Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

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Over the last 55 million years, the horse gradually lost these additional toes, but they didn’t disappear completely.

While male horses have a higher chance of developing wolf teeth, females can also have them occasionally. Horses with sensory disabilities like blindness or deafness usually perform well, especially if they have learned their disciplines prior to losing the use of an eye or ear. Eye ulcers require an infected eye to be removed after gradual deterioration of sight. That’s what happened to Addy and Patch.

Horses exert dominance by controlling the movement of their peers. Horses accept dominance when: a) we or another animal cause them to move when they prefer not to, and b) we or another animal inhibit movement when they want to flee. Examples include using a round pen, longe line, or hobbles; or the more dominant horse in the field chasing the less dominant one away. Horses also have attentional characteristics that vary with their training. A racehorse focuses differently than a dressage horse, much like how a sprinter and a marathon runner have different mindsets. One is all about speed, the other grace and endurance. It's like comparing a Ferrari to a Rolls Royce, but with more hair. Understanding Equine Sensory Perception: Seeing the World Through Horse Eyes Because horses eat frequent, small meals instead of fewer large meals like humans, they don’t need a large amount of bile released at once. Hold your horses! We've got some brainy questions from our readers that deserve some spotlight. Let’s trot through these queries with the same gusto a horse shows when it hears the dinner bell. How Big Is a Horse's Brain? A horse’s hearing is much keener than ours. They use their hearing for three primary functions: to detect sounds, to determine the location of the sound, and to provide sensory information that allows the horse to recognize the identity of these sources. Horses can hear low to very high frequency sound, in the range of 14 Hz to 25 kHz (human range = 20 Hz to 20 kHz). Horses’ ears can move 180 degrees using 10 different muscles (vs. 3 for the human ear) and are able to single out a specific area to listen to. This allows the horse to orient itself toward the sounds to be able to determine what is making the noise.

The effects of sensory deprivation are cumulative. When horses cannot see out of an indoor arena, they rely more on hearing. If they are close to age 20, chances are good that their hearing is impaired. The combination of visual limitation and hearing impairment forces the equine brain to attend even more astutely to smell. And so on.

TRUE TRAINING 82 - Indoor Arenas

A herd of wild horses consists of one or two stallions, a group of mares, and their foals. The leader of the herd is usually an older mare (the “ alpha mare”), even though one stallion owns the herd. She maintains her dominant role even though she may be physically weaker than the others. The older mare has had more experiences, more close encounters, and survived more threats then any other horse in the herd. The requirement of the lead horse is not strength or size; if this were so, then humans could never dominate a horse. Dominance is established not only through aggression but also through attitudes that let the other horses know she expects to be obeyed. The stallion’s job is to be the herd’s guardian and protector, while maintaining reproductive viability. The stallion’s harem usually consists of 2 to 21 horses, with up to 8 of those being mares and the rest their offspring. When the colts are old enough to be on their own they will form a bachelor herd. The fillies will either remain in their natural herd or more commonly disperse into other herds or form a new herd with a bachelor stallion. As soon as a stallion becomes too old to maintain his status as herd owner he is replaced by a younger stallion from a bachelor herd. The average time for a stallion to remain leader is about 2 years, but some can last more than 10 years. The Forebrain -- which contains the part that I'm talking about when I use the term "brain." Perhaps "gray matter" would be a more helpful term, although there are bits and pieces of gray matter scattered elsewhere which aren't connected with a horse's thought patterns. (In the photo, I've faded all but the cerebral hemisphere so it will be easier to see.) So when we want to teach a horse something, we should take care the horse is in a learning frame of mind, and therefore he needs to feel calm, relaxed and comfortable. It’s our job to keep him out of his survival state and ‘reptilian brain’ and to keep him in his thinking state and a learning frame of mind. Left brain and right brain “concept” A horse that’s in a state of fight or flight will use his right brain more. When the right brain is dominating the horse tends to be emotional unstable (easily disturbed/stressed out easily/sensitive/nervous/angry/anxious). In this frame of mind he is unable to learn new things from the trainer.

In humans and horses, when one sense is deprived of information, the brain pays more attention to input from other senses. So a deaf horse pays more attention to sights, and a blind horse pays more attention to sounds. The same compensation accounts for blind riders like Karen Law, who listens for directional cues while jumping mid-level cross-country and stadium courses, or Kristen Knouse who navigates flat classes by hearing hoofbeats echo off the rail. The sense organs have not changed, but the brain is now zeroing in on stimulation we usually ignore. Neurons in the auditory cortex strengthen in response to blindness, so that poorer vision creates better hearing. Training Indoors

The Horse Brain

The one behind the horse can be easily covered by the animal moving their head slightly. Whereas, the horse’s whiskers act as a “third eye” to compensate for the blind spot ahead. Aging a horse by looking at his teeth is very accurate up to the age of eight and after that it is only the approximate age. The adult horse has 40 teeth, which consists of 24 molars, twelve incisors and a male horse has four tusks. Sometimes the horse may also have four wolf teeth. UC Davis professor and Terry Holliday Equine and Comparative Neurology Endowed Presidential Chair Dr. Monica Aleman shared her extensive expertise on these facts about equine neurology. Today’s modern horses walk on a single fortified toe, the equivalent of our middle finger. This trait is what makes them such efficient runners and so light on their feet despite their large size.

Human-centric perceptions can interfere with your horse training because the two mammals don't behave alike. Concepts such as right-brained, which is the dominant use of the survival side of the brain and left-brained- the use of the emotional side of the brain, will help you understand equine behavior. Horses have great senses; it is how they are able to navigate through their environments. Because horses don't have the same capacity as humans for deductive reasoning, they rely on their "feelings" and stimuli. The Mid Brain is made up of several nerve bundles that are constantly sending and receiving messages to and from the cerebral hemisphere.

Just knowing how big is a horse brain is not enough; understand how it influences an animal's behavior. Horses present particular challenges when it comes to handling, but when you understand their thought process, you can adjust your approaches.