Scientists Discover That Horses Can Use Symbols To Talk To Us (sciencemag.org) 171
sciencehabit writes from a report via Science Magazine: Scientists have discovered that horses can learn to use another human tool for communicating: pointing to symbols. They join a short list of other species, including some primates, dolphins, and pigeons, with this talent. Scientists taught 23 riding horses of various breeds to look at a display board with three icons, representing wearing or not wearing a blanket. Horses could choose between a "no change" symbol or symbols for "blanket on" or "blanket off." The horses did not touch the symbols randomly, but made their choices based on the weather. If it was wet, cold, and windy, they touched the blanket-on icon; horses that were already wearing a blanket nosed the "no change" image. But when the weather was sunny, the animals touched the blanket-off symbol; those that weren't blanketed pressed the "no change" icon. The study's strong results show that the horses understood the consequences of their choices, say the scientists, who hope that other researchers will use their method to ask horses more questions. The report has been published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Finally! (Score:1)
Too bad there isn't a /no /no. Button
- I'm going to kick you in the face. Yes
I'm going to bite you as soon as you turn around yes
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I don't think that kicking and biting are issues compared to the things people do to horses - slaughtering them for meat or working them for years before sending them to the glue factory.
Re: Finally! (Score:2)
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I wouldn't say for stupidly rich people.
A middle class family could afford a horse. We have middle class people with a hobbies such as vintage cars, carpentry, electronics... All really costing a good chunk of change.
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Depends on your location, I guess. A lot of horses around here are owned by lower middle class, and maybe upper poverty class. Some people DO still actually work horses.
I'll admit, most horses are owned by people who don't really have any use for them. My younger stepson has two. One was given to him, the other bought at such a low price it might as well have been a gift. In the past year, I've only seen his wife on a horse once, not seen him or the kids astride a horse. Pets - just big expensive pets
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you think a pet that costs couple or three hundred bucks a month is only for rich person? get a real job you slacker.
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As someone that keeps two horses at home:
Monthly grain: 40 Euro.
Monthly hay, October-April only: 50 Euro.
Monthly straw bedding: 40 Euro.
Other expenses, eg. removal of used bedding: Let's say 300 Euro spread over the full year, that's 25 Euro a month.
Total: 155 Euro a month. For a hobby, not that bad.
It's hard to put a price tag on the land since it came with the house and I wanted to live rurally anyway.
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you don't take them to vets for checkup, dental and immunization? My friends that have horses do that here, that $250 a month covers everything
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Seeing as I'm around them on a daily basis I can watch for changes in behavior and health. They have no dental issues (though the mother of one of them did need to have teeth filed a bit a decade ago), the vaccinations and wormer are cheap enough they fall in that Other Expenses line.
Horseshit (Score:1)
All over the west, horses do work; they can get to, and through terrain ATV's can't (thus making a mockery of the "all terrain" part), they are very good at assisting in collecting and collaring livestock because they know what the task is, and can operate in concert with from the person sitting them who is trying to rope or herd the animal.
You really should get out more.
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I'm still laughing too hard at the "rich" part, horse is less than an average person's car payment per month. A Walmart greeter at $9 / hr could afford a horse; one week a month they'd be working for the horse though 8D
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It's easy to make a small fortune from owning horses.
All you have to do is start with a big fortune.
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Sadly the horses don't pay you to shovel their manure
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Not true.
Miniature horses are routinely used as service animals, particularly in rural areas (harder to use in a city and they need more outside space).
They are just as smart, live a lot longer (25-35 years vs.13 on average), and are physically stronger so they can do more work. They do cost more to keep (food, upkeep), and need more space.
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The food part? Dogs are carnivores. They like meat and meat products. That kind of food is rather expensive. The most expensive feed for horses, miniature or otherwise, would be alfalfa. A miniature probably doesn't eat a lot more than a couple of sheep or goats. Since you don't actually "work" a miniature, you probably aren't going to give him much grain, if any. (added benefit of alfalfa is, it is high protein, very well digested, so there is less waste to deal with)
I realize that a service animal
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Dogs need to eat protein. If you look the ingredients in a lot of cheap dog feed they are basically soy. Because its cheap
They'll also eat hydrocarbons like bread or rice though. Just expect them to have a high chance to get diabetic at an already age as a result.
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eh, plenty of solidly middle class people where I live have horses (midwest). All total a horse is about $250 a month to keep.
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Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
How elaborate can this Q&A get?
Q: "Hey horse - how come Christians are allowed to draw pictures of their prophets and Muslims aren't?"
A: "I don't know. I am a horse, and, as such, have no knowledge of the intricacies of Islamic theology. I assume you're asking me because I am a brown horse? In which case, go to hell."
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I assume you're asking me because I am a brown horse? In which case, go to hell."
Because everyone knows the politically correct term is bay [wikipedia.org].
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The Micheal Bay horse, it explodes when you get too close.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
These two racehorses were standing in their stable. The first one said, "I've been in 18 races and won 16." The second one said, "That's nothing. I've been in 28 races and won 25." At this point, a greyhound dog walks by, and overhearing the horses, says "I've been in 48 races and won every one of them!"
One horse looks at the other and says, "That's amazing! A talking dog!"
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Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
Horse:
Many Muslims (like some Christian sects) consider pictorial representations of the human figure as violating the prohibition on graven images. As with those iconoclastic Christian sects [wikipedia.org] that prohibition is most strictly observed when it comes to religious figures, possibly because of the quasi-worship of Christian saints Muslims witnessed among German knights in the Holy Land, which must have struck them (as it would later Protestants) as a kind of polytheism.
That's why when you look at the massive, elaborately decorated [google.com] mosques you won't see a single human or animal figure. Instead you'll see elaborate geometrical figures and highly stylized calligraphy, which are the main visual form of Sunni artistic expression. To find any sort of art depicting people one must look to Shia dominated areas, such as Persia (Iran), which boasts many [wikimedia.org] fine [wikipedia.org] examples [pinimg.com].
The universe is large, little man, and full of endless wonders; the time you have to fill your mind with those wonders is short.
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Who's a good little horsey? You are! Here have an apple. Don't eat any more of that peanut butter it makes it look like your'e talking.
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Can't say I'm surprised (Score:3)
Herd/pack animals need to communicate with each other in some way so the brain structures must be present to allow them to communicate using either voice or body language or in this case pointing.
Re:Can't say I'm surprised (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Can't say I'm surprised (Score:5, Funny)
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Seriously. No reason to stirrup the discussion by bringing politics into it.
Science always helping (Score:5, Funny)
At long last Sarah Jessica Parker wont freeze during winter ever again!!!
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At long last Sarah Jessica Parker wont freeze during winter ever again!!!
You know, I'm all for a good joke, but I think we should take this one by the reins and settle down a bit.
No, no, not for her sake; it's making the horses look bad.
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I for one... (Score:2)
Cats can do that too (Score:2)
Though they prefer using their own symbols. Jumping into your bowl of spaghetti means "my food dish is empty" and crapping in them means "my kitty litter is full". And them lying curled up in a corner means "no change necessary, slave!"
Re:Cats can do that too (Score:4, Informative)
While your examples could be simple aggressive behavior in cat culture, they are amusing.
However, cats indeed use symbolic reasoning. Mine, a mature shelter animal when I got her, loved to play with a boot lace tied off with feathers which I "flew" near her until she realiized it was only a toy controlled by me, at which time she lost interest and did not play anymore.
However, when she wants my company, she fetches the feathered lace and brings it to me. She does not want to play with it -- she uses it as a symbol to say she wants some face time at the places she hangs out in (the porch or the back room with the sunny exposure.)
Am I surprised? At first I was, but it looks like Noam Chomsky was right -- we (many creatures) are "hard-wired" for language.
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And what crime did the bird commit to be taped there next to a cat in distress?
Cart before the horse? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm... While it has been shown in a variety of ways going back at least as far as the original Mr. Ed that horses are smart and capable of performing a large repetoire of tricks, I do wonder in this particular case if the horses are touching the symbols at the appropriate times because they understand what the symbols mean, or because they were trained to touch the symbols at the appropriate times. It is a vitally important distinction. Just how did they teach the meaning of each symbol to them without instead accidentally training them to perform without any true understanding of the symbols themselves? Humans have instinctual behaviours towards pattern recognition, anthromorphism, self-delusion, and rationalisation, thus experimential methods must be very carefully designed to remove these influences.
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And given that it's been peer-reviewed, the presumption is that they designed their methods to do just that, rather than "peer reviewers in animal behavior aren't aware of the caveats involved in animal studies"
That doesn't mean 100% that the presumption is correct - peer review is hardly a flawless process.
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that's what my mane man told me, he's no foal and can look pasture usual stereotypes about horses.
Re:Cart before the horse? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading over the study, in case you're curious: they discuss the Clever Hans effect, how it manifests (the horse observes the trainer or audience and does what it needs to get a reward based on the audience's reaction). In this study, the trainer was off to the side, out of the field of view of the horse, and they monitored where the horse was looking to ensure it was only looking at the symbols when making its choice. Then the horse was given a reward regardless of what symbol it chose; it simply had to choose one to get a treat. The symbol touches were easy to record and unambiguous, so there was no "interpretation" of the horses behavior in question. The researchers also observed side behaviors. For example, once the horses had learned to use the symbols to control their blanketing status they often became very eager to go into the testing facilitity (before the phase where treats were on offer). It was observed that horses that sought to have their blanket removed in this manner tended to be sweaty underneath it, while those that didn't seek it out weren't.
To be fair, there's even more that could be done. I really liked the controls that Pepperberg did in her studies of Alex (the African Grey parrot). She had it set up so that the person asking a question didn't know the answer, and neither did the person scoring the result. In this case here, clearly the trainer knew the weather and thus what would be the "optimal" blanketing status. But by paying attention to where the horse's focus is, whether it's hesitating, etc, and giving it a reward either way, I agree that that's some pretty good controlling for the Clever Hans effect.
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If this were "talking" or "communicating", then the horses would have no reason to select any icon when nobody was watching. That they did it even if there was nobody to 'talk to' shows us that it is simple condition response behavior.
Unless we are claiming the horses are talking to nobody, this is entirely stupid.
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"In this study, the trainer was off to the side, out of the field of view of the horse, and they monitored where the horse was looking to ensure it was only looking at the symbols when making its choice"
Yeah, horses have 350 vision, so "off to the side" means the trainer was still in view...
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There is of course a difference between being in one's field of vision and being the object focused on, which can be seen by a variety of factors, e.g. where they're pointing their head, their ears, whether there's any hesitation about the action (aka looking for outside cues), etc.
Clever Hans was an extremely well studied case. The concept that any reviewer is not going to be familiar with it and how to control for it is beyond silly.
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If you want the exact wording, it doesn't say "out of the field of view", but "stepped 2-3 meters aside ... standing passive to avoid giving the horse any cues". They later go further into the details of how they monitored the horse's attention and discussion of the Clever Hans effect. They also alter the sides that the different symbols were on to avoid side preferences.
Crap before Remorse? (Score:1)
Adding subjective observations like claiming 'simple action/reward conditioning' and 'doesn't confirm anything' doesn't really confirm anything about the experiment itself. It simply reflects what you would expect from conditioned behavior of a disagreeable AC.
Re:Cart before the horse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something not disputed by the study. The top keyword in the article summary is "Operant conditioning" (followed by "Blanket", "Rug", "Thermoregulation", "Cognition" and "Clicker training"). You'd do well to read the study. The key takeaways are:
1) Horses can be conditioned via use of visual symbols
2) Horses can use this to initiate communicated preference rather than just as a response
3) Horses learned much faster using the approach in this study than others
4) Horses understood the link between wearing / removing a blanket and their eventual body temperature for the given weather conditions
5) Different horses took different lengths of time to learn the connection with the symbols, but all managed to learn it, and once it was learned it was understood effectively 100% and not forgotten with time
It's also worth mentioning that most human behaviors are also learned through operant conditioning. That's how we all learned as children. There is no simple line between human and non-human in this regard. E.g., you stick your fingers on a hot burner, you get burned, you learn to avoid hot burners without even having to think about it. Your parent holds up an alphabet block with a "Q" on it, you say "Q", you get praise. The father of operant conditioning, B.F. Skinner, mainly wrote about it with a focus on its effects on human behavior, not animal behavior in general.
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And how exactly is "do this to get the humans to do that" not communication? It ain't Shakespeare, but the very essence of communication is to use your behavior to alter the behavior of others. And doing so via symbols, rather than something more direct like nudging the blanket or shying away, shows a capability to communicate through an abstraction filter - which is the interesting part. As I understand it most animals can't make the mental leap that touching symbols can be used to unambiguously communi
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Yes, this is essentially training the horses to perform an action. But the test could not have been considered a success if the horses didn't demonstrate the cognitive ability to identify symbols and choose appropriately between symbols for a predictable outcome. It is a step further than "ring the bell, get a treat".
T
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Finally (Score:2)
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You've just made me realize my local zoo doesn't provide the dolphins with towels, the bastards. I'm not sure what the chimps have back in the concrete faux-cave at the rear of the exhibit but I intend to get to the bottom of this matter.
Racist Scientists (Score:2, Interesting)
As a dog, I am highly offended by this article. When I grab my leash and whine, my human knows to let me show him around our territory. How is that not using a human tool to communicate? Or is seeing a leash an instinctive reaction in humans that causes them to need to be led by someone smaller than them? That must be it because the little humans never let me walk them when they see the leash.
Never mind, I guess they're not racist. Humans are just dumber than I realized. I thought they understood me,
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It's certainly communication, but it's not *symbolic* communication, which introduces an additional level of abstraction that many species are apparently not capable of. Pretty much every animal is capable of more direct forms of communication.
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On a related note, my parrot literally tells me when he wants company, when he wants to be scratched, when he wants to go to bed, and when he wants a treat, and he's not happy if you do the wrong thing.
Basic single-concept communication seems to be an ability that a wide range of animals are capable of. We seem unusual in our skill at combining concepts. Some animals show a degree of limited ability at this (Pepperberg's work with Alex for example, showed that he could understand qualities of objects, dif
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I'm really interested in understanding more about dolphin communication. Because we know that they "point" at things with their sonar, and listen in to each others' sonar returns (they're one of the few animals that "points" at things as a form of communication). How far does it go? One theory I've seen is that the burst pulsed sounds can mimic sonar returns, and thus can utilize a rough pictoral communication. Whistling had long been the main focus for communication (with the assumption that burst puls
Mr Ed (Score:3)
I always knew that that was a documentary!
Re:Mr Dead? (Score:2)
I prefer Mr. Dead (a buddy story with brainnnss).
A corpse is a corpse of course of course, that is of course unless the corpse is the zombie Mr. Dead!
now they can choose (Score:2)
option 2) I'll go natural thank you
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>So, up to a point, horses like horseshoes.
So we claim - but it would be interesting to get it straight from the horses mouth, so to speak. Just because it benefits them, doesn't mean that they understand that it does so. And even if they do, that doesn't imply that they want it done.
As a human example, pretty much everyone knows that diets relatively low in fat and sugar will benefit their health, but that doesn't mean they like them.
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As a human example, pretty much everyone knows that diets relatively low in fat and sugar will benefit their health, but that doesn't mean they like them.
And yet we have a government increasingly interested in telling us we're damn well going to do what they think is best for us whether we like it or not. No salt on restaurant tables, no 32.oz soda drinks, regulation on alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc.
So I guess what you're saying is that the government treats us like we treat horses.
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All animals understand cause/effect (Score:5, Insightful)
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But not all can understand it when passed through an abstraction like symbolic communication.
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I don't exploit them, I eat them for dinner.
no change (Score:2)
Surely I cannot be the only person who's curious what the "no change" icon they used looks like. :)
horses are smart (Score:1)
Ever see a movie where a stockman/cowboy splits a cow from the herd? A good horse is doing 99% of the work; the rider is just pointing to the cow.
Clever horses (Score:2)
19th century smart vehicles (Score:5, Informative)
When you staggered out of the saloon wasted, your horse would get you home safely. Long before Siri and Tesla, a lot of intelligent navigation must have been done that way.
Re:19th century smart vehicles (Score:4, Interesting)
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They mentioned in the study related research on teaching horses to navigate mazes. Horses learned the maze at different rates, but they all eventually learned it, and once they learned it they never forgot it, no matter how long it was between maze runs. Seems directly applicable to the "milk route" case.
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Animals will instinctively learn patterns to gain a reward. What is an order of magnitude more difficult in intelligence is learning a pattern by correlating independent events. e.g. Following a milk truck is easy, picking a symbol based on the current weather and whether or not I'm wearing a blanked requires quite a bit more thought.
Fascinating creates.
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You were ninja'd by Randall -- https://xkcd.com/1720/ [xkcd.com]
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yes, my friends and I stagger out of saloons on occasion.
Politics politics (Score:2)
the horses understood the consequences of their choices
Wow. That's better than most voters in the modern world...
peanut butter works too (Score:1)
of course of course
Uh (Score:2)
Did they also have a symbol with a fatso on a horse?
Houyhnhnm...good name for a search engine (Score:2)
No Change symbol (Score:2)
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The full study is at http://www.appliedanimalbehavi... [appliedani...aviour.com]
Symbols were painted on a white wooden board.
It was a horizontal line for "blanket on", blank white for "no change", vertical line for "blank off".
In all cases, the blanket was adjusted by a human handler (if only to put it back where it was).
Not a Basket of Deplorables (Score:2)
the horses understood the consequences of their choices
Which is way better than must Trump voters do....
I'm not impressed... (Score:1)
Talk to me when they can master pointers.
If horses can do it then (Score:1)
Clever Hans again (Score:2)
Do the researchers faces light up when the horse points to the right symbol?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I hear that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (Score:2)
have been using this same technique to prep for the debate on Monday. Hillary has been casting about desperately for the icon indicating she would like a glass of water. And Donald is expected to walk on to the debate stage with a blanket draped over him.
Horses are smarter than you'd think (Score:5, Insightful)
I once asked one if Windows was any good.
"Neigh!"
But this begs the question... (Score:2)
Shouda Oughtta Gone For The Duck (Score:2)
the final trial in the series was not actually part of the study plan. That kid who was sent to get the signs printed, they did them by the dozen so he cooked it up, it was his idea. With mock earnestness the signs were placed on the post and the horse was led around. They were,
1. A symbol representing quantum "spooky action at a distance".
2. A symbol representing a horse indicating a choice by indicating a symbol indicating a choice indicated by a symbol indicating a choice, by a horse.
3. A duck. No serio
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My dog has learned that pulling the bathroom door handle ( which makes a noise ) makes me fill up his upstairs water bowl.
He's quite adept at opening doors, so if he was trying to open it he would have.
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the glue factories won't take their carcasses though. you can cut them up for chum or enrich soil in a worm garden for you anglers.
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They did move the symbols around. You know, the paper was linked in the summary...