Can studies of feral horse behaviour be used for assessing domestic horse welfare?

Abstract: DELETE: The last known ‘wild’ horse was the Przewalski (e.f. prezewalskii), which lived until fairly recently in its natural state in Mongolia. Although little is known of their social organisation in the wild, a number of studies have been carried out of their behaviour in captive conditions. Attempts are now being made to reintroduce them into more natural conditions than the zoos and private collections in which most of them are currently maintained (Keiper and Receveur 1992). Although there is a lack of information about truly wild horse behaviour, a number of studies, such as that described on p 262 by Kaseda et al. (1997) have been carried out on feral populations of horses (once captive horses that have returned to the ‘wild’). These have, in general, documented the social behaviour of herds of feral horses in semi-maintained conditions (Tyler 1972; Berger 1977; Feist and McCullough 1976; Keiper 1985). Studies such as those of the horse in its natural state, where behaviour is subject to evolutionary and environmental pressures, with minimal human intervention, are often used as a bench mark by which the welfare of captive or domestic counterparts may be assessed (Veasey et al. 1996). The assumption seems to be that a healthy wild or feral animal is likely to have adequate welfare, and that a captive animal in an environment in which certain behavioural patterns cannot be expressed, is likely to have a welfare problem. That the wild environment leads to optimal welfare is of course debatable since, in the wild, animals are constrained in different ways due, for example, to hunger, disease, and injury. A more practical approach is to use studies of wild or feral animals to identify those behaviors that are most important to the animal, and to use this knowledge to determine the possible causes of any abnormalities that may be associated with captive conditions (Winskill et al. 1995).