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?
Monday, October 27, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
Jim, I have heard it said that horses understand not only linear things, but geometric relationships.
The example given was something like this: inside an arena, hang buckets from every post along the long side and habituate the horse to them being there.
On the first day of the test, put some grain in the first bucket and let him find it.
On the second day, let the grain be in the second bucket. He will look in the first bucket, and go to the second where he will find the grain. Twice as far as the first.
On the third day, put the grain in the FOURTH bucket, not the third (the geometric progression here is 1-2-4-8-16 etc), and when he finds the second bucket empty he will walk directly to the fourth.
There's a good website, iceryder.com, showing some interesting intelligence/comprehension/prediction tests and exercises for horses.
As far as why horses, dogs, or anything else does things, it looks to me as if operant conditioning combined with inborn patterns of behavior pretty much explain everything. An accidental success very quickly leads to a planned success, and we as humans are wonderfully trainable. A little slower to learn HOW to train....or WHEN we are training.
Clicker training is a good way to watch a horse, especially, LEARN to think. Of course he already can think, but we don't give him many opportunities because our horsemanship falls short. Watching the light bulb go on and the mind begin to try things is pretty nice.
Just my thoughts at this moment.
Cindy Reynolds
Post a Comment