Scientists Discover That Horses Can Use Symbols To Talk To Us (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes from a report via Science Magazine: Scientists have discovered that horses can learn to use another human tool for communicating: pointing to symbols. They join a short list of other species, including some primates, dolphins, and pigeons, with this talent. Scientists taught 23 riding horses of various breeds to look at a display board with three icons, representing wearing or not wearing a blanket. Horses could choose between a "no change" symbol or symbols for "blanket on" or "blanket off." The horses did not touch the symbols randomly, but made their choices based on the weather. If it was wet, cold, and windy, they touched the blanket-on icon; horses that were already wearing a blanket nosed the "no change" image. But when the weather was sunny, the animals touched the blanket-off symbol; those that weren't blanketed pressed the "no change" icon. The study's strong results show that the horses understood the consequences of their choices, say the scientists, who hope that other researchers will use their method to ask horses more questions. The report has been published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

Comments

All animals understand cause/effect

[tomhath]

Here's a video of a cow that clearly comes up with a plan, then carries it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Cart before the horse?

[Rei]

Its still just training/conditioning to the environment and 'response and reward'

Something not disputed by the study. The top keyword in the article summary is "Operant conditioning" (followed by "Blanket", "Rug", "Thermoregulation", "Cognition" and "Clicker training"). You'd do well to read the study. The key takeaways are:

1) Horses can be conditioned via use of visual symbols
2) Horses can use this to initiate communicated preference rather than just as a response
3) Horses learned much faster using the approach in this study than others
4) Horses understood the link between wearing / removing a blanket and their eventual body temperature for the given weather conditions
5) Different horses took different lengths of time to learn the connection with the symbols, but all managed to learn it, and once it was learned it was understood effectively 100% and not forgotten with time

It's also worth mentioning that most human behaviors are also learned through operant conditioning. That's how we all learned as children. There is no simple line between human and non-human in this regard. E.g., you stick your fingers on a hot burner, you get burned, you learn to avoid hot burners without even having to think about it. Your parent holds up an alphabet block with a "Q" on it, you say "Q", you get praise. The father of operant conditioning, B.F. Skinner, mainly wrote about it with a focus on its effects on human behavior, not animal behavior in general.

Horses are smarter than you'd think

[Cro Magnon]

I once asked one if Windows was any good.

"Neigh!"