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

Finally!

[JockTroll]

We can ask them "why the long face?"

Re:Finally!

[Rei]

How elaborate can this Q&A get?

Q: "Hey horse - how come Christians are allowed to draw pictures of their prophets and Muslims aren't?"

A: "I don't know. I am a horse, and, as such, have no knowledge of the intricacies of Islamic theology. I assume you're asking me because I am a brown horse? In which case, go to hell."

Re:Finally!

[PPH]

These two racehorses were standing in their stable. The first one said, "I've been in 18 races and won 16." The second one said, "That's nothing. I've been in 28 races and won 25." At this point, a greyhound dog walks by, and overhearing the horses, says "I've been in 48 races and won every one of them!"

One horse looks at the other and says, "That's amazing! A talking dog!"

Science always helping

[Sobakus]

At long last Sarah Jessica Parker wont freeze during winter ever again!!!

Cart before the horse?

[SpiralBound]

Hmmm... While it has been shown in a variety of ways going back at least as far as the original Mr. Ed that horses are smart and capable of performing a large repetoire of tricks, I do wonder in this particular case if the horses are touching the symbols at the appropriate times because they understand what the symbols mean, or because they were trained to touch the symbols at the appropriate times. It is a vitally important distinction. Just how did they teach the meaning of each symbol to them without instead accidentally training them to perform without any true understanding of the symbols themselves? Humans have instinctual behaviours towards pattern recognition, anthromorphism, self-delusion, and rationalisation, thus experimential methods must be very carefully designed to remove these influences.

Re:Cart before the horse?

[Rei]

Reading over the study, in case you're curious: they discuss the Clever Hans effect, how it manifests (the horse observes the trainer or audience and does what it needs to get a reward based on the audience's reaction). In this study, the trainer was off to the side, out of the field of view of the horse, and they monitored where the horse was looking to ensure it was only looking at the symbols when making its choice. Then the horse was given a reward regardless of what symbol it chose; it simply had to choose one to get a treat. The symbol touches were easy to record and unambiguous, so there was no "interpretation" of the horses behavior in question. The researchers also observed side behaviors. For example, once the horses had learned to use the symbols to control their blanketing status they often became very eager to go into the testing facilitity (before the phase where treats were on offer). It was observed that horses that sought to have their blanket removed in this manner tended to be sweaty underneath it, while those that didn't seek it out weren't.

To be fair, there's even more that could be done. I really liked the controls that Pepperberg did in her studies of Alex (the African Grey parrot). She had it set up so that the person asking a question didn't know the answer, and neither did the person scoring the result. In this case here, clearly the trainer knew the weather and thus what would be the "optimal" blanketing status. But by paying attention to where the horse's focus is, whether it's hesitating, etc, and giving it a reward either way, I agree that that's some pretty good controlling for the Clever Hans effect.

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.

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?...

Horses are smarter than you'd think

[Cro Magnon]

I once asked one if Windows was any good.

"Neigh!"