As a species, horses must be close to the top of the list as the biggest scaredy-cats in the animal kingdom. For goodness sake, they can leap sideways at the sight of a rock. And a Bot fly buzzing around their flanks can have horses trained to do cartwheels!

Anyone who has been around horses even a little understands that a primary motivator of horse behaviour is to seek safety. Horses have a desperate need to feel safe. It surpasses the need to fill their bellies, the need to belong to a herd, and the sex drive by a mile. All horse training exploits the need for a horse to feel safe. Without it, we couldn’t train them to do a damn thing.

But here is the thing that I’ve been thinking about and a question I have been asking at clinics….

It seems obvious that horses do not have the intellectual equipment to conceive the concept of their death or mortality. Unlike humans, horses can’t ponder the afterlife because they are unaware of no life. There is only now. Even the concept of ‘tomorrow’ would seem to elude them.

So if horses have no understanding of death, why are they such big scaredy-cats? Why does everything new or different cause them anxiety? If they don’t know they can die, what are they afraid of?

Horses have evolved to be cowards and this is a large part of their success as a species. It’s kept them alive long enough to breed each successive generation. The thing that puzzles me is, if evolution programmed cowardice into horses, and horses don’t understand mortality, what are they afraid of? If they don’t know they can die, why be afraid of a rock or a Bot fly?

I have been thinking about this and I have a theory. I have asked this questions at some clinics and people have proposed various theories. But I’d like to hear your theory.

Why are horses afraid of so many things when the idea of death is not even on the table?