I apologise from the start that this essay is written very much from a human perspective. It may be total rubbish and have no relevance to working with horses. But on the other hand, maybe it will inspire you to reflect on an aspect of horses and their behaviour that you have not considered before. From my view, that is the purpose of this page so that can only be a good thing.
I have lived among people almost all my life. I have friends of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicities, careers, and sexes. Yet I still find I don’t understand people very well. I don’t understand why some people are addicted to reality television. I don’t understand why some people are adrenaline junkies and why other people get their kicks from collecting stamps. I struggle to predict the political views of some people and I am often surprised by how the essays I post on FB are interpreted and received. In short, human behaviour is often a mystery to me.
But what is most surprising is that human behaviour is sometimes incomprehensible to me. I am a human. Who is more qualified and expert to understand humans than another human? We are the same species and share huge amounts of the same experiences, let alone genes. I am almost identical in so many ways to every other human on the planet. Yet, I sometimes fail to understand other people.
Of course, cultural differences can account for a lot of the mystery. For example, I was taught that shaking hands was a common way of greeting. But in some other cultures, some people rub their noses when they meet. Yet other cultures perform a fist bump and hand slap as a greeting.
So here is my question.
Do you think horses always understand the behaviour of other horses?
In our attempt to understand horses, most people try to learn from the behaviour and responses of their horses and the horses they meet. To a huge degree, the study of equine behavioural science relies on the premise that the study of a small group of horses can be applied across the board to the general population of horses. It is largely based on the assumption that the small population of horses in the studies communicate and behave the same as any other group of horses.
We think of horses as one large homogenous species. Do we even consider that maybe an Arab horse from Indonesia would not understand everything about how to communicate and interact with an Arab from Turkey? Or that a Connemara from one herd would struggle to understand how to interact with a Friesian from the same herd? Or that a Percheron born in the wild would grapple to understand a Percheron raised in captivity?
We assume that behaviours like pinning of the ears or lowering of the neck or a nickering sound are understood by all horses of all breeds in all herds in all geographic locations. But if some horse language and behaviour are learned, and not innate, could there be cultural differences between herds? Could there be behaviours and language that are not universally understood, just as a human handshake is not universally understood?
We study the behaviour of horses interacting with other horses and then write books and give lectures on horse herd behaviour as if our observations are definitive. Is it that simple? Are horses that simple? Are the observations of a studying of a horse or group of horses strongly applicable to the study of a different horse or herd? How much of what a horse understands about another horse is inherent and how much is learned?
Do you think they innately understand each other or is it learned? Or is some innate and some learned?