Aug 18, 2024 22:05:00

Research shows that horses are much smarter than humans think and may be able to understand the rules of games

There are often differing opinions on whether animals have the intelligence to understand things or whether they just act on instinct, but horses

have the self-awareness to recognize themselves in the mirror, and are smarter than we thought. Experts from Nottingham Trent University and the University of Central Lancashire in the UK have conducted experiments in which horses were made to play card tasks, showing that 'horses are even smarter than previously thought.'

Whoa, No-Go: Evidence consistent with model-based strategy use in horses during an inhibitory task - ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159124001874

Whoa, No-Go: Evidence consistent with model-based strategy use in horses during an inhibitory task - CLOK - Central Lancashire Online Knowledge
https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/52113/

Horses much more intelligent than we thought, study suggests | Nottingham Trent University
https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/news/news-articles/2024/08/horses-much-more-intelligent-than-we-thought,-study-suggests

Horses are an animal closely related to human life, having been used for transportation as mounts and carriages, and as racehorses. However, as experts point out, racehorses are not only not aware that they are participating in a race, but also have no desire to run faster than the other horses running at the same time, so horses are sometimes thought to be not very intelligent.

It's unlikely that racehorses are aware that they are racing - GIGAZINE

On the other hand, in 2021, a research team from the University of Pisa conducted a ' mirror test ' on horses to test whether an animal's 'ability to recognize itself in a mirror' was present, and the results showed that horses have a certain degree of self-awareness. Opinions are divided as to the extent to which the self-awareness of animals who pass the mirror test is related to intelligence and cognitive ability, but in response to the results of the mirror test, experts have stated that 'horses may be smarter than we think.'

'Mirror test' reveals that horses are smarter than you think - GIGAZINE

In a paper published in July 2024 by Louise Evans, an applied animal behavior scientist at Nottingham Trent University, and her colleagues conducted an experiment using lights and cards to understand how horses learn. For the experiment, 20 horses aged 11 to 22 years old and kept at the university were randomly selected, of which 7 were female and 13 were castrated males. Care was taken to ensure that the horses' daily routines, exercise times, sleep times, etc. were not affected.

In the experiment, the horses were first trained to touch the card with their nose to receive a reward. Next, they added a rule that if they touched the card when the light was on, they would not receive a reward, but would only receive a reward if they touched the card when the light was off. Finally, if they touched the card when the light was on, they were penalized not only by not receiving a reward, but also by being unable to perform the task for 10 seconds.

As a result, up until the second stage, when the light was introduced, the horses touched the cards indiscriminately, regardless of whether the light was on or off, and received rewards according to the conditions. The researchers point out that even the horses that received rewards for touching the cards when the light was off were simply moving at that time and were not performing the task correctly.

On the other hand, after adding a penalty for failing the task as a final step, the researchers reported that all participating horses made significantly fewer mistakes. In the end, the horses were able to correctly play the game, which required them to pay attention to the lights turning on and off and touch the card when the lights went out in order to receive a reward.

Lead researcher Carrie Izic said: 'At first, the horses just kept touching the cards, presumably because they realised that at this stage they could get a reward with minimal mental effort, without having to pay much attention to the task. However, once we introduced penalties for mistakes, the horses quickly understood the game and were able to play appropriately. Horses are often thought of as not very smart, but this study shows that they are actually more cognitively advanced than we think.'

According to Ijichi, when playing a game where you judge the timing and touch the cards, it is thought that humans use the prefrontal cortex to think, but the horse's prefrontal cortex is very underdeveloped. Therefore, even if a horse can perform the task well, it is unclear whether it is playing in the same way as a human. 'The results of this study also teach us that we should not make assumptions about the intelligence and perception of animals in the same way as we do with humans,' Ijichi said about the significance of the study.

Commenting on the results, Evans said: 'We expected that the addition of a penalty would improve the horses' performance, but the results were more dramatic than we expected. Animals usually acquire new knowledge gradually by repeating a task, but the horses in our experiment improved immediately after the penalty was introduced. This suggests that the horses are smarter than we expected, and knew the rules from the start.'