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Female horses spontaneously identify a photograph of their keeper, last seen six months previously.


ABSTRACT: Horses are capable of identifying individual conspecifics based on olfactory, auditory or visual cues. However, this raises the questions of their ability to recognize human beings and on the basis of what cues. This study investigated whether horses could differentiate between a familiar and unfamiliar human from photographs of faces. Eleven horses were trained on a discrimination task using a computer-controlled screen, on which two photographs were presented simultaneously (32 trials/session): touching one was rewarded (S+) and the other not (S-). In the training phase, the S+ faces were of four unfamiliar people which gradually became familiar over the trials. The S- faces were novel for each trial. After the training phase, the faces of the horses' keepers were presented opposite novel faces to test whether the horses could identify the former spontaneously. A reward was given whichever face was touched to avoid any possible learning effect. Horses touched the faces of keepers significantly more than chance, whether it was their current keeper or one they had not seen for six months (t?=?3.65; p?

SUBMITTER: Lansade L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7156667 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Female horses spontaneously identify a photograph of their keeper, last seen six months previously.

Lansade Léa L   Colson Violaine V   Parias Céline C   Trösch Miléna M   Reigner Fabrice F   Calandreau Ludovic L  

Scientific reports 20200414 1


Horses are capable of identifying individual conspecifics based on olfactory, auditory or visual cues. However, this raises the questions of their ability to recognize human beings and on the basis of what cues. This study investigated whether horses could differentiate between a familiar and unfamiliar human from photographs of faces. Eleven horses were trained on a discrimination task using a computer-controlled screen, on which two photographs were presented simultaneously (32 trials/session)  ...[more]

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