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EXPERIENCE
When animals learn from
one another, this is referred to as social learning. It occurs
between mares and foals, since foals learn the bare necessities
about grazing from their mothers. Foals that have been hand-reared
are known to be less bold when exploring their environment, possibly
because they have not been given the necessary cues by their mothers
indicating that certain environments are safe enough to be
investigated. Even in more normal circumstances, when weaning foals
from their mothers we are asking them not only to consume foods
other than milk but also to do without the comfort of their mothers,
who have been their closest companions since birth. The behaviour
of foals around the time of weaning speaks of considerable distress,
unless affiliations with other youngsters or with an entire group of
mares and foals can be established to give the foals some comfort.
The age of a horse has an
effect on its attitude to stimuli, on the way early experience can
be cross-referenced to similar stimuli in later life, and also to
some extent on rank within a herd. This age effect is of importance
when we train horses because we can capitalise on the fact that
two and three-year-olds are generally more curious than older horses
and so are better able to learn from good experiences and strange
sights and sounds. None the less, at any age a horse can learn from
experiences - good or bad. The memory of horses is largely
underestimated, a fact that should be borne in mind when we consider
the effect that previous handling and training can have on their
behaviour. The need for them to find themselves in positions of
comfort and safety is also important here. For instance, if a horse
has been asked to jump fences by a rider who tends to use the reins
for balance, the horse will rapidly associate clearing a fence with
receiving an acute jab of pain in the mouth. His strategy, not
surprisingly, will be to approach the jumps with more caution and
less enthusiasm. If the negative associations with jumping are
continually reinforced the horse will eventually adopt refusal of
the fence as his means of avoiding these repeated threats to his
comfort and safety. As the rider kicks on to revive the dying
place, the horse associates the consequent flank discomfort with
being around jumps in general, and he may go on to develop a
completely stale attitude in the presence of coloured poles.
Examples of equine memory
in laboratory tests are not well documented, but there are a few
early studies in the academic literature which compare the memory of
horses very favourably with that of elephants. We are told from an
early age that elephants never forget, but this seems scarcely
relevant because we are considerably more likely to find ourselves
riding through the countryside on Beauty the Black than on Nellie
the Elephant. My favourite tale of equine memory involves a pony
called Pecos, who was taught to distinguish between twenty pairs of
patterns in order to earn his carrot rewards. After a break of
five months, he had retained more than 96 per cent of the
information. Since, as a vet student, I had to remember only 50 per
cent of the information 1 had received in order to pass my end of
year exams,
I
am in complete awe of Pecos! |
