>Over the few years I've had horses, I have come across some folks that
think horses aren't smart. I don't accept this.
>Was wondering how you folks feel?
What is smart? Horses do not have (or care about)
the ability to write DOS programs, do differential equations, or write
sonnets. That said--we do not have the ability to smell the fact that a
cougar crossed this path last week, and deduct that we might want to be careful
going this way as the cougar might return and eat us.
Horses do indeed pass on information to each other
and learn from each other. They are also capable to some extent of
figuring out problems that have something to do with what is important in their
lives. (And if you don't believe that, imagine an old pregnant mare who
figured out how to get astraddle of a mineral feeder to scratch her belly, and
then carefully sidepass back off of it when she was done. Have seen more
than one figure that sort of thing out.)
And like people, some horses are considerably smarter than
other horses. Just as some kids have the mental ability to rocket through
the simple stuff in school and go on to college at 15, and subsequently solve
mysteries in quantum physics or cellular physiology, while others struggle to
grasp the basics of addition, subtraction, and reading, some horses can watch a
thing and then go do it, while others can drill and drill and drill and still
never quite get it. Like people, in addition to differences in
intelligence, there are also differences in ambition level, work ethic, and
disposition--all of which also play a role in what you can or can't accomplish
with a given horse, as well as how well the given horse functions within his
social group.
And in terms of communication, horses (and virtually all
higher mammals) are miles ahead of humans with regards to non-verbal
communication--not having a verbal language, they rely entirely on observation
of body language, and hence "read" it very well, whereas people range from being
passably reasonable body language readers to not even being aware that body
language exists. We humans are used to dabbling in concepts that are
expressed verbally--and sometimes we miss the boat entirely on the other sorts
of concepts that are communicated through body language. Some cultures are
worse about this than others, but I don't think any human culture "reads" body
language the way and at the level that non-verbal animals do.
So in terms of "smart"--I guess it all depends on whether
you want to know what is going on in Iraq, or what is going on over the next
hill. I'll rely on humans for global, scientific, mathematical, and
literary talent, but I'll rely on my horse every time for knowing that something
is coming over the hill that I can't see.
I have to relate a funny story from hunting season.
I was watching my horses, and all of them were looking with interest up the hill
behind my place. I noticed a herd of elk up near the ridgeline--kind of
broken into two smaller groups. The horses weren't looking at the elk, but
rather off in a somewhat different direction. I noticed all the elk start
to look, too. Gradually, in ones and twos, they started to slip around and
over the hill--not in any great hurry, but obviously concerned about
something. About 10 minutes went by--and I heard 7 shots, none of which
sounded like they connected with anything. But both the horses and the elk
knew exactly where that hunter was up there on the hill. (I never did see
him.) Furthermore, the elk knew that he represented something that they
should quietly sneak away from. The horses have no reason to fear a human
sneaking around, but they did think his behavior was noteworthy, or they would
not have been watching so intently. Now, if this guy was up to no good, he
could have gotten quite a ways closer to the place before I ever would have
noticed him. (And being an old ranch girl, I'm more alert to motion up on
my hill than most folks not raised in a rural setting would be.) So--who's
smart here?
I also had an interesting experience this winter when we
had some really deep snow for a few weeks, and the hungry elk were down on my
place looking for something to eat. I've always heard that hungry elk will
run horses off their feed under such conditions, but I noticed the elk coming
into the upper part of the pasture one night, and just thought I'd sneak around
and see what happened. First off, about 5 old mares were marching along
the perimeters--reminded me of dogs stiff-legging around an intruder, trying to
intimidate him. When the handful of lead elk (there were about 120 elk
altogether, with an "advance force" of about half a dozen) got up to a certain
point, all of the mares (just under 30 of them) flung their heads up
and went charging up the hill to chase them off. Looked like a cavalry
charge. The elk departed, and stayed beyond the perimeter line defined by
the mares. The mares were working as a herd to defend their food and their
territory, and were able to "hold off" a much larger force of hungry
aggressors. I kept checking for elk tracks out there for several days--and
it seemed like pretty consistently the mares only allowed the elk to come within
a tantalizing sniffing distance of the hay before running them off. Again,
it seems to me like there are some "smarts" involved in a situation like
that.
