Horses Can Plan And Strategize, New Study Finds

Horses are capable of strategic thinking and planning ahead, a new study has found. It reveals that they are more cognitively complex than many people previously thought.

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University made a game for horses where they had to touch a piece of card with their noses to get a treat. They made it progressively harder, and discovered that the horses all changed their strategies in the most difficult stage to ensure they would continue getting treats.

“Horses are not natural geniuses, they are thought of as mediocre,” said lead researcher Dr Carrie Ijichi in a statement. “But this study shows they’re not average and are in fact more cognitively advanced than we give them credit for.”

Clever strategy

After learning to touch the card for a treat, the horses then received a treat only if they touched it when a light was off but not if it was on. At this stage they all continued to touch the card whether or not the light was on, which made the researchers think they didn’t understand the game.

But then they introduced a penalty for touching when the light was off. They gave the horses a ten second time out from playing or receiving any rewards.

At this point, all the horses suddenly began to play the game correctly, only touching the card when it would lead to a treat. The researchers suggest that this shows the horses understood the game all along. “At first we found that horses would just keep touching the card over and over, as they probably realised they would still get a frequent reward with minimal mental effort,” said Ijichi. “There was no cost for indiscriminate hitting, sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn’t. When we introduced a cost for their errors, however, they could instantly understand and play the game properly.”

Goal-oriented

To strategically change tack, the horses demonstrated goal-oriented thinking, focusing on what they wanted to achieve and how to do it. Essentially, the study shows they can perform a cost-benefit analysis. Researchers previously believed this capacity to be beyond the cognitive abilities of horses.

“It’s fascinating because they have a very underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex which is what we typically credit with producing that type of thinking in humans,” said Ijichi. “This means they must be using another area of the brain to achieve a similar result.” This shows us that “we shouldn’t make assumptions about animal intelligence or sentience” based on similarity to humans.

Plant Based News does not condone the use of animals in research.