Abstract: Mirror Self-Recognition (MSR) unveils complex cognitive, social and emotional skills and it has been found only in humans and few other species, such as great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies. In this pilot study, we tested if horses show the capacity of MSR. Four subjects living socially under naturalistic conditions were selected for the experiment. We adopted the classical mark test, which consists in placing a coloured mark on an out-of-view body part, visible only through mirror inspection. If the animal considers the image as its own, it will use its reflection to detect the mark and will try to explore it. We enhanced the classical paradigm by introducing a double-check control. Only in the presence of the reflecting surface, animals performed tactile and olfactory exploration of the mirror and looked behind it. These behaviors suggest that subjects were trying to associate multiple sensory cues (visual, tactile and olfactory) to the image in the mirror. The lack of correspondence between the collected stimuli in front of the mirror and the response to the colored mark lead us to affirm that horses are able to perceive that the reflected image is incongruent when compared with the memorized information of a real horse. However, without replication of data, the self-directed behavior towards the colored marks showed by our horses cannot be sufficient per se to affirm that horses are capable of self-recognition.

Abstract: For ages horses and donkeys constituted the most important domesticated animals. Even though equids were often bred and kept in close proximity to humans, surprisingly little is known about their cognitive abilities. Traditionally, horses are not regarded as clever animals; common beliefs maintain that the horses“ behaviour is merely driven by conditioned-responses. Additionally, from an anthropomorphic point of view donkeys are believed to be ”stupid" animals.
Our study investigates the equids“ ability to recover a hidden object. For this purpose the animal has to create and maintain a representation of the object and its location in space, from the moment in which it disappears from direct perception, till the moment in which it reappears. The knowledge about objects being entities that continue to exist even when they are no longer available for direct perception is refered to as the well known concept of ”object permanence".
We primarly assessed the ability of Esperia's pony and donkeys to solve a Detour problem while employing an opaque “U-shaped” barrier. Each animal observed a food bucket moving and disappearing behind the barrier. Immediately after the object"s disappearance, the animal was released to search for the object. If it solved the task by detouring the barrier it was positively reinforced.
The ability to retain in memory the hidden object as well as its spatial location was subsequently tested in the presence of two, rather than one, screens (Working Memory testing phase). The food bucket was made to move and hidden behind one of the two identical screens, while the animal was watching it. Following a pre-established delayed period of 10 sec, the animal was set free to look for the food. In such a test the detour problem is combined with the classical delayed-response task, which is in use for the comparison of memory duration in different species.
In order to recover the hidden objects, animals must encode, maintain and correctly regain from their working memory the existence of the no longer visible object and its location from their working memory.
Both donkeys and ponies performed the Detour task showing to grasp the fact that an object which is no longer perceivable still continues to exist and can be regained. They also were able to correctly retrieve the goal object after a delay of 10 s in the Working Memory tasks, showing that they had encoded, maintained and correclty retrieved from their working memory the spatial location of the hidden object as well as its existence.
Nevertheless, when Standardbreds, raised in traditional stables, were tested in identical conditions to those describe for the ponies and donkeys, they could not succeed in the Detour tasks. The reason for such differences needs to be studied Even though it would be interesting to focus on handling differences, i.e., the ponies had been living in an environment rich in natural stimuli, while the Standardbreds had lived in a man-controlled environment since birth. It is also noteworthy that, like donkeys, the Esperia's pony have a reputation for being hard to handle.
Several considerations could arise from our preliminary investigations, and we will have the pleasure to leave them open for discussion.

Abstract: We hypothesized that in an open environment, horses cope with a series of challenges in
their interactions with human beings. If the horse is not physically constrained and is free to move
in a small enclosure, it has additional options regarding its behavioral response to the trainer. The
aim of our study was to evaluate the influence of 2 different training strategies on the horse’s behavioral
response to human stimuli. In all, 12 female ponies were randomly divided into the following 2
groups: group A, wherein horses were trained in a small enclosure (where indicators of the level of
attention and behavioral response were used to modulate the training pace and the horse’s control over
its response to the stimuli provided by the trainer) and group B, wherein horses were trained in a closed
environment (in which the trainer’s actions left no room for any behavioral response except for the one
that was requested). Horses’ behavior toward the human subject and their heart rate during 2 standardized
behavioral tests were used to compare the responses of the 2 groups. Results indicated that the
horses in group A appeared to associate human actions with a positive experience, as highlighted by
the greater degree of explorative behavior toward human beings shown by these horses during the tests.
The experience of the horses during training may have resulted in different evaluations of the person, as
a consequence of the human’s actions during training; therefore, it seems that horses evaluate human
beings on daily relationship experiences.

Abstract: In human sports medicine exercise tests are normally used to check training progression. Correlation tests between blood lactate concentration and exercise speed are often used for this purpose. Studies have been done to adjust exercise tests for athletic horses using the same principle. The aim of this work was to verify the practical possibility that the anaerobic threshold in elite endurance horses could be calculated by adjusting a submaximal exercise field test in order to obtain reference parameters for endurance horses. Ten selected horses from the Italian National Endurance Team were used for this study. The tests were conducted on an 800 meters grass oval. Horses performed three steps (800 meters every step), at increasing speed with two minute intervals between each step. Riders were informed of the ideal speed for every step (5, 7.5, 10 m/s) and the real velocity was calculated on the basis of time taken to finish a single step. Blood samples were obtained via venipuncture from the jugular vein, immediately before the beginning of the test and 60 seconds after the end of each step. The following parameters were evaluated for each horse: individual anaerobic threshold (VSI), anaerobic threshold (V4) and exercise velocity corresponding to a lactate concentration of 2 mM/I (V2). Analysis of results indicate that lactate concentration is exponentially related to exercise speed for the entire test. VSI, V4, V2, were (mearttsd): 25.7±5.1; 30.5±2.5; 21.1±2.9 km/h respectively.

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.