Abstract
Simple SummaryHorses were confronted with a spatial problem-solving task in which they had to detour an obstacle. Individuals that observed a human demonstrating how to solve the task did not solve the task more often or faster compared with a control group without demonstration. However, horses of both the treatment and control group detoured the obstacle faster over trials. Together with previous research, our results illustrate that horses do not seem to rely on social information when solving a spatial problem-solving task.Horses’ ability to adapt to new environments and to acquire new information plays an important role in handling and training. Social learning in particular would be very adaptive for horses as it enables them to flexibly adjust to new environments. In the context of horse handling, social learning from humans has been rarely investigated but could help to facilitate management practices. We assessed the impact of human demonstration on the spatial problem-solving abilities of horses during a detour task. In this task, a bucket with a food reward was placed behind a double-detour barrier and 16 horses were allocated to two test groups of 8 horses each. One group received a human demonstration of how to solve the spatial task while the other group received no demonstration. We found that horses did not solve the detour task more often or faster with human demonstration. However, both test groups improved rapidly over trials. Our results suggest that horses prefer to use individual rather than social information when solving a spatial problem-solving task.
Highlights
The management of horses is key to providing them with adequate welfare [1,2]
We investigated the ability of horses to socially learn from humans in a spatial problem-solving task
Horses in both test groups improved over trials, a finding which is in line with previous studies on spatial problemsolving in horses [19,25]
Summary
An important role in these management practices, such as handling and training, is the horses’ ability to adapt to new environments and to acquire new information, either individually or from others [3,4]. In the context of horse handling, social learning from humans could help to facilitate management practices but research on this topic is limited (but see [5]). As horses often experience frequent interactions with humans, either due to training or general husbandry practices, potential heterospecific information transfer from handlers to horses might help to improve their welfare [6]. Research on social learning in horses found contradictory results on their ability to solve novel problems by the observation of conspecific demonstrators. Horses copied specific following behaviours towards humans when a familiar and dominant conspecific demonstrator followed the path of a human handler, but not when the demonstrator was a subordinate or unknown conspecific [13]
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