Researchers at Nottingham Trent University made a game for horses where they had to touch a piece of card with their noses to get a treat. They made it progressively harder, and discovered that the horses all changed their strategies in the most difficult stage to ensure they would continue getting treats.
Horses are capable of strategic thinking and planning ahead, a new study has found. It reveals that they are more cognitively complex than many people previously thought.
Researchers at Nottingham Trent University made a game for horses
where they had to touch a piece of card with their noses to get a
treat. They made it progressively harder, and discovered that the
horses all changed their strategies in the most difficult stage to
ensure they would continue getting treats.
“Horses are not natural geniuses, they are thought of as mediocre,”
said lead researcher Dr Carrie Ijichi in a statement. “But this
study shows they’re not average and are in fact more cognitively
advanced than we give them credit for.”
Clever strategy
Rita Kochmarjova – stock.adobe. Researchers were surprised by
the cognitive capacities of the horses
After learning to touch the card for a treat, the horses then
received a treat only if they touched it when a light was off but
not if it was on. At this stage they all continued to touch the card
whether or not the light was on, which made the researchers think
they didn’t understand the game.
But then they introduced a penalty for touching when the light was
off. They gave the horses a ten second time out from playing or
receiving any rewards.
At this point, all the horses suddenly began to play the game
correctly, only touching the card when it would lead to a treat. The
researchers suggest that this shows the horses understood the game
all along. “At first we found that horses would just keep touching
the card over and over, as they probably realised they would still
get a frequent reward with minimal mental effort,” said Ijichi.
“There was no cost for indiscriminate hitting, sometimes it paid
off, sometimes it didn’t. When we introduced a cost for their
errors, however, they could instantly understand and play the game
properly.”
Goal-oriented
To strategically change tack, the horses demonstrated goal-oriented
thinking, focusing on what they wanted to achieve and how to do it.
Essentially, the study shows they can perform a cost-benefit
analysis. Researchers previously believed this capacity to be beyond
the cognitive abilities of horses.
“It’s fascinating because they have a very underdeveloped
pre-frontal cortex which is what we typically credit with producing
that type of thinking in humans,” said Ijichi. “This means they must
be using another area of the brain to achieve a similar result.”
This shows us that “we shouldn’t make assumptions about animal
intelligence or sentience” based on similarity to humans.
Plant Based News does not condone the use of animals in research.