Abstract: The aim of our study was to analyze the behavioural responses of horses (N = 51) to familiar humans and to find factors that may affect these responses in three tests: (1) approach to, (2) standing beside, and (3) following the familiar person. We investigated the impacts of horse-related factors (gender and age) and human-related factors (type of work, housing management, amount of handling, number of handlers and training to follow).<br xmlns=“http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/”></br> Horses with one handler needed less time to approach the human than horses with more handlers. Standing beside the human correlated positively with following. Following was mainly affected by training.<br xmlns=“http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/”></br> According to our results, the number of handlers has an important effect on horses' responses to familiar humans, especially regarding approach and follow behaviour. However, following behaviour is fundamentally determined by training.

Abstract: Most animals must learn some of the behaviours in their repertoire, and some must learn most. Although learning is often thought of as an individual exercise, in nature much learning is social, i.e. under the influence of conspecifics. Social learners acquire novel information or skills faster and at lower cost, but risk learning false information or useless skills. Social learning can be divided into learning from social information and learning through social interaction. Different species have different mechanisms of learning from social information, ranging from selective attention to the environment due to the presence of others to copying of complete motor sequences. In vertical (or oblique) social learning, naïve individuals often learn skills or knowledge from parents (or other adults), whereas horizontal social learning is from peers, either immatures or adults, and more often concerns eavesdropping and public information use. Because vertical social learning is often adaptive, maturing individuals often have a preference for it over individual exploration. The more cognitively demanding social learning abilities probably evolved in this context, in lineages where offspring show long association with parents and niches are complex. Because horizontal learning can be maladaptive, especially when perishable information has become outdated, animals must decide when to deploy social learning. Social learning of novel skills can lead to distinct traditions or cultures when the innovations are sufficiently rare and effectively transmitted socially. Animal cultures may be common but to date taxonomic coverage is insufficient to know how common. Cultural evolution is potentially powerful, but largely confined to humans, for reasons currently unknown. A general theory of culture is therefore badly needed.

Abstract: Four methods of ranking horses on reactivity were evaluated and compared: isolation from conspecifics, presentation of a static novel stimulus, traversing a novel stimulus in a runway (isolation, novel stimulus and runways tests, respectively) and assigning subjective emotionality scores. Forty horses performed each of the three tests daily on three different days in a switchback design where treatments were injection of a tranquilizer or vehicle. Horses were randomly assigned a daily test sequence, which was maintained throughout the study. In all tests, heart rates were recorded and behavior was videotaped. To be considered a valid test of reactivity, at least one heart rate and one behavioural measurement in the test had to show a significant difference due to tranquilization, and behavioural measures had to be displayed in at least 75% of the trials. In the runway test, no significant difference in heart rate values in tranquilized and non-tranquilized horses was found, and no behavioural attribute was displayed in more than 52% of the trials; therefore it was rejected as a valid test of reactivity. Both isolation and novel stimulus tests produced valid measurements. Mean heart rate was the most precise physiological measure for these tests, and walking and defecation frequency were the most precise behavioural measures for novel stimulus and isolation tests, respectively. Mean heart rates on the novel stimulus and isolation tests were correlated (rs=0.79, P<0.01) indicating that these tests produced similar rankings based on physiological responses. However, behavioural measures ranked horses differently (rs=0.27, P<0.10) on the tests. Rank correlations between mean heart rates and behavioural measures were higher in the novel stimulus (rs = 0.66, P<0.01) than the isolation test (rs = 0.55, P<0.01), indicating that the novel stimulus test ranked horses based on either physiological or behavioural responses more similarly than did the isolation test. Therefore, the novel stimulus test was considered the more accurate evaluation of reactivity. Subjective emotionality scores were correlated moderately with mean heart rates (rs > 0.33, P<0.01) from the novel stimulus and isolation tests and with walking scores (rs = 0.47, P<0.01) from the novel stimulus test. Assignment of subjective emotionality scores was not as accurate as the novel stimulus or isolation tests in ranking horses for reactivity. Using physiological data alone, combining physiological and behavioural measurements or using more than one behavioural measurement in reactivity tests may reflect the reactivity of the horse better than a single behavioural measurement.