HOW YOUR HORSE TELLS YOU WHAT HE WANTS

When your horse looks at you from across the paddock and tosses his head, he may be trying to tell you something.

It has long been known that dogs sometimes interact with people using “functional referential communication,” gesturing to direct a human’s attention toward a third entity (such as an object, person or location) in pursuit of a goal. For example, a dog might use his gaze in an attempt to get a person to retrieve a toy from a shelf. New research suggests that horses are also capable of this type of communication.

For a study conducted cooperatively by the School of Ethical Equitation (SEE) in Italy and the University of Vienna in Austria, 14 horses were led one at a time into a small paddock where two buckets, containing a random selection of oats, carrots or apples, were placed or held on the opposite side of a gate. Each horse was then released and could choose one of the two buckets, but it had no access to it. “We recreated a set of conditions where horses would need to communicate to a human observer the location of the desired target out of reach. In each experimental condition, we varied the attentional state of the observer or the availability of the observer to test whether horses adjusted their communication accordingly,” says Rachele Malavasi, PhD.

The four set conditions (each repeated three times a day) were as follows: (1) the handler remained in the arena oriented toward the buckets (baseline condition); (2) the handler turned her back to the buckets and the horse; (3) the handler walked away; (4) two volunteers held each bucket outside the distant gates while the handler was oriented toward the buckets.

Each horse’s reaction to each situation was videotaped and later analyzed. “A series of conditions has to be met to classify a communicative attempt as intentional,” says Malavasi. “The horse must alternate its gaze between the handler (to make sure of visual contact) and the bucket (to convey her attention toward it); it must use some attention-getting behavior (such as stomping a foot, bobbing the head or twisting the tail); these signals must be used only if the handler is present and only if it makes sense to use them--for example, not using visual signals if the handler had her back turned (condition 2) or walked away (condition 3) and therefore could not see them. Finally, the horse must elaborate its strategy if it doesn’t work.”

The data revealed that horses did, indeed, attempt to communicate with their handlers---or any attentive humans---seeking help in reaching the bucket. In the trials where other volunteers were holding the buckets (condition 4), the horses “asked” them for help instead of the handler. “When

CHALLENGE: In functional referential communication, a horse uses gestures to direct a person’s attention to a third entity. For example, a horse may alternate his gaze between his handler and a feed bucket to seek help reaching the bucket.