Horses May Be Smarter Than We Think

Study suggests they have the ability to strategize
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 12, 2024 8:21 AM CDT
Horses May Be Smarter Than We Think
   (Getty / Horse & Hound Fine Art Photographer)

A new study suggests that horses are more intelligent than thought, with the ability to strategize rather than just react in the moment. Researchers at the UK's Nottingham Trent University sussed this out with a three-stage experiment involving 20 horses, reports the BBC. In the first stage, the horses got a treat for touching a card with their nose. In the second stage, researchers added a "stop light," and the horses were rewarded only if they touched the card when the light was off. However, the light didn't affect the horses' behavior much—they kept nosing the cards looking for a treat whether it was on or off, per the Guardian. That changed in the third stage, when researchers added a penalty for touching the card when the light was on.

The horses were given a 10-second time-out if they nosed the card at the wrong time, during which they could not play the game or receive a reward—and they immediately started playing by the rules. "Previously, research has suggested that horses simply respond to stimuli in the moment—they don't proactively look ahead, think ahead and plan their actions—whereas our study shows that they do have an awareness of the consequences and outcomes of their actions," says lead researcher Louise Evans.

The horses seemed to understand after the first two stages that they might as well nose the card indiscriminately because "sometimes it paid off and sometimes it didn't," says Evans in a release from NTU. They only changed course with the addition of the penalty. Because the animals have an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex, which is associated with thinking in humans, it suggests that they are using a different part of their brain to work this out—and that humans shouldn't make assumptions about animals' intelligence because their brains are built differently. "To the authors' knowledge, this is the first evidence suggesting higher order, executive function in horses, a species thought to possess only moderate cognitive capabilities," they write in the study at Applied Animal Behaviour Science. (More horses stories.)

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