Dissertation research suggestions

[fburton]

Semi-tongue-in-cheek: "Do horses actually have a sense of humour?"

More serious/interesting, but of little practical value: "Are horses capable of establishing eye contact with people and/or other horses?"

The challenge would be to design an experiment or experiments to show this definitively.

 

[Elbie]

The only time I found "Role Play" useful was in First aid training, as the role play was the physical moving of the "Injured Party" & learning the proper & safe way to do so, which can really only be done with an actual human.

I have nothing useful to add to the original question but just wanted to say I hate role play too! I just can't take it seriously

When I worked at a hospital we all had to do basic life support training. I was a trainer so had to go on a train the trainer course. At the end the lady running it did a bit of role play with each of us, but in the scenario that she was doing the basic life support then we had to, as trainers, provide her feedback and say if she'd passed or failed. When it came to me I had to fail her and she pretended to cry. Im standing in this room full of people while a grown woman pretends to cry at me. I just laughed and said I'm sorry but I can't take this seriously!

 

[Elbie]

Semi-tongue-in-cheek: "Do horses actually have a sense of humour?"

More serious/interesting, but of little practical value: "Are horses capable of establishing eye contact with people and/or other horses?"

The challenge would be to design an experiment or experiments to show this definitively.

Yeah I wonder if they see someone/some horse fall over and think its funny!

 

[Keith_Beef]

Semi-tongue-in-cheek: "Do horses actually have a sense of humour?"

I was up in Yorkshire around Christmas time. I saw this horse in a field, and I went "do you want to hear a joke".

He went "Nay".

 

[ycbm]

New one from another thread. Would take a big sample size and some neat statistical analysis.


Does backing a horse before four years old affect it's longevity?

 

[fburton]

Does late castration affect height and conformation via testosterone effects on growth plate closure?

I have been told "It is impossible to prove that testosterone levels affects growth plate closure, fact." (http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/foru...n-to-improve-conformation#ow6ZmEddTkO0mWA3.99)

However, I think the question is amenable to statistical analysis given a suitably large sample size.

 

[ester]

These will only work if someone else has already collected the data though . Tricky to do on a 3 month project.

 

[fburton]

True.

 

[oldie48]

I was up in Yorkshire around Christmas time. I saw this horse in a field, and I went "do you want to hear a joke".

He went "Nay".

A zebra escaped from the zoo and went on the run. He met a cow standing in a field, "Hallo cow" he said. "What do you do?" Cow said, " I give the farmer milk, meat and leather. I'm very important" A bit further down the road the Zebra met a sheep. "What do you do?" asked the Zebra. "I give the farmer meat and wool for his clothes, I am very important". At the end of the lane the Zebra met a stallion looking over a gate. "What do you do?" asked the Zebra. "Take those stupid pyjamas off and I'll show you" said the stallion.
Rubbish joke but the only one I know that is horse related!!

 

[anguscat]

I'd quite like to know if horse people (without looking in the obvious places) have a better than evens chance of 'guessing' the sex of a horse.

 

[Keith_Beef]

I'd quite like to know if horse people (without looking in the obvious places) have a better than evens chance of 'guessing' the sex of a horse.

My daughter told me that a the first letter of a horse's name depended on the year of it's birth, and that the grammatical gender of its name matched the horse's biological sex.

This is in France, remember, so we're talking about horses with French names like "Ouragan" a masculine noun meaning "hurricane"...

So one day I went up to the yard for my lesson, I looked in the ring binder on the desk in the office and saw that I'd got a horse called "Kermesse", a feminine noun meaning "faire, gala, fête". So I went over to the stable block, walked down the line looking for that name, and found a gelding.

Now sometimes the horses are moved around; a horse can be moved out of its normal place because it needs to put on sawdust bedding instead of straw, so I thought Kermesse must have been moved.

So I walked back up to the office, nobody around and there's no stabling plan to help out. So I spent a good ten minutes looking for my instructor before I found her smoking outside the gates...

And it turns out that no, the grammatical gender of a horse's name doesn't necessarily match its biological sex. And Kermesse turned out to be the worst malingerer and lead-swinger I have so far met.

 

[fburton]

I'd quite like to know if horse people (without looking in the obvious places) have a better than evens chance of 'guessing' the sex of a horse.

I reckon some horsepeople would have a better than evens chance of telling if a horse is a stallion vs mare just by looking at the head. Better odds if you add in the neck, for obvious reasons. I think telling gelding vs mare from head alone would not be nearly as easy.

It would be interesting to see this tested - using both static photos and video.

 

[abbijay]

I am still desperate for someone to undertake research in to the relationship between size/confirmation of an animal and the long term soundness affected by jumping. Ok, this is probably more PHD than undergrad level! I have got so infuriatingly exasperated but some nasty old curmudgeons who have told me I am evil for jumping my heavy horse - one made a serious threat to call the RSPCA! Their standard argument is "their joints can't stand up to it" but no one has ever been able to provide me with the evidence on this (either proof or disproof)
I suppose at BSc level I'd like someone to do some research into appropriate uses and workloads for heavy horses.