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| Author | Schuetz, A.; Farmer, K.; Krueger, K. | ||||
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Social learning across species: horses (Equus caballus) learn from humans by observation | Type | Journal Article | ||
| Year | 2017 | Publication | Animal Cognition | Abbreviated Journal | Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume | 20 | Issue | 3 | Pages | 567-573 |
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| Abstract | This study examines whether horses can learn by observing humans, given that they identify individual humans and orientate on the focus of human attention. We tested 24 horses aged between 3 and 12. Twelve horses were tested on whether they would learn to open a feeding apparatus by observing a familiar person. The other 12 were controls and received exactly the same experimental procedure, but without a demonstration of how to operate the apparatus. More horses from the group with demonstration (8/12) reached the learning criterion of opening the feeder twenty times consecutively than horses from the control group (2/12), and younger horses seemed to reach the criterion more quickly. Horses not reaching the learning criteria approached the human experimenters more often than those that did. The results demonstrate that horses learn socially across species, in this case from humans. | ||||
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| ISSN | 1435-9456 | ISBN | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ Schuetz2016 | Serial | 6028 | ||
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| Author | Krueger, K. | ||||
| Title |
Social learning and innovative behaviour in horses | Type | Conference Article | ||
| Year | 2015 | Publication | Proceedings of the 3. International Equine Science Meeting | Abbreviated Journal | Proc. 3. Int. Equine. Sci. Mtg |
| Volume | Issue | Pages | |||
| Keywords | social learning, innovative behaviour, Equus caballus, cognitive capacities | ||||
| Abstract | The evaluation of important parameters for measuring the horses’ cognitive capacities is one of the central topics of the equine behaviour team at Nürtingen-Geislingen University. Social complexity has been said to be one of the settings in which needs for cognitive capacities arise in animals. A variety of studies throughout the last two decades proved the horses’ social complexity to be far more elaborate than previously assumed. Horses form social bonds for the protection of offspring, intervene in encounters of others, identify group mates individually and easily orientate in a fission fusion society. In such socially complex societies, animals will benefit from learning socially. In many bird and primate species the degree of social complexity correlates nicely with the species abilities for social learning. Social learning was, therefore, argued to be an indicator for elaborate mental capacities in animals. We were delighted to prove that horses actually copy social behaviour and techniques for operating a feeding apparatus from older and higher ranking group members. In a recent study we found young horses, at the age of 3 to 12, to copy the operation of a feeding apparatus from a human demonstrator. Social learning seems to work nicely in horses when the social background of the animals is considered. The degree to which individual animals adapt to changes in their social or physical environment by finding innovative solution appears to be the other side of the coin, of whether animals adjust to challenges by social learning. It is not very astonishing, that along with the animals’ social complexity and their ability to learn socially also the degree to which they show innovative behaviour was claimed to be one of the most important demonstrations of advanced cognitive capacities. In a recent approach, we started to ask horse owners and horse keepers in many countries to tell us about unusual behaviour of their horses via a web site (http://innovative-behaviour.org). To date, we received 204 cases of innovative behaviour descriptions from which six cases were clear examples of tool use or borderline tool use. We categorized the innovative behaviours into the classes, a) innovations to gain food, b) innovations to gain freedom, c) social innovations, d) innovations to increase maintenance, and e) innovations that could not be clearly assigned to a category. About 20% of the innovative horses showed more than one innovation. These animals could be termed “true innovators”. Again, young horses were more innovative than older ones with the age group 5 – 9 showing the highest number of innovative behaviour descriptions. In a nutshell, the horses’ cognitive capacities appear to be underestimated throughout the last decades. The horses’ social complexity is far more elaborate than previously assumed, horses learn socially from conspecific and humans, some of them demonstrate innovative behaviour adaptations to their environment and even simple forms of tool use. |
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| Corporate Author | Krueger, K. | Thesis | |||
| Publisher | Xenophon Publishing | Place of Publication | Wald | Editor | |
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| Series Volume | in prep | Series Issue | Edition | ||
| ISSN | ISBN | 978-3-95625-000-2 | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5848 | ||
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| Author | Krueger, K.; Hollenhorst, H.; Schuetz, A.; Weil, S. | ||||
| Title |
Social learning and innovative learning in horses. | Type | Conference Article | ||
| Year | 2015 | Publication | Proceedings of the 3. International Equine Science Meeting | Abbreviated Journal | |
| Volume | 3 | Issue | Pages | ||
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| Publisher | Xenophon Publishing | Place of Publication | Wald | Editor | K. Krueger |
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| ISSN | ISBN | 978-3-95625-000-2 | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5956 | ||
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| Author | Krueger, K.; Flauger, B. | ||||
| Title |
Social learning in horses from a novel perspective | Type | Journal Article | ||
| Year | 2007 | Publication | Behavioural Processes | Abbreviated Journal | Behav. Process. |
| Volume | 76 | Issue | 1 | Pages | 37-39 |
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | refbase @ user @ | Serial | 625 | ||
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| Author | Krueger, K. . | ||||
| Title |
Soziales Lernen der Pferde | Type | Book Chapter | ||
| Year | 2011 | Publication | Göttinger Pferdetage '11: Zucht, Haltung und Ernährung von Sportpferden | Abbreviated Journal | |
| Volume | Issue | Pages | 51 | ||
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| Publisher | FN Verlag | Place of Publication | Warendorf | Editor | |
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| ISSN | ISBN | 978-3885427582 | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5719 | ||
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| Author | Wolter, R.; Krueger, K. | ||||
| Title |
The analysis of social bonds in feral horses | Type | Conference Article | ||
| Year | 2015 | Publication | Proceedings of the 3. International Equine Science Meeting | Abbreviated Journal | Proc. 3. Int. Equine. Sci. Mtg |
| Volume | Issue | Pages | |||
| Keywords | social bonds, grooming, nearest neighborhood, rank | ||||
| Abstract | In many social mammals, individuals preferentially affiliate with a small subset of available partners instead of distributing their social behaviors equally among all group members. The resulting social bonds have been investigated in several mammalian taxa, especially in primate societies, but also in other taxa such as birds, dolphins, rodents and ungulates. In feral horses, a great number of studies on social bonds can be found, but with a huge variety between methods for the analysis. There seems to be a lack of a clear and common definition of social bonds in horses and of comparable analyses. For example, there are irregularities between the studies regarding the research designs, the selection of recording methods and the interpretation of the measurements. Mutual grooming is used most often for the analysis of social relationships in many species. As mutual grooming is rare in horses, especially measurements of spatial proximity are commonly used for the analysis of social bonds in addition to other behavioral patterns. However, the combination of mutual grooming and nearest neighborhood analyses for the analysis of social bond is debatable, as in contrast to mutual grooming, which must occur deliberately by both grooming partners, the spatial distribution can be influenced by one partner alone, which may even force the other horse to keep a certain distance or to stay in close proximity. In this study, we investigated the comparability of mutual grooming and nearest neighborhood data for social bond analyses in feral horses. Therefore, we observed five groups of semi-wild living Przewalski’s horses and six groups of feral horses. We analysed the horses’ social ranks by applying an Average Dominance Index, we recorded the distances between the animals and observed the number of mutual grooming events as well as friendly approaches. Our results show that there was only a weak correlation between the frequency of staying in nearest neighborhood and mutual grooming in all observed horse groups. In contrast to this, the correlation between the number of friendly approaches and mutual grooming events was higher in most groups. Hierarchies did not affect social bonds, as mutual grooming was similarly induced by higher and lower ranking animals and the social rank did not affect the choice of the grooming partner. Similarly, likelihoods of staying in the neighborhood of particular animals were not affected by the animals’ social rank. The grooming frequencies differed between the different horse groups and between the individual horses living in the particular groups. They seem to be effected by individual predisposition. Altogether we suggest that the ratio of mutual grooming seems to be a better indicator for social bonds in feral horses than the frequency of staying in the nearest neighborhood. Mutual grooming occurs deliberately and is bidirectional, whereas nearest neighborhoods could be enforced and unidirectional. For the calculation of social bonds in horses, we consider it to be more reliable to combine the frequency of mutual grooming with the frequency of friendly approaches. |
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| Corporate Author | Wolter, R. | Thesis | |||
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| ISSN | ISBN | 978-3-95625-000-2 | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5882 | ||
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| Author | Krueger, K.; Farmer, K.; Heinze, J. | ||||
| Title |
The effects of age, rank and neophobia on social learning in horses | Type | Journal Article | ||
| Year | 2014 | Publication | Animal Cognition | Abbreviated Journal | Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume | 17 | Issue | 3 | Pages | 645-655 |
| Keywords | Horse; Social learning; Sociality; Ecology; Social relationships | ||||
| 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. | ||||
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| Publisher | Springer Berlin Heidelberg | Place of Publication | Editor | ||
| Language | English | Summary Language | Original Title | ||
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| ISSN | 1435-9448 | ISBN | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5737 | ||
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| Author | Wolter, R.; Pantel, N.; Stefanski, V.; Möstl, E.; Krueger, K. | ||||
| Title |
The role of an alpha animal in changing environmental conditions | Type | Journal Article | ||
| Year | 2014 | Publication | Physiology & Behavior | Abbreviated Journal | Physiol. Behav. |
| Volume | 133 | Issue | Pages | 236-243 | |
| Keywords | Alpha male; Horse; Equus ferus przewalskii; Bachelor group; Group structure | ||||
| Abstract | Abstract The maintenance and development of conservation areas by grazing of large herbivores, such as Przewalski's horses, is common practice. Several nature conservation areas house male bachelor groups of this species. When males are needed for breeding they are removed from the groups, often without considering group compositions and individual social positions. However, alpha animals are needed for ensuring group stability and decision making in potentially dangerous situations in several species. To investigate the role of the alpha male in a bachelor group, we observed the behaviour of five Przewalski's horse males during the enlargement of their enclosure. We analyzed the group's social structure and movement orders, as well as the animals' connectedness, activity budgets, and whether they moved with preferred group members and how factors such as social rank influenced the horses' behaviour. We also investigated the excretion of glucocorticoid metabolites (GCM) via faeces of the horses while exploring a new area as a parameter of glucocorticoid production. Our results show that the alpha male is important for a bachelor group in changing environmental conditions. The alpha male had the highest level of connectedness within the group. When exploring the new environment, its position in the group changed from previously being the last to being the first. Furthermore the whole group behaviour changed when exploring the new area. The stallions showed reduced resting behavior, increased feeding and did not stay close to each other. We found that the excretion of glucocorticoid metabolites of most horses rose only marginally during the first days on the new area while only the alpha male showed a significant increased amount of glucocorticoid production during the first day of the enclosure enlargement. | ||||
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| ISSN | 0031-9384 | ISBN | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5818 | ||
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| Author | Schneider, G.; Krueger, K. | ||||
| Title |
Third-party intervention | Type | Conference Article | ||
| Year | 2012 | Publication | Proceedings of the 2. International Equine Science Meeting | Abbreviated Journal | Proc. 2. Int. Equine. Sci. Mtg |
| Volume | Issue | Pages | 73 | ||
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| Abstract | Third-party intervention is the interruption of a dyadic interaction by a third animal. We observed such interventions in affiliative interactions in free-ranging Esperia-ponies (Equus caballus). It is known that horses intervene in affiliative contexts especially when a preferred partner is involved, probably to protect their social bond to this preferred partner. To prove this hypothesis the present study investigated whether the preferred partner was targeted, i.e. challenged, or supported by the intervener or both randomly. Therefore we examined the social relationship between the intervener and both dyadic interacting individuals. We found that interveners usually supported individuals to which they have stronger social bonds than to other group mates, while they have no particular relationship to the targeted animals. This indicates that interveners in stable horse groups protect their social bonds to the supported animals by challenging their interaction partners. Of all observed horses only some mares showed intervention behaviour. Their social position, reflected by their position in the dominance hierarchy, social networks, and the spatial group structure were investigated. We found that interveners occupy no unique position, but they are involved in a high amount of affiliative interactions, high-ranking, and relatively aggressive. KW - | ||||
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| Corporate Author | Krueger, K. | Thesis | |||
| Publisher | Xenophon Publishing | Place of Publication | Wald | Editor | |
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| ISSN | 978-3-9808134-26 | ISBN | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5549 | ||
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| Author | Schneider, G.; Krueger, K. | ||||
| Title |
Third-party interventions keep social partners from exchanging affiliative interactions with others | Type | Journal Article | ||
| Year | 2012 | Publication | Animal Behaviour | Abbreviated Journal | Anim. Behav. |
| Volume | 83 | Issue | 2 | Pages | 377-387 |
| Keywords | Equus caballus; horse; rank; social bond; social network; third-party intervention | ||||
| Abstract | Third-party interventions are defined as the interruption of dyadic interactions by third animals through direct physical contact, interposing or threats. Previous studies focused on the analysis of interventions against agonistic encounters. However, there have been no evaluations of interventions against affiliative behaviours, particularly in relation to the intervening animal�s social relationships and its social and spatial position. Horses, Equus caballus, are an interesting model species, as interventions against affiliative interactions occur more frequently than against agonistic interactions. In this study, 64 feral horses displayed 67 interventions in affiliative interactions and eight interventions in agonistic interactions within the observation period. We analysed the interventions in affiliative encounters, and found that it was mainly higher-ranking females that intervened in the affiliative interactions of group mates in the stable horse harems. The intervening animals took an active part in affiliative and agonistic encounters within the group, but did not occupy particular social roles or spatial positions. They intervened in affiliative interactions in which group mates with which they had social bonds interacted with other members of the group. They targeted the nonbonded animal and approached the one with which they were socially bonded. We suggest some species use third-party interventions in affiliative interactions to prevent competition for preferred social interaction partners from escalating into more costly agonistic encounters. | ||||
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| ISSN | 0003-3472 | ISBN | Medium | ||
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| Notes | Approved | no | |||
| Call Number | Equine Behaviour @ team @ | Serial | 5492 | ||
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