No, we are not crazy (or, What took you so long?)

[Koolkat]

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/10/sport ... index.html

More detail:
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... 2/20150907

[Tarlo Farm]

Really. I guess I have always kind of liked that secret fact known only to true horse people. In years past, it has made apparent, the posers from the real folk.

[M&M]

I am surprised that they can tell angry faces from photographs.

[Literiding]

Here's a link to the original research paper:

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... 2/20150907

(Note: After a period of time, it may go behind a "pay wall.")

[kande50]

Here's a link to the original research paper:

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... 2/20150907

Did you read it, and if so, does the research look good to you, or do the conclusions they reached take a leap of faith?

[Literiding]

Yes, and within it's rather narrow focus, it came to a reasonable conclusion.

It was obviously done on a "shoe string" with the very small number of horses, only 27 predominately geldings, a few mares and no stallions. The choice of livery horses was good because the horses would have a "generalized" model of human faces.

The experimental questions I have are:

There are no assumptions about the vision of the horse. We know horses are mostly color blind and the presentation of full color photos introduces some questions about the way the horse might perceive the photos.

There is no discussion regarding breeds or gender differences. As a long time handler of stallions, a well socialized stallion is much more "engaged" with his handler than either a gelding or mare. And as the members of this board know, different breeds have wildly different approaches to human interaction. Barque horse are in your pocket while OTTB tend to be stand-offish. Some of that is by handling, some of that is inherent. It would have been interesting to see if horses handled by a single handler would have a stronger reaction to positive faces than the hack horse did.

The discussion that I most likely to disagree with is the use of the left eye to assess threats. I'm currently handling a young stallion and when ever he is uncertain, he will assume a "leading" position -- standing at the handler's right facing the same direction as the handler is. I think the authors didn't eliminate handling bias on the left eye discussion. Also, while I don't follow the neurological research, I know there has been a lot of recent research that is demonstrating communication within the brain is quite complex and concurrent. The process of looking at a possible threat with the left eye may a leap of faith.

Another part of the discussion is assessing the individual capacities of the horses. For instance, it is generally believed that horses don't recognize themselves in a mirror. But I owned an Andalusian stallion that could pass the mirror test easily. Some horse may be able to "read" human expressions while others can't. I recently was exposed to Boarder Collies in sheep herding competition. I learned that some Boarder Collies could read the sheep and adjust their handling depending on the skittishness of the sheep while other collies couldn't and the handler had to make the adjustments via the commands. While I've always found reading horses quite easy, I've met any number of experienced horse people that seemed to be obvious to the horse's body English. So as with any generalization, your milage may vary.

(Edited to fix the spell check's erroneous fix)

[Koolkat]

Here's a link to the original research paper:

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... 2/20150907

(Note: After a period of time, it may go behind a "pay wall.")

Did you miss that in the original post?

[Literiding]

Did you miss that in the original post?

No, I always assume people are capable of reading source material and coming to their own conclusions. Press accounts are suspect in my mind because of news sites editorial position and the frequent "dumbing down" of material. You asked for my opinion and being a polite person, I gave you an honest answer.

[KathyK]

I'm pretty sure Koolkat was asking whether you missed the link to the original research paper in the original post. It was there.

[Literiding]

I'm pretty sure Koolkat was asking whether you missed the link to the original research paper in the original post. It was there.

Until you mentioned it, I didn't even notice that the second URL was the same. This morning, I was in a hurry -- "Late, late, late for a very important date," morning feed for the horses -- and didn't look at the second link because I had seen the article in a British newspaper and had looked it up on a science digest site from there back to the original paper prior to checking in here. So I'm guilty of haste and she failed to ID the URL she posted as the original paper.

[Tarlo Farm]

The discussion that I most likely to disagree with is the use of the left eye to assess threats. I'm currently handling a young stallion and when ever he is uncertain, he will assume a "leading" position -- standing at the handler's right facing the same direction as the handler is. I think the authors didn't eliminate handling bias on the left eye discussion. Also, while I don't follow the neurological research, I know there has been a lot of recent research that is demonstrating communication within the brain is quite complex and concurrent. The process of looking at a possible threat with the left eye may a leap of faith.

For sure to this! I thought the same thing.

[PaulaO]

Hey, y'all gotta admit QEII rocks a bicolor blue hat.

[Koolkat]

Hey, y'all gotta admit QEII rocks a bicolor blue hat.

She does indeed!


I think someone smells carats on her brooch. . .

160210124743-queen-horse-exlarge-169 - Copy.jpg (85.14 KiB) Viewed 10143 times

[PaulaO]

She's packing carrots or sugar cubes in her pocketbook. I love that she loves horses so much.