“My treasures do not clink together or glitter; They gleam in the sun and neigh in the night.”
-Arabian Proverb
Thoughts On How Horses Think12/28/2021 a brief explanation of equine neuroanatomy and how horses think by looking at the autistic brainThey say a horse's brain is about the size of a large walnut; and that's not based on some Bedouin tale. The brain of an average adult horse weighs anywhere from 600 - 700 grams; which is less than 2 pounds. In comparison, the human brain is about the size of two clenched fists and weighs roughly 3 pounds. Surprisingly, general brain mass has not been scientifically linked to intelligence levels. There are portions of the brain, however, whose mass can be used as indicators of acumen. The mammalian brain is sectioned into 4 hemispheres: the frontal, the parietal, the temporal and the occipital. Each hemisphere, or lobe, is responsible for some aspect of neurological function. The occipital lobe processes the things we see and is located at the very back of our brains. The temporal lobe processes things we hear as well as more complex things we see and is home to the hippocampus which is where all of our memories are stored. This is located between the occipital lobe and the parietal lobe. The parietal lobe is responsible for processing the senses related to touch which include temperature, pressure and pain. Finally, and most importantly, the frontal lobe is in the front of the brain and just on the other side of the parietal lobe. The frontal lobe is where our executive functions come from. Here is a breakdown of executive functions from Queensland Health: "Executive functions refer to a collection of cognitive skills including the capacity to plan, organise, initiate, self-monitor and control one’s responses in order to achieve a goal. The frontal lobes are considered our behaviour and emotional control centre and home to our personality. There is no other part of the brain where lesions can cause such a wide variety of symptoms. The parietal lobe and the frontal lobe are the portions that we most commonly associate with intelligence and where we find the basis of intelligence quotients, or IQ. IQ measures an individual's ability to use logic and reasoning and operates on human standards. There are no IQ tests for animals; so we gauge an animal's intellectual ability on their Emotional Intelligence Quotient or EQ which is manufactured in the frontal and prefrontal cortexes. Emotional intelligence is pretty much exactly what it sounds like-- it's measured by how an individual perceives, expresses, and assesses emotion. Emotional intelligence "...involves the ability to... access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth." According to a study by Cozzi et al; whose abstract can be found here (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24335261/), the average EQ of 131 horses is 0.78. For reference, the average EQ of a neurotypical human is 6.62. It is suggested but not proven that individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience lower EQs than the average human. This belief stems from the fact that brains with ASD usually contain deficiencies in both the frontal cortex and parietal cortex as well as other core regions not discussed here. Likewise, animals have a much less developed frontal cortex than humans because some areas, such as the ventrolateral frontal cortex, are only distinct from the human brain. It is this observation that prompted a comparison to animal brains and brains of those with ASD. "Animal cognition has similarities to autism cognition," explains scientist and animal behaviorist Temple Grandin. However, Grandin argues that animal emotion differs greatly from that of autistic emotion. Cognitively, horses and autistic individuals are similar; emotionally, horses and neurotypical individuals are more similar than horses and autistic individuals. Grandin is quite familiar with both animal brains and ASD brains; she is autistic. "Animals are very aware of small, sensory details in the environment. People on the autism spectrum excel at work involving details," says Grandin. For starters, autistic individuals and animals, including horses, are associative thinkers. An unnamed horse trainer once made the statement that animals are not necessarily thinking but are rather making simple associations. "If making associations is not thinking," replied Grandin, "then I would have to conclude that I do not think," The trainer, however, was not wrong in saying that horses use thought by association more than forming independent thoughts. Grandin explains that "People with autism and animals both think by making visual associations. These associations are like snapshots of events and tend to be very specific." For example, what comes to mind when you think of a church steeple? For a neurotypical person, they would think of a very generalized picture of a steeple; probably a pointed figure with perhaps a square base that fastens the structure to a roof. Grandin, however, like many autistic people, would think of a very specific steeple. She would associate the idea of church steeples to a very precise image of one that she has experienced at one point in her life. "There is scientific evidence that animals think in pictures, and that this learning is very specific. When an animal is trained to tolerate one type of activity, it does not easily transfer to another similar activity. For example, habituating a horse to tolerate the sudden opening of an umbrella does not transfer to a flapping tarp. Animals often get specific fear memories that are associated with aversive events. A horse that had alcohol thrown in its eyes during a veterinary procedure became afraid of black cowboy hats. A white cowboy hat was safe and a black hat was scary. He was looking at a black cowboy hat when the alcohol was thrown." Grandin also points out that the association's animals make can be place or condition-specific. Every horseman and woman has experienced this. Have you ever had a horse that had a strange aversion to a specific place? Maybe they become spookier when standing at a particular pair of crossties or they behave differently depending on which warm-up ring you work in. You're not just imagining it. The associations horses make with places and things are incredibly specific to the horse's past experiences. Maybe your horse prefers loading into a slant-load goose-neck horse trailer to loading into a smaller, straight-load bumper-pull because it had more positive experiences in a goose-neck than in a bumper-pull. That is just how fine-tuned these associations are. "This is why it is so important that an animal's first association with something new is a good first experience," writes Grandin. Secondly, nearly every decision made by horses or autistic individuals is done so out of fear. "Fear is the main emotion in autism and it is also the main emotion in prey animals such as horses," writes Grandin. Horses and autistic individuals can even share similar fear stimulants. "Any little thing that looks out of place, such as a piece of paper blowing in the wind, may cause fear," says Grandin. For prey animals, anything that makes unexpected or sudden movements could mean death. "In the wild," explains Grandin, "sudden movement is feared because predators make sudden movements." Grandin also points out that both equine and autistic individuals share a hatred of loud and high-pitched noises. As horses are prey animals, they are highly driven by their instinctual fight-or-flight responses. Neurotypical humans are driven by what we can only hope are rational thoughts and emotions. What we understand and rationalize as harmless, a horse may understand as threatening. Many joke about a horse being afraid of its own shadow and to some degree, they are not wrong. To human eyes, we see the darkening of the ground and rationalize it as a harmless shadow being produced by the afternoon sun being partially shielded by their large bodies. A horse, who has never taken a science class, quite literally does not possess the brainpower to conceptualize the darkening ground as a shadow made from the sun. Instead, the horse sees a pitless black hole that has suddenly appeared on the ground and is relentlessly following it around the ring. It sounds ridiculous to humans but to equines, this is how their species has survived so long. When working with prey animals, it's crucial to understand how to work with its fight and/or flight responses --as we've discussed are the product of their main emotion which is fear. When an animal learns or develops a fear, it becomes a fear memory. Fear memories, as Grandin explains, can never be erased. "This is why it is so important to prevent the formation of fear memories associated with riding, trailering, etc.," writes Grandin. They can, however, experience something called a cortical over-ride when the fear memory becomes muted after repetitive positive experiences to otherwise negative stimuli. The cortical override can easily be broken if and when the fear or anxiety returns. Grandin enforces the importance of creating positive first impressions for your horse. "Novelty" or unusual situations are huge triggers for a horse's flight responses. "The paradoxical thing about novelty is that it can be extremely attractive to an animal when he can voluntarily approach it," writes Grandin. "People working with horses and other animals need to think more about how the animals perceive the situations we put them in." We cannot expect a horse to immediately accept new or novelty stimuli without a slow, thorough, pain-free and fear-free introduction.
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Leave a Reply.About CassidyCassidy Payne is a lifelong equestrian and animal welfare activist. With over 16 years of experience in the equine industry, Cassidy is retired from competing on multiple levels, from A-rated shows to local schooling shows. She is now focusing her efforts on training her horses with the Principles of Learning Theory in Equitation. Archives
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Photos used under Creative Commons from NathalieSt, mikecogh, Joanne Goldby