The Author

Donald McMiken has combined a passion for riding with the study of physiology and evolutionary psychology. Donald holds a masters degree and a doctorate in exercise physiology from The Universityof Texas at Austin. Dr McMiken was then invited to Sweden as director of research in equine physiology at the Swedish Veterinary University in Uppsala from 1980-1982. Donald taught for many years at Cumberland College, which is now part of Sydney University. He also worked with Professor Ruben Rose at that time in establishing an equine muscle laboratory at the veterinary school. He has taught Horse Management -including horse psychology- at TAFE colleges in Australia and at Humber College in Canada. He has published widely and has been an editor of scientific journals including the Australian Journal of Sports Medicine and the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science (USA). Donald has published many articles in equestrian magazines abroad.

He has put scientific information into practice at his Speedtest-Thoroughbreds training centre in Ontario, Canada where he trained racehorses and developed new interval-training and Fartlek methods for conditioning horses. Don has ridden in Horse Trials and other events in Canada and Australia. He was a member of the Australian Modern Pentathlon Team for many years competing at the Tokyo Olympics 1964 (where he won maximum bonus points in the cross-country riding). He also competed in the 1968 Mexico Olympics (where he won the pistol shooting event). Dr McMiken has coached several Australian teams including the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. He has travelled extensively and has lived for extended periods overseas. Recently returned to Australia Donald now lives on the Central Coast of NSW.

Like the Horse Whisperer you need to understand the psychology of horses to be able to relate to them. As a rider you need to be able to think like horses do and anticipate their reactions. To do this you must look at the world from their point of view. This is empathy, most important to horse handling. It also happens to be a particular facility of the human species-useful when hunting to anticipate prey. Empathy enables you to read the horse and anticipate his actions. To understand horses it's crucial to examine the nature of their intelligence and their natural behaviour, wrought by evolution.

Are Horses Intelligent?

The short answer is yes.

Without a reasonable ability to learn, domesticating horses would be extremely difficult. To meet their own needs horses have developed their role in the herd hierarchy. They have also a keen sense of observation, an excellent memory and a good ability to read their immediate environment. In this sense they are the most intelligent of the equids- horses, asses (donkeys), zebras and mules.

If intelligence is measured by speed of learning then horses are exceptionally bright. They remember many situations in a single trial especially if there is an emotional component. Horses can also learn complex behaviour like new aids or movements with a small number of trials, compared with other domestic animals. They usually exhibit good judgment in terms of their own safety, and routinely gauge their riders ability and act accordingly- with devious or subtle ploys to resist weaker riders. Horses also exhibit more complex behaviours like imagination. "Oh, yeah" I hear you say. I was riding in Canada one day and the weather closed in suddenly, as it can there. The temperature dropping well below freezing within minutes and the snow was flying stinging my face as the storm front hit. After half an hour of painful trotting in the blizzard my horse suddenly stopped and refused to pass a driveway where there was a large barn. He tried desperately to turn into the drive. I hadn't ridden that road before so the horse didn't know the place. Nor did the driveway or barn look like our own. The horse must have had a generic concept of a barn and imagined the warmth and feed within!

Despite this example, there are definite limitations to their intelligence, and from a human perspective horses can appear stupid. What horses do not possess, unlike ourselves, is the ability for conceptual thought and problem-solving intelligence. We should make allowances for this and not expect it of them - since we are so empathetic and intelligent.

To understand horses you should resist the temptation to ascribe human qualities to them. Horses are neither naughty nor vicious. Horses aren't loving and caring either. They are not intelligent like man, nor are they keen to learn new skills, and they certainly don't treat problems as a challenge. They see problems as a threat and often panic when faced with new situations. Horses are simply horses. They have inborn defensive reflexes, acute senses and quick reactions to deal with their wild environment.

The horses biological niche is a herd-bound, grazing species. In their ancestral home of Central Asia and the open Eurasian steppes, horses were for a long time prey to carnivores like the big cats, wolves and also man who hunted them for millenniums. Their niche as a prey species is probably the basis of their excellent memory - sometimes the source of inexplicable behaviour.

In the wild if a horse makes a mistake and misjudges the safety of the situation the error can result in it's sudden death. This is not true of predators, who tend to be smarter and more flexible in their behaviour. If they make a mistake they may go hungry, but they learn from the experience and live to hunt again.

Horses are acutely aware of their niche, they are extremely conservative in their routine, from feeding to fighting - they dislike change. We too often take the human perspective and change our horses routine to avoid boredom. This is usually a mistake. Horses prefer to do the same things in the same way- thereby avoiding risk and jeopardising their survival. They are extremely anxious to avoid fearful situations.

One nasty moment of fear and the horse commits the fright, the place and circumstances to memory for years. A normally docile horse may suddenly jump or bolt in blind panic if this memory is triggered by passing the same spot or finding itself in similar circumstances. These fears may arise from a long ago - but not forgotten - incident in their early life or their handling.

You can use this aspect of the horses psychology to your advantage. Horses will remember for years all the good things you teach as well as the bad - so it pays to be careful and explicit when schooling.

Contact with humans obliges the horse to include us in his personal herd - in his hierarchy. Because they include us in their hierarchy horses are sensitive to nuances in our own behaviour, especially our body language. We must be aware of this and maintain our superiority at all times- by brains not brawn, since horses are much stronger. Their sense of security is fragile. We must maintain their confidence if we are to remain in a position of trust. Without this security a horse will become chronically anxious, nervous or temperamental. When a horse is distressed it is not focused on the task and it does not learn.

So the first requirement in teaching any horse is to retain calm and confidence. In the horse's natural herd and social environment they learn largely by example-by imitation and emulation. We can take advantage of this by showing them the required performance on another horse as a teacher. This gives a youngster a lead in the arena, out hacking, or over a cross-country course. The Natural Behaviour of Horses

To see how species behaviour comes about we will take an evolutionary approach to horse psychology. Fossil evidence indicates that horses first evolved as a forest-browsers on the American continent. They became grazers as the earth cooled, forest thinned and grassland predominated on the great plains. Horses migrated West into Asia and eventually to Europe via the Bering land bridge during a succession of ice ages.

It's just as well they did, for horses became extinct in the Americas within a short time of the arrival of humans capable of big-game hunting. The evolutionary story begins with Darwin.

Darwin's theory of evolution -
Darwin's theory was considered just that at the time because the evidence was fragmentory and scientists had incomplete fossil records. However, the theory has stood the test of time with many observational and experimental tests verifying the process of natural and sexual selection. We now have an almost complete fossil records of most species including the horse and also man. Indeed the horse was one of the first species for which we had a complete fossil record. There are now no missing links or gaps in the theory. It is still referred to as a theory, for in science we are now aware that nothing can ever be proved, only disproved

The essence of Darwin's theory is that species characteristics evolve by a process of natural selection. This selection is shaped by environmental pressures and more subtly by sexual preferences.

Behaviour is an outcome of processing by neural mechanisms which arose in the distant past - as a result of the environment in which horses evolved. Any structure that favours reproductive success will increase within a population - while unsuccessful traits will tend to diminish. Structures or traits include all psychological mechanisms that have a genetic component. The essence of evolution, what fitness really means, is this:

Natural selection favours only traits which increase reproductive success. This raises the question of what traits really  are?

Evolution does not operate directly on the individual. Certainly it does not operate at the level of competing species. Natural selection acts at the level of the genetic code - our cellular DNA.

Darwin expressed the idea as an evolution of traits. Darwin's work has often been misinterpreted as applying among species, rather than among traits that arise from the genetic code. In this context the horse's mind is a computational mechanism designed to optimise its reproductive success. A computational theory of mind considers the animal's psychology is a computational result of inherited neurological hardware. Horse behaviour is not the direct and unvaried result of instincts, rather the horse's genetically determined instincts are neural networks and algorithms which are then used to compute responses for it to interact with a changing environment.

The computational theory holds that beliefs, desires, motivations and choices for behaviour are information. Information communicated by connections and electro-physical events within the neural networks of the brain. It explains how the mind becomes more than the sum of its parts - how intangible thoughts can bring about purposeful behaviour.

Evolution has optimised neural computation for a previous ancestral environment. Not with a general purpose computer but with a massively parallel processor built of thousands of special purpose algorithms. These neural networks evolving sequentially as each adaptation arose. The more powerful and comprehensive this machine became the better its computation response to environmental challenges. Genetics supplies the hardware and algorithms for the horse to use in its interactions with its environment. So how did specific instincts evolve?

When are instincts an advantage? The down side to learning from experience is that it is costly. In a world of predators and prey, practice trials can be fatal. Learning is costly in time, energy and protein synthesis.

Instinctive, preprogrammed responses are much faster, more directed and more dependable. I imagine you've experienced quite a few of these instinctive responses with your own horses and marveled at their speed!

Horses are social animals. Their behaviour is central to their evolutionary niche as a grazing prey animal herding together for mutual protection.

However, these instinctive responses may not be optimal in new environments that are radically different to where they evolved. We rapidly discover this when we ride and drive horses in our modern world of roads, cars, trains and so forth; which they are not emotionally equipped by evolution to cope with. It's important for an animal to learn with minimal cost and to communicate learning to their kin to ensure their reproductive success.

For this purpose horses, and other mammals, developed signalling behaviour. Signalling to warn of predators or opportunities for feeding. Symbolic signals evolved like grooming, pointing (with their gaze), sexual displays and so on. Aggressive signals like the threat gaze, foot stamping, vocalising and expressing an angry face. Universal signs of submission too:
avoiding eye contact, retreating and expressing a submissive face-like smiling in humans. You can see this clearly in horses and dogs too if you care to observe them closely. Communications included vocal signals. Such signalling alerts others to danger, communicates aggressive or submissive intentions, establishes social hierarchy and herd cohesion.

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