Abstract: Animals that live in stable social groups need to gather information on their own relative position in the group`s social hierarchy, either by directly threatening or challenging others, or in a less costly manner, by observing interactions among others. Such indirect inference of dominance relationships has previously been reported from primates, rats, and birds and fish. Here, we show that domestic horses, Equus caballus, are similarly capable of social cognition. Taking advantage of a specific “following behavior” that horses show towards humans in a riding arena, we investigated whether bystander horses adjust their response to an experimenter according to the observed interaction and their own dominance relationship with the horse whose reaction to the experimenter they had observed before. Horses copied the following behavior towards an experimenter after watching a dominant horse following, but did not follow after observing a subordinate horse or a horse from another social group doing so. The following behavior which horses show towards an experimenter therefore appears to be affected by the demonstrator`s behavior and social status relative to the observer.

Abstract: This study evaluates the horse (Equus caballus) use of human local enhancement cues and reaction to human attention when making feeding decisions. The superior performance of dogs in observing human states of attention suggests this ability evolved with domestication. However, some species show an improved ability to read human cues through socialization and training. We observed 60 horses approach a bucket with feed in a three-way object-choice task when confronted with (a) an unfamiliar or (b) a familiar person in 4 different situations: (1) squatting behind the bucket, facing the horse (2) standing behind the bucket, facing the horse (3) standing behind the bucket in a back-turned position, gazing away from the horse and (4) standing a few meters from the bucket in a distant, back-turned position, again gazing away from the horse. Additionally, postures 1 and 2 were tested both with the person looking permanently at the horse and with the person alternating their gaze between the horse and the bucket. When the person remained behind the correct bucket, it was chosen significantly above chance. However, when the test person was turned and distant from the buckets, the horses’ performance deteriorated. In the turned person situations, the horses approached a familiar person and walked towards their focus of attention significantly more often than with an unfamiliar person. Additionally, in the squatting and standing person situations, some horses approached the person before approaching the correct bucket. This happened more with a familiar person. We therefore conclude that horses can use humans as a local enhancement cue independently of their body posture or gaze consistency when the persons remain close to the food source and that horses seem to orientate on the attention of familiar more than of unfamiliar persons. We suggest that socialization and training improve the ability of horses to read human cues.

Abstract: Social learning is said to meet the demands of complex environments in which individuals compete over resources and co-operate to share resources. Horses (Equus caballus) were thought to lack social learning skills because they feed on homogenously distributed resources with few reasons for conflict. However, the horse’s social environment is complex, which raises the possibility that its capacity for social transfer of feeding behaviour has been underestimated. We conducted a social learning experiment using 30 socially kept horses of different ages. Five horses, one from each group, were chosen as demonstrators, and the remaining 25 horses were designated observers. Observers from each group were allowed to watch their group demonstrator opening a feeding apparatus. We found that young, low ranking, and more exploratory horses learned by observing older members of their own group, and the older the horse, the more slowly it appeared to learn. Social learning may be an adaptive specialisation to the social environment. Older animals may avoid the potential costs of acquiring complex and potentially disadvantageous feeding behaviours from younger group members. We argue that horses show social learning in the context of their social ecology, and that research procedures must take such contexts into account. Misconceptions about the horse’s sociality may have hampered earlier studies.

Abstract: A previous study demonstrated that horses can learn socially from observing humans, but could not draw any conclusions about the social learning mechanisms. Here we develop this by showing horses four different human action sequences as demonstrations of how to press a button to open a feed box. We tested 68 horses aged between 3 and 12 years. 63 horses passed the habituation phase and were assigned either to the group Hand Demo (N = 13) for which a kneeling person used a hand to press the button, Head Demo (N = 13) for which a kneeling person used the head, Mixed Demo (N = 12) for which a squatting person used both head and hand, Foot Demo (N = 12) in which a standing person used a foot, or No Demo (N = 13) in which horses did not receive a demonstration. 44 horses reached the learning criterion of opening the feeder twenty times consecutively, 40 of these were 75% of the Demo group horses and four horses were 31% of the No Demo group horses. Horses not reaching the learning criterion approached the human experimenters more often than those who did. Significantly more horses used their head to press the button no matter which demonstration they received. However, in the Foot Demo group four horses consistently preferred to use a hoof and two switched between hoof and head use. After the Mixed Demo the horses' actions were more diverse. The results indicate that only a few horses copy behaviours when learning socially from humans. A few may learn through observational conditioning, as some appeared to adapt to demonstrated actions in the course of reaching the learning criterion. Most horses learn socially through enhancement, using humans to learn where, and which aspect of a mechanism has to be manipulated, and by applying individual trial and error learning to reach their goal.

Abstract: Horses (Equidae ) are believed to clearly demonstrate the links between ecology and social organization. Their social cognitive abilities enable them to succeed in many different environments, including those provided for them by humans, or the ones domestic horses encounter when escaping from their human care takers. Living in groups takes different shapes in equids. Their aggregation and group cohesion can be explained by Hamilton“s selfish herd theory. However, when an individual joins and to which group it joins appears to be an active individual decision depending on predation pressure, intra group harassment and resource availability. The latest research concerning the social knowledge horses display in eavesdropping experiments affirms the need for an extension of simple herd concepts in horses for a cognitive component. Horses obviously realize the social composition of their group and determine their own position in it. The horses exceedingly flexible social behavior demands for explanations about the cognitive mechanisms, which allow them to make individual decisions. ”Ecology conditions like those that favour the evolution of open behavioural programs sometimes also favour the evolution of the beginnings of consciousness, by favouring conscious choice. Or in other words, consciousness originates with the choice that are left open by open behavioural programs." Popper (1977)