Monday, October 27, 2008

How smart are our animals?

This isn't going to be some cogent dissertation on animal intelligence, rather it's more of my early morning musing.
This morning at 6:45am I went out to feed my horses, which this time of year means letting them into one of my pastures. I have a routine that I follow: I go into the barn, say good morning to the horses, and get the halter for the most dominant horse. Usually this horse walks in out of the paddock in "his" stall and I put the halter on and lead him to my larger pasture, which can take more feeding pressure. Some mornings the dominant horse doesn't come in, and instead stands by the gate to the paddock to be--I assume--to the pasture which is off the paddock. I always think this is because there is something that grows in this pasture which isn't in the other one and he wants a change in his diet. That is an Anthropomorphism on my part the assignment of a human characteristic to an animal.
Most mornings I have to lead the horses across the driveway to another larger pasture. I take them across one at a time since I'm pretty sleepy in the morning and the chance's for a mistake are higher and safety rules!
Now that it's getting colder, 28 degrees this morning, I feed hay in the morning, summertime is pasture only in the AM and hay in the PM. For my larger pasture I set up some hay feeding stations, one more than the number of horses so they can eat and not fight.
In anticipation of having to do this the next morning I set up the stations a couple nights ago. Yesterday when I went out to feed and the dominant wanted to go out in the closer pasture... The hay I put out stayed out in the other pasture.
This morning when I moved the horse, pretty exciting on a cold morning with a hot horse and turned him loose he immediately went to the hay, which was covered in frost, that I had put out two nights before.
When I brought out the next horse I thought I would have to show him where I had put out more hay, but he walked right to it, even though it was 60 feet from the first horse and across my irrigation "ditch"--a two foot wide by two foot deep cut in the pasture.
Here's the intelligence question: Did the first horse see, smell or know that there was the hay out? Did the second horse use some logical reasoning, deduction, to determine that there was another hay pile, or did he see, smell... it? By logic I mean he's thinking: Horse one is eating hay, he'd have to see this and associate what is being eaten as hay and not pasture grass, therefore there must be another hay pile and it's usually over there...?
A little more,when I came into the house the cat came up to me and meowed until I said "show me what you want", she then ran over to her feed dish, one of those autofeed things, and it was empty, she needed food and was telling me. Was this a sign of intelligence or of habit?
Any comments?

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Seabiscuit part 3

First let me say thanks to Jerry B. for pointing out that Phar Lap wasn't a small horse. I think I got this from a picture which may have been Seabiscuit and I got confused.
Never the less--that's how you imply that you're still correct--his power came from his lumbar coiling and his ewe neck contributed to his ability to coil, especially if he had restricted shoulders. Whereas Seabiscuit had a really nicely set on neck and an ability to rise between the shoulders to coil the lumbars.
Lumbar coiling is a very important feature in promoting power in the rear, this is what Dolphins and whales do. While other marine life, fish, don't have this movement. They have lateral bending but not coiling. If we postulate the whales and dophins evolutionarily returned to the oceans from land; then we can postulate that this movement is terrestial and returned with them. So what does this imply? Why was lumbar coiling so important to terrestial life that it adapted it, and that dolphins and whales retained it? I'm still pondering this one.
I first started on this track of analysis in 1995 when I read the proceedings from the "Second Congress on Low Back Pain", my initial interest was applying this to humans--my primary practice--but it quickly mapped over to my work with horses and then with dogs. The key to the coiling--take this with a grain of salt--is the lumbar aponeurosis which is a large fascial "sheet" in the lumbar region of the back. The aponeurosis acts like a spring in that it stores energy from the coiling of the rear end and returns it during the ground phase of the stride. (I'm defining the ground phase as the from the time the foot hits the ground to the time it leaves it, this is obviously part of protraction, or the stance phase.) The aponeurosis is stretched by the coiling as well as the brachiocephalicus stretching the latissimus which attaches into the aporneurosis and the humerus.
By the way it's this aponeurosis that gives Tiger Woods his phenomenal driving ability.
The question is: Why did this adaptation take place in evolution and only in mammals? Was it a part of the legs moving under the body? (amphibian legs are on the outside of the body)
Much more to think about.
By the way, if you look at Seabiscuits pictures you'll see he's really over at the knee on the left fore. I'm writing a two part article about working with one cause of this in Natural Horse Magazine, the first part is the next issue. I'll venture that this didn't slow him down because he was able to dynamically move his Center of Mass towards his rear legs, this is what dressage people call "lightening the forehand".
thanks for reading this.