Tran 1

Hannah Tran
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 39C
24 April 2016
Literature Review Regarding Equestrian Emotion and Cognition
Introduction
The human-horse relationship has existed for thousands of years, as horses were one of
the earliest domesticated animals. Throughout this long relationship, there have been countless
movies and assumptions about the equines emotional capabilities; those assumptions being that
horses are like humans in that they feel and have emotion, yet it wouldnt be until the 1980s and
1990s that there would be any actual evidence of such abilities.
With the development of ethology in the 1970s, Irenus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, the founder of
human ethology, rarely wrote about horses, and not much was known about their cognition
states. One of the earliest researchers that studied horses in their natural environment was James
Feist, and he himself wrote that there were no published articles about horses at the time
(Leblanc 1). The 1980s would mark the first time any substantial evidence was collected. In
recent years, there have been great strides in understanding horse cognition, and these recent
studies will be the primary focus of this literature review.
This review will first begin to look at the human-horse relationship through horse riding
training to see what this reveals about equine emotion, and how positive and negative
reinforcement affect the outcome of the horses training. Going off of this, the human-horse
relationship will be further reviewed through the examination of a horses concept of a person,
and this will be an attempt to understand equine cognition and how horses form interspecies

Tran 2
relationships. Horse facial expressions and how this relates to humans will also be explored. This
will all be eventually tied in to understand how horse training and stress can affect a horses
emotional and physical state.
Ultimately, this review will attempt to offer insight into equine cognitive and emotional
abilities. If our understanding of horses has evolved from the thought that they were just large,
living machines to conscience beings, then do humans have a duty to honor these emotions?
Historical Context
People have been writing about horse riding as early as 3500-4500 years ago (Leblanc 1),
yet it has only been in the last couple decades that horse relationships with humans has been
thoroughly studied. Evelyn Hanggi, one of the leading researchers on horse cognition and the codirector of the Equine Research Foundation, was one of the first to conduct research solely on
horse cognition. In her article, The Thinking Horse: Cognition and Perception Reviewed, she
states how horses traditionally have rarely been classified as intelligent, but that this belief
runs counter to how they actually live (246). They are constantly adapting and foraging for food
in unknown environments, as well changing their behaviors to unnatural ones in order to appease
human conditions. Hanggi and her team employed a variety of stimuli tests on the horses to
measure their intelligence, and whenever negative reinforcement was used, the horses were more
prone to behave unpredictably and nervously. Nevertheless, the horses were still able to
complete multiple cognitive tests, such as those involving the size and location of objects.
However, Hanggi makes the distinction that this is not to say that horses possess the same
conceptualization abilities as humans, nonhuman primates, or other so-called advanced species,
but she does believe it is an indication that they possess more cognitive ability than what was
known (253).

Tran 3
Equine Relationships
Likewise, in Roles of Learning Theory and Ethology in Equitation by Paul McGreevy
and Andrew McLean, veterinary scientists at the University of Sydney,MrGreevy and McLean
studied equine conditioning and revealed that many horse trainers are mistaken about how horses
view them. These trainers usually overlook kinship and affiliation and innate behaviors,
important aspects in horse domestication, and instead rely on a hierarchy and human leadership.
These trainers gave little consideration to the emotional state of these horses, and this resulted in
increased danger for both the trainer and horse. McGreevy and McLean claimed that this
ideology is anthropocentric (113), and only led to improper handling of horses.
Furthermore, horse cognition should not be dismissed, especially in regards to the
human-horse relationship, because there have been studies that have been leaning to the belief
that horses are able to tell species apart, excluding their own. According to Carl Sankey, a
leading researcher in the field of horse cognition, and his team of researchers at the Universit
De Rennes 1 in their article Do Horses Have a Concept of Person, horses have the ability to
recognize a familiar person from an unknown one through their voice and their commands.
In this study, domesticated horses were given orders from familiar and unfamiliar voices.
The horses still obeyed the unknown voice, but their reactions were not the same as when they
heard a familiar voice. For unknown voices, they took longer to respond and responded
differently depending on how the order was given. As shown in Figure 1, if the unknown person
had their back turned, rather than looking directly at the horse, the horse would have taken even
longer to respond, However, this was untrue for familiar voices, in which the data was similar
across the board, even when the order was given with their back facing towards the horses.

Tran 4
Regarding this, Sankey even claimed it was as if they were surprised to hear the familiar order
given by an unknown voice.

Figure 1 Horse human recognition - bar graph, "Do Horses Have a Concept of Person"

Horses are able to not only distinguish different people from one another, but they are
also incredibly competent in reading body language in humans. A famous example of horse
cognition as given by Jeffrey Kluger, a senior writer specializing in science at TIME magazine,
in "Inside the Minds of Animals" was Clever Hans. Clever Hans was a horse living in the early
20th century who was believed to have been able to perform arithmetic and answer other
intellectual questions through tapping his hoof. However, when psychologist Oskar Pfungst
studied him, it was revealed that Clever Hans was able to answer the questions by reading his
owners body language. When he was approaching the right answer with his hoof, Clever Hans

Tran 5
noticed that his owner would look tense, and when he got to the right answer, his owner would
relax (Kluger 77). This only goes to show that horses are capable of understanding the world
around them and adapting to those changes.
Equine Facial Features and Social Behaviors
There is more to the human-horse relationship that is still being studied, but another piece
of critical information to come out during the last few years is the EquiFACS (Equine Facial
Action Coding System), developed by the researchers Jen Wathan, et al., specialists in animal
behavior and psychology at the University of Sussex. In this particular study, it was shown that
horse facial movements were similar to humans and primates, which was due to the fact that
horses contain similar facial muscles as humans as can be seen in Figure 2. Understanding this
can lead to an understanding of horses and their responses to social environments by comparing
their facial features to those of primates, and this could be another possible avenue in exploring
equine emotion.

Figure 2 Horse-Human Facial similarities, "EquiFACS: The Equine Facial Action Coding System"

Tran 6
Because of these revelations in horse ethology, it is no wonder that researchers are
interested in delving into horses and their emotions. Hausberger, et al., a leading researcher in
the field of horse cognition at the Universit De Rennes 1, decided to set up a study to explore
stress levels in horses, and based off of their findings, even suggest using horses as an animal
model for depression.
In their article Could Work Be a Source of Behavioural Disorders? A Study in Horses,
they sought to find a correlation between work levels in domesticated horses and the amount of
stress a horse feels. It is no wonder that they arrived at this study, when, as previously
mentioned, researchers such as Hanggi and McLean found that positive reinforcement was better
for training horses and made them less anxious.
Like with Hanngi, they found that horses with more work, that were surrounded by
negative reinforcement, and were forced to suppress natural physical and emotional behaviors
were more likely to become depressed. These horses became apathetic and developed
stereotypical behaviors. They displayed behavior that was abnormal and chronic, such as
increased fear, and this ultimately led to stress. As displayed in Figure 3, Hausberger, et al.
studied the body language of the horses, and found that the stressed horses were usually in
withdrawn postures.

Figure 3 Withdrawn horses, "Towards an Ethological Animal Model of Depression? A Study on Horses"

Tran 7
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is still much to be done and discovered in the field of horse
cognition. However, it can be said that horses do indeed have a range of intelligence and
emotion. Just how far this range goes can only be said with future research, but it is important to
not classify equine cognition as unimportant. With that said, a question that lingers is whether
anything will be done with this information. It is clear that horses are not emotionless beings, but
does it matter if they are? With equine emotion in mind, will humans reconsider the conditions
and ideologies behind equestrianism?

Tran 8
Works Cited
Feist, James D., and Dale R. Mccullough. "Behavior Patterns and Communication in Feral
Horses." Zeitschrift Fr Tierpsychologie 41.4 (1976): 337-71. ResearchGate. Web.
Fureix, Carole, Patrick Jego, Sverine Henry, La Lansade, and Martine Hausberger. "Towards
an Ethological Animal Model of Depression? A Study on Horses." PLoS ONE 7.6
(2012): n. pag. University of Sussex. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Hanggi, Evelyn. "The Thinking Horse: Cognition and Perception Reviewed." AAEP Proceedings
51 (2005): 246-55. ResearchGate. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.
Hausberger, Martine, Emmanuel Gautier, Vronique Biquand, Christophe Lunel, and Patrick
Jgo. "Could Work Be a Source of Behavioural Disorders? A Study in Horses." PLoS
ONE 4.10 (2009): n. pag. Universit De Rennes 1. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Kluger, Jeffrey. "Inside the Minds of Animals." Time. Time Inc., 05 Aug. 2010. Web. 24 Apr.
2016.
Leblanc, Michel-Antoine. The Mind of the Horse: An Introduction to Equine Cognition.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2013. Print.
Leblanc, Michel-Antoine, and Patrick Duncan. "Can Studies of Cognitive Abilities and of Life in
the Wild Really Help Us to Understand Equine Learning?" Behavioural Processes 76.1
(2007): 49-52. ScienceDirect. Web.
McGreevy, Paul D., and Andrew N. Mclean. "Roles of Learning Theory and Ethology in
Equitation." Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research 2.4
(2007): 108-18. ResearchGate. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.
Sankey, Carol, Sverine Henry, Nicolas Andr, Marie-Annick Richard-Yris, and Martine

Tran 9
Hausberger. "Do Horses Have a Concept of Person?" PLOS ONE. Universit De Rennes
1, 30 Mar. 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Wathan, Jen, Anne M. Burrows, Bridget M. Waller, and Karen Mccomb. "EquiFACS: The
Equine Facial Action Coding System." PLOS ONE PLoS ONE 10.8 (2015): n. pag.
University of Sussex 1. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.