Horses communicate with their ears, apparently...

Nessa4 said:
Yet another treatise from the School of the blindingly bleedin' obvious.
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You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but with respect I suggest you haven't read and appreciated what the study actually set out to show. Is it bleedin' obvious that horses can tell what other horses are looking at from just their eyes or ears? I would say it isn't that obvious at all, and I have worked with horses for decades.
 
I did roll my eyes at this one but to be fair it is probably the media spin that has made it so pointless sounding. You have to remember that most people who report on such things know very little about horses (or perhaps science some may argue..) so this wouldn't be so obvious to them. They probably missed the point entirely and just reported on the bit that did sound interesting to them.

It happens a lot. I was involved in some research about dry water that got super hyped up as amazing and novel and the researcher ended up on radio 4 and it all went viral. To us it was a little interesting aside that wasn't that scientifically interesting or new..

Another funny example is the space dinosaur comment in a chemistry journal. A flippant throw away comment at the end of a paper got reported as prediction of space dinosaurs on other planets.
 
teapot said:
It was funded by a research council - http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/news/fundame...0805-pr-how-horses-communicate-with-ears.aspx so Government money, NOT a private company.

And the Sussex press release is here too: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents/?id=25751
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Interesting as all the research councils have had their funding from the government absolutely mullered in the last few years. The fact that it is a PhD probably makes a difference though - more pure research goes through that route than the normal standard grants. Believe it or not, I've actually seen weirder ones than this get grants in the past.
 
fburton said:
It's pure research. It may have an application in future, or not. TBH I can't think one offhand. On the other hand, I for one am interested in finding out more about exactly how horses perceive the world, including 'useless' knowledge like what colours they can see/distinguish. It is of particular interest to me whether horses are naturally sensitive to gaze direction.

Whether that kind of research should be funded out of the public purse is another matter entirely!
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I, too, am interested in finding out more about how horses perceive the world, communicate and behave, naturally and when stabled. Like you, and after 50 years around horses, I also believe that what seemed 'bleedin' obvious' is sometimes not and some traditionally accepted practices for managing horses' behaviour can be shown now to be wrong and harmful e.g., randomly, cribbing collars cause more stress and harm than the cribbing.

When I found a course earlier this year at one of the French National Stud sites on equine ethology, I got myself on it. To be clear, 'ethology' is intended to be a scientific study of behaviour in the wild and in domestication, and not about 'whispering' and charismatic folk in cowboy hats. It was a real eye-opener, and the training and research was funded ultimately by the French government. I've just been scouring the web for something similar in the UK, and I can't find anything. Is there anything on a genuine ethological basis out there? If there is, I would strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the inside of our horses' heads.

By the way, the French government funds 26 national stud sites around the country with a wide range of activities and support for breeders and most of the equestrian disciplines. We have the National Stud at Newmarket that stands a few TB stallions and, er, that's it. And yes, I know the French national debt is spiraling out of control, but what a great way to go bust.
 
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Aeolian said:
When I found a course earlier this year at one of the French National Stud sites on equine ethology, I got myself on it. To be clear, 'ethology' is intended to be a scientific study of behaviour in the wild and in domestication, and not about 'whispering' and charismatic folk in cowboy hats. It was a real eye-opener after 50 years around horses, and the training and research was funded ultimately by the French government. I've just been scouring the web for something similar in the UK, and I can't find anything. Is there anything on a genuine ethological basis out there? If there is, I would strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the inside of our horses' heads.
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try Equitation Science, there are some part-time behavioural courses as well.


rather something like this than the endless questionnaire type projects-which exist as PhDs as well.
 
MotherOfChickens said:
try Equitation Science, there are some part-time behavioural courses as well.


rather something like this than the endless questionnaire type projects-which exist as PhDs as well.
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Many thanks for this, Ms Chickens, I've just been round the ISES website. It seems just what I was looking for.

I'm particularly encouraged, for example, by the 'Position statement on restrictive nosebands', when most of the horses I see are in tightly done-up flashes, and you're called a **** for saying it's wrong.
 
fatpiggy said:
Interesting as all the research councils have had their funding from the government absolutely mullered in the last few years. The fact that it is a PhD probably makes a difference though - more pure research goes through that route than the normal standard grants. Believe it or not, I've actually seen weirder ones than this get grants in the past.
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Me too and I'm a funded PhD student!
 
There are a number of very interesting Coursera courses on Animal Behaviour - there is one running currently on Animal Behaviour and Welfare (https://www.coursera.org/course/animal ) that includes sections on horses. There is quite a lot of fundamental information about animal behaviour that it's useful to understand before starting to look at horses/equines in detail - lots of "received wisdom" about horse behaviour is actually in almost direct conflict with current understanding about animal behaviour as a whole (the concept of dominance is one aspect that seems to be used incorrectly in explaining a whole range of horse behaviours). So a good place to start is usually with an Animal Behaviour course, such as this one... https://www.coursera.org/course/animalbehav

Online courses aimed at horse owners that cover behaviour include this one : https://www.coursera.org/course/thehorsecourse

Coursera seem to run successful courses again, so although these are either half way through or have started and finished, chances are they will run again over the next few months.


Additionally, this one is very much more indepth (you would need the basic information on animal behaviour before diving in, I would say) and is not free, but the material presented is fascinating. http://www.equine-education.com/courses/introduction-to-equine-behaviour/

Again, this one is just finishing after running for the last 4 weeks, but I would imagine the organisers hope to run it again, and possibly to add a more advanced option :)
 
Brightbay said:
There are a number of very interesting Coursera courses on Animal Behaviour - there is one running currently on Animal Behaviour and Welfare (https://www.coursera.org/course/animal ) that includes sections on horses. There is quite a lot of fundamental information about animal behaviour that it's useful to understand before starting to look at horses/equines in detail - lots of "received wisdom" about horse behaviour is actually in almost direct conflict with current understanding about animal behaviour as a whole (the concept of dominance is one aspect that seems to be used incorrectly in explaining a whole range of horse behaviours). So a good place to start is usually with an Animal Behaviour course, such as this one... https://www.coursera.org/course/animalbehav

Online courses aimed at horse owners that cover behaviour include this one : https://www.coursera.org/course/thehorsecourse

Coursera seem to run successful courses again, so although these are either half way through or have started and finished, chances are they will run again over the next few months.


Additionally, this one is very much more indepth (you would need the basic information on animal behaviour before diving in, I would say) and is not free, but the material presented is fascinating. http://www.equine-education.com/courses/introduction-to-equine-behaviour/

Again, this one is just finishing after running for the last 4 weeks, but I would imagine the organisers hope to run it again, and possibly to add a more advanced option :)
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Many thanks all for the info. Trite, but it's a testament to online forums that connections which might have taken forever to make happen so quickly.

As for the subject of how we understand, manage and train our horses, people have been at this for at least 5,000 years, resulting in some genuinely sound principles (e.g. Xenophon 300 BC) and some appalling, ignorant practices that must have caused untold suffering. Sorting out the valid from the nonsense is one of the big challenges, I think.

And it keeps on changing: e.g. I was always taught that the longer a young horse was left to mature, the stronger the adult animal would be. The Italian cavalry manual on starting horses said they should be left alone until they were five, until their skeletons fully hardened. Actually, research in the USA and the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket has shown that a controlled exercise program from yearlings upwards results in stronger bones, tendons and ligaments. Thousands of young horses may have been spared from breaking down by this.

The point is, it pays to keep an open mind, and not all academic researchers are twits.
 
There was a popular horsey episode of QI last year which talked about horse's ear communication, someone must have seen that prior to this 'research' or at least read up on basic horse behaviour.
 
The_Dappled_One. said:
There was a popular horsey episode of QI last year which talked about horse's ear communication, someone must have seen that prior to this 'research' or at least read up on basic horse behaviour.
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Wish I had seen that episode - it sounds fun! :)

I'm sure the researchers are well "read up" on horse behaviour! To reiterate, the point of the study wasn't to show that horses communicate with their ears, although it may have been reported that way by some; it was to find out what horses communicate this way, in particular whether the ears (and eyes) are important in telling where they are directing their attention.

It wasn't a perfect study, imo - science is inherently imperfect because that's the way it works - but I am glad it was done nonetheless.
 
My mare is the queen of ear communication (she very dominant but not aggressive) - a tiny twitch is all she needs so say "back-off you greedy cob oaf, look at my tea again let alone think about stepping closer to it and it's going to hurt - and that's you not me". Watching her interact with her herd is all anyone needs to learn about the power of ear communication.
 
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