The horse is a smart animal and possesses advanced cognitive abilities and short-term memory. This is the result of a study conducted by researchers of the Veterinary Sciences Department of the University of Pisa which demonstrates this for the first time, contrary to what has been documented so far in the scientific literature.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
The horse is a smart animal and possesses advanced cognitive abilities and short-term memory. This is the result of a study conducted by researchers of the Veterinary Sciences Department of the University of Pisa which demonstrates this for the first time, contrary to what has been documented so far in the scientific literature.
The results of the research, carried out by Paolo Baragli and Claudio Sighieri of the Pisa University, were published in the latest issue of the international journal. “Applied Animal Behaviour Science”. In a test conducted on 24 horses divided into two groups the animals faced three identical buckets and upside down and they had to guess under which a piece of carrot was hiding.
But in one case they had to find the carrot without any indication or help, while in the other they could see the person approaching the bucket, hid the carrot and then it was gone. During the test, the horses demonstrated that they know how to change their search strategy to reach their goal, namely the carrot, in the shortest possible time, regardless of the clues provided by man.
In other words, the horses of the group who saw the person hide the carrot at the beginning they took advantage of this indication and were more precise, that is, they went to the right bucket, but they took longer. With the succession of tests, the animals changed their strategy and became less precise but faster, also overturning all the buckets, still sure of find the carrot.
“The results of this test shows that horses are capable of understand and use cognitive meaning of human indications to make their own choices - concluded Baragli - but they are also able to change their strategy when they realize that the information obtained is not essential to achieve the goal, especially if it can be conquered more quickly in another way. And all this takes place over a period of time, that is the duration of the tests, which is very short, indicating the fact that horses possess sophisticated abilities to quickly find different solutions to the same problem, based on their experience ".
Yet to these marvelous animals, extremely sensitive and intelligent, we deny freedom, using them in jobs, competitions, sports, betting and sightseeing, and then having them end up in the slaughterhouse when no longer useful. Don't you think they deserve a life without reins and without reins?
Roberta Ragni
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