Equine Behaviour Through Time
Horses began their journey through time 60 million years
ago. Three million years ago the footsteps of humans were fossilized next to
the hoofprints of horses, suggesting that humans have been contemplating horses
for some time. But it was not until perhaps ten thousand years ago that human
societies began the dance of domestication with the horse. Over thousands of
years, perhaps tens of thousands of years, the horse herds gradually merged
with human societies. A shared language described by contemporary scientists as
kinetic empathy, a language of movement, and similar compatible social
structures facilitated the merging of the two species.
There is archeological evidence that humans had formed an
intimate and intermingled relationship with horses by 5500 years ago in Botai,
where the horsefolk stabled and milked horses, and probably rode them. Horses
provided these early horsefolk with much of the essentials they needed for
group survival. It is interesting to note that large domestic dogs lived with
these early horsefolk as well, but no other domestic animals. To understand the
domestication process is to enhance our appreciation of equine behaviour.
Horses apparently became domesticated because they found a niche with people
long ago on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Both trained and wild horses existed in
this realm south of Russia and west of China. A population of horses more
amenable to captivity and taming than their wild counterparts likely provided
the stock for the first horse societies. Rather than plucking wild horses out
of the wild and taming them, it is thought that over tens of thousands of years
a relationship developed in a shared niche.
By the early 20th century the closest living relative to Equus
caballus, the Tarpan, had gone extinct. No truly wild horses remain. All of
today’s caballine horses are descended from
an original, and possibly separate, population of horses that were amenable to
being tamed and selectively bred by humans. It appears to have taken tens of
thousands of years to fully domesticate the horse, and to eventually attain
control of breeding. Breeding initially consisted primarily of selection for
docility and amenability to captivity, and later milking, riding, driving, and
stabling. In contemporary culture, selective breeding often involves selecting
for the best athlete, or attempting to select for the best athlete. In addition
to genetics, this presentation will focus on the socialization aspect of
raising horses, and portray the importance of nurture on the eventual
behavioral and physical health of the adult athlete.
No longer does human society depend on horse society for
survival as it once did. Although still bred for trainability, more and more
horses are today bred for specific performance goals. These days, horses
provide people with entertainment, recreation, sport, esteem, performance, and
pleasure, and, as ever, but in fewer and fewer reaches, utility. Other than
stockfolk, few others rely on horses to sustain a pastoral livelihood. This new
role of the horse requires renewed studies and considerations of equine
behavior.
Horsefolk and veterinarians alike remain enticed and
intrigued by horses. The science of equine behaviour attempts to appreciate
just who horses are, and from the horse perspective. To appreciate the horse
perspective, behaviourists explore the evolution and domestication of the
horse. We continue to find ourselves attempting to appreciate how the current
human/horse relationship came to be so as to facilitate a smooth trouble free
relationship with our horses. As well, appropriate breeding, socialization, and
training of horses helps minimize behavioural wastage.
To understand where our relationship with the horse is
headed, veterinary behaviour practitioners attempt to see where the human/horse
relationship has been, and to subsequently help modify and refine the
relationship to favour the horse. Humans continue to live with horses and continue
to learn from them, as all horsefolk have through time. Now,
however, much less time is spent with horses and learning from horses, so
contemporary practitioners must research and make themselves aware of the
behavioural principles that were once gleaned from a near-constant exposure to
horses through all stages of their development. We study the evolution and
domestication of the horse to better help us appreciate the horses we have in
our hands today. Evolution and domestication provide a basis for the
understanding of equine behaviour. Man has attempted to refine his relationship
with the horse ever since the first kid grabbed a mane and swung atop a horse.
To become a partner with the flighty, powerful (but trainable and tamable)
grazer of the plains remains the horsefolk goal.
Appreciation and sensitivity to all of our caballine horses'
evolved preferences results in optimum health and soundness, and therefore
optimum performance. A horse cannot be coerced to win the Kentucky Derby. The
people must work with the horse, and from the horse’s
view. If we understand equine behaviour, we understand what makes horses do our
bidding, and do it willingly and well. To this day, horses seek to appease
their domesticators much as they appease others in horse societies and herds.
Horses are willing learners. This learning behavior is a result of evolutionary
development of a complex social lifestyle. More recently, selective breeding
has influenced equine behaviour.
The nature of the horse is enhanced by the horse’s
social development. Appropriate socialization with other horses in the herd
pasture setting best prepares horses to be subsequently trained by horsefolk.
Pastured horses train up and learn more efficiently than stabled horses. The
appropriate, efficient, and considerate training of horses is highly dependent
on their previous socialization by the dam and other horses, as well as their
current husbandry situation. Trainability is heavily influenced by the
intensity and type of stabling and husbandry, not to mention the type of
training. In the latest revolution of horsemanship, the area of appropriate
socialization and stabling has not received the attention it deserves.
Horses are a quiet species. They prefer calm, and learn most
efficiently in tranquil, familiar settings. Horses must know and be comfortable
and secure in their environment to be able to learn as horsefolk hope them to
learn. Horsefolk all know what we want from our horses, however in this paper I
shall present the science of what our horses want and need from humans, the
science of equine behaviour. Equine behaviour is not only the basis of training
and trainability, but also the very basis of equine health. To succeed in our
endeavors with horses (whatever the our equine goals or pursuits), our horses
are best served to receive what they preferentially need and require
behaviourally, nutritionally, socially, physically, environmentally, visually,
and metabolically. In order to properly care for horses and successfully teach
and train horses, horsefolk must know horses. They must know who the gregarious
grazers of the plains are. They must know how to properly socialize horses
through their growth phase to ensure that their horses grow up to be horses.
Horses raised out of the herd context are vulnerable to behavioural
insecurities later in life. Most behavioural wastage is due to improper
socialization and husbandry.
Rather than being dissimilar to us, horses are much like us.
In this presentation, I attempt to clarify humankind's social and communicative
similarities to horses. As with people, strong social bonds develop between
individual horses and groups of horses. This herd nature results in intense
social pair and herd bonds. Horses need other horses. Horses require other
horses for security, comfort, and behavioural health. Horses need friends
throughout their entire life, first their teaching mother, and then their
teaching herd. Today’s domestic horse
needs horse friends and human friends, although horses do retain the wherewithal
to survive just fine without horsefolk. Horses need friends so greatly and
constantly, that horses allow horsefolk to substitute as friends. This is
possible because man shares a sociality with domestic horses. We speak their
gesture language, and horses speak ours. We share a language of movement, and
language described as kinetic empathy.
Domestic horse is no longer human prey, and has not been for
thousands of years. Horse has been brought into the circle of humanity, along
with a dozen or so other domesticates that share an adequate sociality with
mankind to be allowed to develop a mutually beneficial relationship.
Horse and man have co-evolved together for thousands, if not
tens of thousands of years. Each knows the other, well, and horses have proven
to know the nature of people more consistently than people know the nature of
horses. It is paramount that horsefolk appreciate the social and communicative
nature of horses, and deal with horses in a fashion that is appropriate to
their long-evolved social nature.
In addition to adequate and appropriate sociality and
socialization, the importance of the need for near-constant motion is paramount
to proper application equine behaviour. Locomotion is essential for horse
health. In natural settings, horses move about grazing, playing, trekking, and
variety of other movements as much a two-thirds of the time. Abundant movement
provides constant connection and communication with the other horses in the
herd, and as well, sustains the overall and physiologic functions of the horse.
Plentiful locomotor activity facilitates behavioural expression and maintains
physiologic health. An essential interdependence exists between horse health
and locomotion. Horses evolved to be near-constant walkers and grazers. Horses
did not evolve to be confined in stalls and stables, but rather evolved to live
in open herd settings. Despite domestication and selective breeding for
docility and captivity, horse health remains dependent on locomotion.
Locomotion is inherent to grazing. Locomotion is inherent to digestion, to
respiration, to metabolism, to hoof health and function, and to joint health.
If horses are not allowed to move about freely and socialize with other
familiar horses grazing and chewing as they evolved to do, they become
metabolically vulnerable and subsequently troubled. Horses deprived of
locomotion and constant forage ingestion develop strategies to maintain the
motion and oral security they feel they need to survive. When horses are
deprived of adequate and abundant locomotion, they develop strategies to keep
themselves and their jaws moving, as is their essential and inherent nature.
Horses deprived of friends, forage, and locomotion are at risk to develop
stereotypies to provide themselves with the movement they need to survive.
The primary premise of equine behavioural health is this: in
natural settings, horses walk and graze with other horses two thirds of the
time. They take a step and graze, then another step or two grazing and moving
along, always observing their surroundings, grazing while in touch with other
members of the herd unless playing, occasionally dozing or sleeping, but only
under the secure and established watch of others. Horses that are not afforded
the opportunity to graze and walk much of the time take up with behaviours to
replicate essential locomotion. When stabled, some of the horse's long- evolved
survival behaviours become unwanted and unwelcome.
Horses require friends, forage, and locomotion to stay
healthy and productive. Additionally, horses need clean air and abundant space
for optimum health. In rural settings, these requirements are easy to fulfill.
Open grasslands and steppes are the geography and environs from where the most
recent predecessors of Equus caballus evolved. The further we remove
horses from their social grazer of the plains preferences, the more health
issues develop that require treatment and management by veterinarians and horsefolk.
Stabling, stalling, hospitalization and transport all
deprive horses of their preferences for friends, forage, and locomotion.
Although convenient for horsefolk, stabling is inconvenient for horses.
Stabling limits the resources of friends, forage, and locomotion. Stabling
creates bad air, and allows pathogens and parasites to travel easily between
horses. When stabling is required, horses are best served to have their natural
needs re-created in the stable. The air must be kept clean, and forage must be
always available. Opportunities for movement and simulation of grazing with
friends must be provided in abundance. Once our horses’ behavioural
needs are understood, appreciated, and fulfilled, the learning and training can
begin. Enrichment strategies re-create the needs of stabled horses. Horses
deprived of friends, forage, and locomotion are not able to learn as well as
appropriately socialized horses. Those strategies that best replicate the
grazer of the plains scenario promote the best health, learning, and
performance from horses.
Locomotion and socialization are essential for both horse
health and healing. Husbandry, healing, and rehabilitation nearly always
benefit from appropriately managed locomotion strategies that are constantly
tailored to the horse's healing process. Locomotion is required not only for
normal healing, but for normal digestion, respiration, hoof health,
circulation, and all other physiologic functions of the horse. Stall rest is at
the expense of many systems, especially the hoof and metabolic systems.
Digestion and respiration are compromised by confinement and restriction of
movement. Metabolic, digestive, circulatory, hoof health, musculoskeletal, and
nervous, systems, as well as the all other systems and functions of the horse,
are dependent upon adequate and appropriate locomotion for normal functioning
and/or healing.
For horses that are hospitalized, paddocked, stabled, and
corralled; active implementation and re-creation of the social pasture setting
is required to optimize and maintain health and promote healing. Medical
conditions are apt to deteriorate in the face of the deprivations of forage,
friends, and locomotion created by stabling and hospitalization. Re-creation of
a natural setting in the stall is the biggest challenge veterinarians face in
maintaining the health of stabled horses.
Stalled horses not only heal poorly, they learn and train
poorly. Locomotion, social, and forage deprivations create problems for horses.
In addition to appropriate medical treatment, veterinarians and stable managers
must creatively provide horses with abundant socialization, forage, and
locomotion to maintain health and facilitate healing within the parameters of
acceptable medical and surgical treatment. Restriction of locomotion to
facilitate healing necessitates the implementation of enrichment strategies to
simulate locomotion, including massage, passive flexion, and a wide variety of
physical therapies.
Horses also heal horsefolk, and those horsefolk that
implement these healing strategies often experience a sense of healing
themselves, it seems. The human/horse bond runs deep. Domestication of the
horse is a co-evolving evolutionary process. The human perspective is being
shaped by the horse's perspective these days. Appreciation of the science of
equine behavior and equitation is encouraged to support the renewed interest in
equine medicine and welfare, and to facilitate the veterinarian’s
role of providing horses with their essential needs.
References
Chyoke
A, Olsen S & Grant S 2006 Horses and Humans, The Evolution of
Human-Equine Relationships, BAR
International Series 1560, Archeopress, England, ISBN 1 84171 990 0
Magner
D 2004 Magner’s Classic
Encyclopedia of the Horse Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books
McGreevy
P 2004 Equine Behavior: A Guide for Veterinarians and Equine Scientists Philadelphia:
Elsevier Limited. ISBN 0 7020 2634 4
McGreevy
P, McLean A 2010 Equitation Science, Wiley Blackwell, UK, ISBN
2009048321
McGreevy
PD et al 2007 Roles of Learning theory and ethology in equitation
Journal of Veterinary Behavior 2:108-118
McGreevy
PD 2006 The advent of equitation science The Veterinary Journal 174:492-500
Waran
N, McGreevy P & Casey RA 2002 Training Methods and Horse Welfare in
Waran N, ed The Welfare of Horses, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, p151-180
Preventing Stereotypies
Horses require abundant friends, forage, and locomotion to maintain behavioural and physical health. Horse health is dependent on body and jaw movement. Digestion, respiration, metabolism, and musculoskeletal and hoof health are all dependent on abundant daily exercise, walking, and socializing.
The causes of cribbing, weaving, and other stereotypies are clear. Deprivations of friends, forage, and locomotion are the causes of stereotypies. Abundant daily friends, forage, and locomotion is the prevention and treatment of stereotypies. Horses are born to socialize, communicate, move, and chew on a near constant basis. The nature of the horse is to move and graze with others day and night. For behavioural health, these preferences need to be re-created in the stable.
Stabled horses require 24/7 forage, and miles and miles of daily walking, as well as abundant socialization to re-create a natural existence. When these needs are not provided in adequate measure unwelcome behaviors develop.
Foals raised by the mare and herd in a grazing setting develop into easily trainable animals, as it is the mare and herd that teach growing horses how to learn. It is the in-depth socialization and interaction with the herd of mares and foals that nurtures and develops athletic ability and prowess the growing horse. In the case of thoroughbreds, it is the mares and cohorts that instill growing horses with the confidence to run by and through other horses at speed. The herd teaches the horse how to prevail. Horses learn how to cooperate from other horses. They learn how to see and graze and move, and perhaps most importantly, how to communicate with others as taught by other horses. This is socialization. Please appreciate the necessity of socialization in the development of equine athletes. It is the herd that provides the foundation for the horse to learn, endure, and prevail in athletic competitions.
The horse's genetic potential is usually well-documented and identified. It is appropriate socialization that develops the equine athlete. Foals raised in stalls and stables seldom develop the wherewithal to become consistent reliable winners, as it is the herd that develops the foal's inherited abilities to perform. Much of this development occurs during the first hours and days of life, and this development phase with the mare should be nurtured rather than interfered with. The mare and herd are the most qualified individuals to teach the newborn foal to become a developmentally healthy horse.
All physiologic, behavioural, and metabolic functions of the horse are dependent on abundant daily walking. In natural settings, ingestion is paired with walking, and takes place 70% of the time. Horses requires miles of daily walking to maintain homeostasis. Digestion, respiration, metabolism, musculoskeletal function, and behaviour are all dependent upon abundant daily locomotion. Locomotion is the most overlooked and deprived maintenance behaviour of stabled horses.
http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Behaviour-Nature-Horses-Gustafsons-ebook/dp/B00ILG3JX0/ref=la_B00IN7XNNI_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393961474&sr=1-1
Dr Gustafson is a practicing veterinarian, equine behavior educator, and novelist.
The application of behavior science enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes.
Behavioral and nutritional strategies enrich the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses who are willing to learn and perform.
