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

This research article investigates if horses are capable of learning through observation, specifically observing humans. The study revealed that horses do have the ability to learn across species, from humans in particular.

Objective and Methodology

• The objective of the research was to examine whether horses could learn by observing humans. This exploration was driven by the fact that horses have been observed to identify individual humans and focus on humans’ attention.
• The researchers conducted tests on 24 horses aged between 3 and 12. The horses were divided into two groups of 12.
• One group was exposed to a familiar person who demonstrated how to open a feeding apparatus. This group was tasked with learning to open the feeder by observing the human.
• The other group, the control group, underwent the same experimental procedure but without the demonstration on how to open the feeding apparatus.

Findings and Conclusions

• In the group that was given a demonstration by a human, more horses (8 out of 12) learned how to open the feeding apparatus – as measured by opening the feeder twenty times consecutively – compared to the control group in which only 2 out of 12 horses managed to do so. This suggests that horses can indeed learn from observing humans.
• The study also noted that younger horses appeared to learn more quickly than older ones. However, further research would be needed to investigate this age effect more thoroughly.
• Out of the horses that did not reach the learning criteria, the researchers observed that these horses approached human experimenters more often, potentially indicating a stronger reliance on human intervention or direct assistance.
• The findings of the study illustrate that horses have the ability to learn socially across species, in this case, from humans.