract thought. They don’t imagine the future or dwell on the past.
Many, probably most, actions of animals are given the wrong attribution by the ignorant. I see it all the time. For example, dogs get excited when it looks like they are going for a walk, but horses not so much. That’s because dogs are going out ‘hunting’ with their pack, a time of great joy. Horses don’t hunt in packs. So you won’t see that behavior. Also, we aren’t their pack anyway. The other horses are. If a group of ten horses and riders rode out and left a horse behind in a pen, that horse would be in agony. They hate to be left behind just like dogs do. It’s just a different context because they are different creatures with different lives.
I just want to say that watching a cutting competition is amazing. The riders don’t really do anything–they’re not supposed to. The horses do it all. They are almost catlike in their ability to get that calf and keep it where they want, and all the while the reins are hanging loose.
One of my horses was politely ejected from the place I was keeping her because she liked to herd the cattle there on her own. “Running the cows” was how they put it. She had to go to a place where there were just horses.
There used to be a lady, we called her the “dog and pony show,” who would walk her dog and her pony (she said it was actually a miniature horse, not a pony) through the neighborhood, because she said the horse liked to take walks as much as the dog did. It is hard to picture the horse bringing her its halter the way a dog will bring you its leash, but maybe that happened. The horse did seem to enjoy it, and got impatient when she stopped to talk to people. (As did the dog.)
I’ve read (a long time ago, so no cite) that warhorses were large, vicious and could each only be handled by a few individuals they were comfortable with. I’m talking about the horses rode by men wearing heavy armor and lances, not cavalry horses carrying archers or firearms. They were trained to kick and trample whenever possible. To have no fear of any man, except for obedience to the trusted individual on his back.
At least that’s what I read. Exaggeration, wrong, true? Tell me more.
In all seriousness though, some people undoubtedly did select warhorses just for sheer nastiness. However because warhorses were generally more high trained animals - some of the maneuvers that you see the Lipizzaner stallions perform are directly derived from movements trained in warhorses - I don’t think it would have been a general practice. An ill tempered horse is an unreliable partner in a chaotic situation, like a battle.
Warhorses were also not the same as a knight’s every day riding horse. They were built heavier, and considered uncomfortable for an entire’s day ride (or days, or weeks). Horses like the Spanish-Norman are modern attempts to breed back to older war horse lines. You can imagine that riding something built like a Percheron for days would be hard on the body.
It is true that knights were likely to spend a lot of time, money, and energy on their warhorse.
If anyone is interested in specifics on warhorses, please let me know. I’ve got some research material from graduate school.
I was thinking, but likely explaining poorly, that warhorses were ill-tempered but not uncontrollable, if that makes sense. So the rider could expect the horse to obey commands. But the horse would be eager to push, stomp, or kick anyone near it. And certainly be willing to run through human obstacles rather go over or around them. Please go into specifics if that’s wrong or right.
Given the recent controversy over misogynistic comments, it’s hard to see this as anything else than trolling. If not, it’s a pretty jerkish joke. This is an official warning for trolling.
Its a bad joke that was based upon people giving animals human traits, that’s all. Sorry to have given the appearance of trolling, which I dispise as much as anyone.
Actually, many “wild” horses (in most cases “feral” is a better word) do travel great distances, as this government studyof horses in the Australian outback shows:
There are so many different breeds of wild and feral horses, though, that extrapolating is almost impossible.
