This is just one of the many moments in which horses, in their coexistence with us, are pushed into adopting a reactive behavior. If the horse doesn’t run away, he is often given a “friendly” tap on his rump or an arm is waved to encourage him to charge off.īut why should he run? And if he doesn’t run off, why do so many of us feel the need to trigger that reaction? As a symbol for freedom, perhaps? At the moment the halter is taken off-or the rope is detached from the halter-the horse gallops away. Here is a simple example: Someone leads a horse out to a field. It is present in a wide range of situations. Perceiving horses as flight animals is a deep-rooted belief that influences many aspects of human behavior toward them. It is not surprising that what we then see is an unpredictable flight animal. They start to respond to stimuli with behavioristic responses without actually processing the information. However, due to their coexistence with humans, horses gradually change because not only do they usually grow up in a context in which the elements that make a socio-cognitive environment have vanished, but they also start to fulfill a human purpose. Their cognitive abilities allow them to understand themselves, their initiatives, each other, their environment, and their social context. So, what we should ask ourselves is why domestic horses feel the need to show so many reactive behaviors.Īll horses are born cognitive. In reality, they become fight-or-flight animals as a result of their coexistence with humans. Many modern training methods, however, focus on this simplistic concept that horses are flight and reactive animals that need to be controlled if we want a safe and efficient interaction. Thinking of them merely in terms of prey or “fight-or-flight” animals is clearly too simple and doesn’t make it possible for us to see them as they truly are. From an ethological (study of animal behavior under natural conditions) point of view, horses are socio-cognitive animals in their specific and individual patterns. From an ecological point of view, horses are herbivores and can be subject to predation by certain carnivore species, depending where they live. In this excerpt from their book Equus Lost? biologists and ethologists Francesco De Giorgio & José De Giorgio-Schoorl challenge popular assumptions about the horse as a prey animal and what that means for his relationship with humans.įrom an evolutionary point of view, horses are mammals and belong to the equid family of the Perissodactyla order (hooved mammals).