Plaastoe! Julie 2017 Uitgawe 17 | Page 44

A ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR How intelligent is your horse? BY JOAN KLEYNHANS-JORDAAN According to EB Hanggi, at the Equine Research Foundation in Aptos, California, horses are smarter than we think! They can manage ordinary daily cognitive tasks and mental challenges quite well. Habituation n nature, food and water sources are of inconsistent quality and variable distribution. Their predators change location and habits. At the same time, they need to deal with interactions in the herd and learn and remember the identities and roles of other individuals in the herd. Life for a domesticated horse is even more bewildering. In addition to dealing with natural situations, they often live in unsuitable environments, need to suppress instinctual behaviours and learn tasks that Horses learn through habituation throughout their lives. In a new environment, they are very reactive and pay attention to any stimulus perceived by any of their senses. However, when certain stimuli are insignificant and are repeated regularly, the response diminishes. Habituation is a simple form of learning, but none the less important because it allows non-vital information to be filtered out subconsciously, enabling the horse to focus on what is significant. I 42 Plaastoe! July 2017 are not natural behaviour. They also need to coexist with humans, who from a horse’s viewpoint must be very strange indeed. Research into the nature of cognition and perception in horses is gradually providing some fascinating insights. When a horse is particularly sensitive or fearful, either by his nature or through learned experience, he can be desensitized. Rough handling of the ears, or some banging against the teeth may make a horse extremely sensitive to being bridled, for example. This leads to head shyness. Such a horse needs to be retrained by approaching his head in increments and retreating when necessary until the horse willingly accepts normal, gentle bridling.  Horses can become habituated and desensitized to almost all overwhelming stressors if this is done correctly. A good trainer exposes horses in a positive manner to all sorts of sights, sounds and contacts. This can be done by leaving the horses unrestrained in a safe corral and having humans behaving strangely around them, such as playing with bouncing beach balls,