Horses In The Raw
Understanding How Your Horse REALLY Operates
~ Skip Taggart, Natural Horseman~
To have a successful training and riding relationship it is imperative to understand the horse from it’s true 55 million year evolution as a prey animal, not through past personal experience with common house pets that have descended from wild predators or wishful thinking that your horse is like Mister Ed but just can‘t speak. Read on. And remember, the search for truth will often take you places you never intended to go.
Predators require far more mental capacity than prey animals. And evolution has provided them with that. If they cannot find, outwit, catch, kill and eat another animal they will not survive. Grazing herbivores, on the other hand, are often surrounded by food right beneath their feet. That difference reduces a herbivore’s survival needs down to just three basic elements; reproduction, alertness to danger and speed. And that’s what evolution has provided for the horse.
The horse has the largest eye of any land animal on Earth, with a magnification factor of 1.5 times human vision. Placed on the side of the head and not the front, each eye sees things separately but still provides a wide panorama of the horizon, keenly alert for movement in all quadrants except directly behind them. Although each eye sees separately and is connected to separate hemispheres of the brain, both optic nerves are routed through a central command center that connects directly to the adrenal gland and the feet. That’s how horses explode instantaneously into flight when either eye spots something unfamiliar and potentially threatening. Evolution has secured the horse a near perfect defense mechanism. Flee now. Investigate later. More about the horse’s brain will follow.
Many larger herbivores, such as horses, also learned through evolution there is more alertness to danger with more eyes watching for it. That additional safety created their proclivity to travel in herds. But the safety of the herd also comes with additional constraints and demands. Primarily, more competition for food and reproduction. And it also creates the need for hierarchy and leadership in a loosely knit social structure. Horses that do not acquire a demeanor of cooperation within the herd become isolated, lost to predators and mere footnotes in the natural selection process.
With horses, the herd or band structure that emerged is quite simple. A lead stallion, alpha mare, herd mares and fillies, foals and young bachelor colts. Position in the herd is not decided by vote or discussion. It’s determined by the level of dominant characteristics each horse has acquired through the natural selection process of evolution that gave it the strongest will to survive in the group.
The herd stallion is the dominant male and breeds with all the herd mares. He protects his harem from invading stallions and drives off band bachelors when they sexually mature. Even so, with age or injury the herd stallion eventually loses the mares to an upcoming bachelor or an invader. The alpha mare is usually the most experienced at finding grazing areas and water, easily getting the band to follow for their mutual benefit. Horses lower in order from the stallion and alpha mare exhibit descending characteristics of dominance, regularly being pushed off areas of lush grass, drinking water or after getting too close to the proximity of a favorite mate. These aggressive acts by the horse are not idle displays of ill temper, pride or vanity. They are raw expressions of the horse’s level of desire for it’s personal survival that result in gaining respect by dominance from herd members with lesser overt survival attributes .The herd or band member with the most dominant demonstrated skills for survival becomes the leader. If that leader should die or be killed the next most skillful in line takes over leadership of the band by default.
Horses in the wild are generally silent. To act otherwise is an advertisement to any predator within earshot there is dinner close by. Horses learn to recognize the body language of others that silently telegraph the presence of danger or pending hierarchy transgressions. The education in that silent language starts as a foal being corrected for behavior that is either threatening (often defined as disrespectful) to superiors or dangerous to the safety of the herd. Horses express that dominance and gain respect through reprimand with the application of physical or mental pressure on subordinate horses. Pinned ears, head-tossing, kicking and biting are all designed to accomplish one thing; make the other horse submissive by yielding it’s space or relinquishing food. While many of the horse’s behaviors are instinctive from birth, the physical expression of dominance is not. It is learned behavior by every new foal during it’s introduction to socialization within the herd. That’s why isolation from the herd environment of domestic foals by owners often results in future behavior and training problems. The foal hasn’t learned it’s natural language of submission and cooperation. Conversely, many training and handling problems experienced with domestic horses that have been properly socialized as foals can also be linked to the owners and trainers not learning or recognizing the horse’s natural language of cooperation either.
The need to interact with instinctive herd hierarchy seems to be what eludes many humans who seek a working relationship with horses. We often approach training horses with the same methods we employ teaching ourselves and other humans as high functioning creatures capable of reasoning and abstract thought. The horse brain does not work that way. They are incapable of rational or abstract thought and devoid of complex human emotions. They can, however, independently learn by trial and error while seeking an objective such as liberty or food (both are a reward the horse regularly seeks on it‘s own). Human observation often mistakes this process as rational thought by the horse. It is not. Horses cannot learn by observation, contemplation and reasoning. If they could, training would be as simple as making them watch horse training videos repeatedly. So, how do horses learn?
The science behind those eyes To understand how the artificially induced learning process of domestic training is processed by the horse, we have to look inside the horse’s brain as best science has so far examined and defined it. The horse’s brain is not the size of a walnut, as popularly thought. It’s actually about the size of a small grapefruit. But the reactive and learning cerebellum portion of the brain is about walnut sized ( See Fig. 1). It’s that part we have to deal with when working with our horses.
Here’s where we get into the horse’s head. Literally.
The Horse Brain
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Figure 1. It’s important to know the corpus colosum is the collection of nerve fibers that join the left and right hemispheres of the brain. In horses, the corpus colosum is very primitive and does not allow sharing of sensory input between associated sides of the horse. For all practical purposes a single horse must be treated and trained as two different horses; a left side horse and a right side horse. A classic example of this phenomenon is training the green horse to pick up it’s feet. When trained only on the near side the horse willingly yields those feet. But attempting to pick up the untrained off side feet may get you stomped or kicked into another zip code. The right side of the brain did not get any shared knowledge from the left side. It’s also a good example of the horse’s inability to reason that if nothing bad happens by giving up it’s feet on one side then nothing bad should happen on the other side either. This is why we must train both sides of the horse equally.
You can always tell where a horse is looking by watching where it’s ears are pointed. The horse's ear is hard-wired to follow the eye, even though there may be no auditory input to support what the eye is seeing. The optic and auditory nerves connect to different parts of the brain. The eyes are most important to the horse's survival. So the optic nerves run to the diencephalon (thalamus & hypothalamus combined area) and independently attach to the left/right lobes of the thalamus for threat evaluation. Visual signals then go directly through to the hypothalamus and, when needed, the hypothalamus has the capability to instantaneously trigger the flight response and jolt the horse into immediate flight by a direct connection to the adrenal gland and the nerves that control motor function of the legs and feet.
The auditory nerves, on the other hand, connect to the temporal lobes of the cerebral cortex for processing and then have to pass signals through the screening process of the thalamus and hypothalamus before the horse can consciously attach any level of importance to what it hears. The delay in that decision making process could be fatal to the horse. That's why the horse's vision is so critical to it's survival and why body language is the most direct method of communication and provides instantaneous responses. Even though the ear follows the eye in apparent unity, they work in completely different ways.
If you think of the horse's brain as a computer, the diencephalon and the cerebellum (the small walnut-sized mass at the back of the brain) make up the hard drive and contain the ancestral operating system written to it over 55 million years of evolution. The larger hemispheres of the cerebral cortex (big left and right parts of the brain) serve as the file manager where long term memory and much of the ancestral memory files reside. The horse's eyes act as "enter" keys that can either continually keep it's natural software running smoothly or, in an emergency, cause the task manager (hypothalamus) to override all other functions to protect the entire operating system (the horse) and activate the firewall (flight instinct) to avoid crashing the computer (injury or death). (Author’s note: If you happen to be in the middle of a ride or training session when this occurs, all unsaved data will be lost.) The cerebellum (small brain) also directly registers the sensation of pressure on the horse's limbs and body, dictating natural reaction to pressure while coordinating voluntary movement. One of the most important pieces of information a horse trainer can have is knowing the cerebellum is also where physical movements are learned and stored. It's important because it allows repeated application and release of pressure on different parts of the body to directly overwrite and reverse the horse's natural instinctive operating system that tells it to move into pressure. Once the new operating system commands to move away from pressure are properly written (learned) the horse's reactions to those commands become automatic and immediate. There is no regular thought process required for the horse to respond to pressure. It’s totally instinctive. And it can be manipulated by consistent training.
Although the cerebellum directly senses body pressure and automatically responds to it, the rewriting of code to reverse the natural response has to come from the hippocampus, another small part of the brain that folds across the diencephalon in the center of the brain. The hippocampus is where new learning and new memory originate. Once threatening or non-threatening signals are filtered by the thalamus and hypothalamus, the hippocampus records the memory and sends a copy of it off for storage in the cerebellum.
To illustrate, a simple away-from-pressure training lesson would follow a path something like this: Pressure is applied at the right hip. The natural instinctive evolutionary response written to the cerebellum is to move into* the pressure. When no relief from pressure is achieved the cerebellum automatically orders more positive resistance and possibly kicking to relieve pressure. With still no relief a message is sent through to the thalamus, then the hypothalamus for threat evaluation. If no real threat is perceived the message goes to the hippocampus (learning, memory and cognitive processing center). That's where the horse's natural operant conditioning learning technique (trial and error) is activated and random deliberate movement (moving forward, backward or sideways) seeking relief from the pressure begins. At whatever point during that movement the pressure stimulus is removed, the hippocampus begins writing and recording new code in a temporary file for the cerebellum to automatically react a new way to escape the pressure when it's felt at that specific part of the body again. This is why the release of physical or mental pressure at the exact moment of desired compliance is so critical to successful training. And, interestingly enough, there is also a visual cue to the trainer that announces some new hippocampus code writing (learning) has taken place. Stimulation of the hippocampus (learning center) also releases endorphins that cause the horse to lick it's lips or chew.
(* Horses move into pressure as an instinctive response to predator attacks, enabling them to trample attackers and minimize the tearing of flesh that would be caused by pulling away from the grip of long fangs.)
The horse's brain is not going to completely rewrite instinctive responses based solely upon one experience. It has limited storage capability and needs to have some level of importance attached to a new correct response. Repeated application of pressure and consistent release of pressure at the proper time during the correct response are needed to eventually overwrite the old code. As the old reaction code is replaced over time, the horse becomes quicker, lighter and, when fully trained, immediate in response to these new physical cues.
For the most part, all horse training results in rewriting or manipulating the instinctive code contained in the tiny cerebellum by the application and release of pressure. Once that’s in place and you have the horse’s attention pressure can be applied either physically or mentally, from the ground or from the saddle, from near or afar to get the desired reaction. This tractability of the horse's nature (wanting to get along and comply with leadership to assure it‘s survival) is what has made the domestication of the horse such an important part of pushing all human history forward. Understanding their language and their limitations is just a starting point. That’s something we all should lick and chew on as we continue to ask for more from our horses. ~Skip Taggart is a 35+ year veteran animal handler and natural horsemanship trainer / clinician in Lakeland, Florida. His experience includes extensive animal behavior studies, lectures and training of horses, dogs, wolves, cougars, tigers, bears, handling venomous reptiles and other exotic predators.
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