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Friday 25 November 2016

Social learning across species: horses (Equus caballus) learn from humans by observation.

2016 Nov 19. [Epub ahead of print]


Author information

  • 1Department Equine Economics, Faculty Agriculture, Economics and Management, Nuertingen-Geislingen University, Neckarsteige 6-10, 72622, Nürtingen, Germany.
  • 2School of Psychology and Neuroscience, St Andrews University, St Mary's Quad, South Street, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JP, Scotland, UK.
  • 3Department Equine Economics, Faculty Agriculture, Economics and Management, Nuertingen-Geislingen University, Neckarsteige 6-10, 72622, Nürtingen, Germany. Konstanze.Krueger@hfwu.de.
  • 4Zoology/Evolutionary Biology, University of Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31, 93053, Regensburg, Germany. Konstanze.Krueger@hfwu.de.

Abstract

This study examines whether horses can learn by observing humans, given that they identify individual humans and orientate on the focus of human attention. We tested 24 horses aged between 3 and 12. Twelve horses were tested on whether they would learn to open a feeding apparatus by observing a familiar person. The other 12 were controls and received exactly the same experimental procedure, but without a demonstration of how to operate the apparatus. More horses from the group with demonstration (8/12) reached the learning criterion of opening the feeder twenty times consecutively than horses from the control group (2/12), and younger horses seemed to reach the criterion more quickly. Horses not reaching the learning criteria approached the human experimenters more often than those that did. The results demonstrate that horses learn socially across species, in this case from humans.

KEYWORDS:

Equus caballus; Human demonstrator; Interspecies-specific learning; Social enhancement; Social learning