Grand National or grandmasters? Horses think strategically
They can run, jump and – as Olympics viewers know – dance. But horses are even smarter than previously thought, having shown the capacity to plan ahead during games of strategy.
Researchers found that when denied treats for not following the rules of a complex reward-based game, horses were able to adjust quickly to get more rewards.
Scientists say this shows that the animals have the ability to think and plan ahead, something previously considered beyond their capacity.
Knowing how horses learn can help carers to train them more humanely and improve their welfare, the team from Nottingham Trent University says.
Dr Carrie Ijichi, a senior lecturer in equine science, said: “This study shows they’re not average and are, in fact, more cognitively advanced than we give them credit for.”
For their study, the researchers set 20 horses a task consisting of three stages. In the first, the animals had to touch a piece of card with their nose in order to get a treat.
Things became more complicated when a light was introduced and horses were allowed a snack only if they touched the card while the light was switched off.
The team found that the horses kept blindly touching the card, regardless of whether the light was on or off, but were rewarded only for correct responses.
In the final stage, a penalty was put in place – touching the card when a “stop” light was on resulted in a 10-second timeout. Instead of indiscriminately touching the card, the team found that the horses followed the rules by making a move only at the right time in order to get their treat.
The researchers said this suggested that rather than failing to grasp the rules of the game, the horses had understood it the whole time but had found a way to play in the second stage that did not require much attention.
Louise Evans, a PhD candidate at the university’s school of animal, rural and environmental sciences, said: “Animals usually need several repetitions of a task to gradually acquire new knowledge, whereas our horses immediately improved when we introduced a cost for errors. This suggests that the horses knew all along what the rules of the game were.”
The researchers said the findings, published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, suggested that horses had the ability to form an internal model of the world around them to make decisions and predictions, a technique known as model-based learning.
It was previously thought that this was beyond them because they have an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with strategic thinking. Ijichi said the horses “must be using another area of the brain to achieve a similar result”. – The Times