Equestrian Emotion and Cognition and Horse Racing

The human-horse relationship has existed for thousands of years, as horses were one of
the earliest domesticated animals. Throughout this long relationship, there have been countless
movies and assumptions about the equines emotional capabilities; those assumptions being that
horses are like humans in that they feel and have emotion, yet it wouldnt be until the the 1980s
that any substantial scientific evidence would be collected to attempt to prove this. In recent
years, there have been great strides in understanding horse cognition, and these recent studies
will be the primary focus of this literature review.
This review will first begin to look at the human-horse relationship through horse riding
training to see what this reveals about equine emotion, and how positive and negative
reinforcement affect the outcome of the horse's training. Going off of this, the human-horse
relationship will be further reviewed through the examination of a horses concept of a person,
and this will be an attempt to understand equine cognition and how horses form interspecies
relationships. Horse facial expressions and how this relates to humans will also be explored. This
will all be eventually tied in to understand how horse training and stress can affect a horses
emotional and physical state.
Ultimately, this review will attempt to offer insight into equine cognitive and emotional
abilities. If our understanding of horses has evolved from the thought that they were just large,
living machines to conscious beings, then do humans have a duty to honor these emotions?
People have been writing about horse riding as early as 3500-4500 years ago (Leblanc 1),
yet it has only been in the last couple decades that horse relationships with humans has been
thoroughly studied. Evelyn Hanggi, one of the leading researchers on horse cognition and the codirector of the Equine Research Foundation, was one of the first to conduct research solely on

horse cognition. In her article, The Thinking Horse: Cognition and Perception Reviewed, she
states how horses traditionally have rarely been classified as intelligent, but that this belief
runs counter to how they actually live (246). They are constantly adapting and foraging for food
in unknown environments, as well changing their behaviors to unnatural ones in order to appease
human conditions. Hanggi and her team employed a variety of stimuli tests on the horses to
measure their intelligence, and whenever negative reinforcement was used, the horses were more
prone to behave unpredictably and nervously. Nevertheless, the horses were still able to
complete multiple cognitive tests, such as those involving the size and location of objects.
However, Hanggi makes the distinction that this is not to say that horses possess the same
conceptualization abilities as humans, nonhuman primates, or other so-called advanced species,
but she does believe it is an indication that they possess more cognitive ability than what was
known (253).
Furthermore, horse cognition should not be dismissed, especially in regards to the
human-horse relationship, because there have been studies that have been leaning to the belief
that horses are able to tell species apart, excluding their own. According to Carl Sankey, a
leading researcher in the field of horse cognition, and his team of researchers at the Universit
De Rennes 1 in their 2011 article Do Horses Have a Concept of Person, horses have the ability
to recognize a familiar person from an unknown one through their voice and their commands.
In this study, domesticated horses were given orders from familiar and unfamiliar voices.
The horses still obeyed the unknown voice, but their reactions were not the same as when they
heard a familiar voice. For unknown voices, they took longer to respond and responded
differently depending on how the order was given. If an unknown person had their back turned,
rather than looking directly at the horse, the horse would have taken even longer to respond,

However, this was untrue for familiar voices, in which the data was similar across the board,
even when the order was given with their back facing towards the horses. Regarding this, Sankey
even claimed it was as if they were surprised to hear the familiar order given by an unknown
voice.
Horses are able to not only distinguish different people from one another, but they are
also incredibly competent in reading body language in humans. A famous example of horse
cognition as given in 2010 by Jeffrey Kluger, a senior writer specializing in science at TIME
magazine, in "Inside the Minds of Animals" was Clever Hans. Clever Hans was a horse living in
the early 20 century who was believed to have been able to perform arithmetic and answer other
th

intellectual questions through tapping his hoof. However, when psychologist Oskar Pfungst
studied him, it was revealed that Clever Hans was able to answer the questions by reading his
owners body language. When he was approaching the right answer with his hoof, Clever Hans
noticed that his owner would look tense, and when he got to the right answer, his owner would
relax (Kluger 77). This only goes to show that horses are capable of understanding the world
around them and adapting to those changes.
There is more to the human-horse relationship that is still being studied, but another piece
of critical information to come out during the last few years is the EquiFACS (Equine Facial
Action Coding System), developed by the researchers Jen Wathan, et al., specialists in animal
behavior and psychology at the University of Sussex, in 2015. In this particular study, it was
shown that horse facial movements were similar to humans and primates, which was due to the
fact that horses contain similar facial muscles as humans. Understanding this can lead to an
understanding of horses and their responses to social environments by comparing their facial

features to those of primates, and this could be another possible avenue in exploring equine
emotions.
Because of these revelations in horse ethology, it is no wonder that researchers are
interested in delving into horses and their emotions. Hausberger, et al., a leading researcher in
the field of horse cognition at the Universit De Rennes 1, decided to find a correlation between
work levels in domesticated horses and the amount of stress a horse feels. In their 2009 article
Could Work Be a Source of Behavioural Disorders? A Study in Horses, they found that the
horses with more work became apathetic and developed stereotypical behaviors. They displayed
behavior that was abnormal and chronic, such as increased fear, and this ultimately led to stress.
As displayed in Figure 1, Hausberger, et al. studied the body language of the horses, and found
that the stressed horses were usually in withdrawn postures. Based off of their findings, they
suggest using horses as an animal model for depression.

Figure 1 Withdrawn horses, "Towards an Ethological Animal Model of Depression? A Study on Horses"

In conclusion, there is still much to be done and discovered in the field of horse
cognition. However, it can be said that horses do indeed have a range of intelligence and
emotion. Just how far this range goes can only be said with future research, but it is important to
not classify equine cognition as unimportant. With that said, a question that lingers is whether

anything will be done with this information. It is clear that horses are not emotionless beings, but
does it matter if they are? With equine emotion in mind, will humans reconsider the conditions
and ideologies behind equestrianism?
Suffering is really the important criterion for morality, not intelligence. We dont give
special extra rights to professors because theyre intelligent, or to priests because theyre very
religious. We wouldnt want that to happen within our own society. So why do we do it across
the species barrier, allegedly giving us more moral privileges, more rights, than the other species
merely because we seem to be a bit more intelligent? This is Richard Ryders, a leading
psychologist and writer on animal rights advocacy, idea of speciesism that has been applied to
animals since the beginning of the human-animal relationship. This idea of human superiority is
one of humankinds biggest flaws and has caused humans to engage in activities that demean
animals. One such activity that is guilty of this is horse racing.
Despite the scientific evidence that has gone on to show that horses do indeed have
emotions and feel pain that align with human emotions, the mistreatment that has gone on for
years in horse racing has not stopped. When allegations were made by organizations such as
PETA in 2014 on the abuse horses receive to become winning athletes, such as excessive
amounts of drugs injections to mask pain and make the horses faster, it came as no surprise to
anyone. Instead, people in the business either denied it or continued to stay quiet about it
(Cohen). This is an issue that cannot continue to be invisible, and the public needs to be aware
that the livelihoods of horses are more than just a business.
Animal rights activists, the general public, and event goers alike have been questioning
these issues, and horse racing as a whole. According to the article, "Sustainability, Thoroughbred
Racing and the Need for Change," only a mere 22% of the general public views thoroughbred

racing in a positive manner; 46% of current fans, defined in the study as someone who attends
an event three or more times per year, would recommend attending events to others; and a vast
majority of the fans, 78%, would stop placing bets entirely if they knew the horses were being
mistreated(Bergmann). This pushback stems from more pressing issues, because although injury
to the horses is very important and serious, it is what causes these injuries that the people find
most upsetting.
It is no question that thoroughbred horses are pushed to their limits, especially when it
comes to the actual race. Such limits that most normal horses would have died before even
getting to the track. So how are these horses able to do it? It is done by the copious amounts of
drugs that are pumped through them. Racehorses receive so much medication that they are often
called chemical horses(Brumfield and Stapleton) These racehorses are pumped with various
medications that enhance their performance, such as thyroid drugs to speed up metabolism,
muscle relaxants, sedatives, and the diuretic Lasix to prevent lung bleeds during overexertion. If
a professional human athlete were to take even half the amount of performance enhancing drugs
that these horses do, they would get kicked out of their organization without a second thought.
The drugging does not just stop at performance enhancing either. These creatures are pushed to
their witts end in both training and racing, resulting in large amounts of pain, and according to
Nancy Perry of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA,
instead of lessening the workload that horses are given, trainers use more drugs. "They are
injecting cocaine. They are injecting cancer drugs into horses in order to mask pain They are
even injecting snake venom." (Conder and Wian)
It is no wonder that horse racing can stress out horses when they are forced to live in such
conditions. The many issues involved in thoroughbred horse racing is apparent, from the vast

amount of injuries and deaths, to the constant drugging. The Jockey Club even estimate that 15
thoroughbreds die on American racetracks every week (Conder and Wian). People within and
outside of the industry need to recognize that horses are not machines that are inferior to humans,
that they instead are comparable to humans in terms of their emotional capabilities and
suffering.

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