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Gatta, D., Baragli, P., Ferrarini, N., Ciattini, F., Sighieri, C., & Colombani, B. (1998). Fitness evaluation in endurance horses by standardised exercise test on treadmill. Valutazione dello stato di allenamento del cavallo da endurance mediante test standardizzato su trea, 9(4), 57–69.
Abstract: Endurance horses, like marathon runners, undertake sub-maximal, longterm physical exercises and in both cases thermoregulation plays a critical role. A standardised sub-maximal treadmill test was used to assess fitness and training state in endurance horses. Literature reports that trained human athletes dissipate head load better than not trained ones; in this study parameters related to thermoregulation were recorded together with other haematologic and metabolic ones. Six endurance horses, divided into two groups according to their training state, performed two submaximal tests at a distance of one week. Blood samples were collected at rest, during exercise, at the end and during recovery (10, 30 and 60 minutes after work). Heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR), rectal (RT) and skin (ST) temperatures were monitored through the exercise (and recovery for HR). HR resulted significantly lower (P<0.01) in trained horses than in untrained ones, especially during recovery. Also rectal and skin temperatures resulted significantly lower (P<0.05) in trained horses and ST increased more gradually during exercise. The values of haematocrit and haemoglobin resulted significantly lower (P<0.05) at rest, during exercise and recovery samples. In this study, the parameters related to thermoregulation, in accordance with data from human athletes, resulted significantly different in trained and untrained horses, while other parameters didn't vary significantly between the two groups. Thermoregulatory responses to exercise-generated heat load in a standardised test, studied by simple parameters, can thus offer useful information about fitness and training state of endurance horses.
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Lovrovich, P., Sighieri, C., & Baragli, P. (2015). Following human-given cues or not? Horses (Equus caballus) get smarter and change strategy in a delayed three choice task. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 166, 80–88.
Abstract: Highlights
�Horses remember the location of food hidden by the experimenter after a delay.
�They understand the communicative meaning of a human positioned close to the target.
�The same horses are capable of changing their decision-making strategy.
�They are able to shift from accuracy inferred from human given cues to speed.
�Horses can use human cues or not depending on time, cost, experience and reward.
Abstract
To date, horses have seemed capable of using human local enhancement cues only when the experimenter remains close to the reward, since they fail to understand the communicative meaning of the human as momentary local enhancement cue (when the human is not present at the moment of the animal's choice). This study was designed to analyse the ability of horses to understand, remember and use human-given cues in a delayed (10 s) three-choice task. Twelve horses (experimental group) had to find a piece of carrot hidden under one of three overturned buckets after seeing the experimenter hide it. The results were then compared with those of a control group (twelve horses) that had to find the carrot using only the sense of smell or random attempts. At the beginning, the experimental horses made more correct choices at the first attempt, although they took more time to find the carrot. Later the same horses were less accurate but found the carrot in less time. This suggests that the value of the proximal momentary local enhancement cues became less critical. It seemed, in fact, that the experimental and control group had aligned their behaviour as the trials proceeded. Despite this similarity, in the second half of the trials, the experimental group tended to first approach the bucket where they had found the carrot in the immediately preceding trial. Our findings indicate that horses are capable of remembering the location of food hidden by the experimenter after a delay, by using the human positioned close to the target as valuable information. The same horses are also capable of changing their decision-making strategy by shifting from the accuracy inferred from human given cues to speed. Therefore, horses are able to decide whether or not to use human given-cues, depending on a speed-accuracy trade-off.
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