Researchers Górecka-Bruzda, Jastrzębska, Muszyńska, Jędrzejewska, Jaworski, and Jezierski of the Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding at the Polish Academy of Sciences studied whether horses prefer to jump obstacles or not.
Even though jumping is a seldom used strategy of negotiating obstacles by the free-living horses, show jumping is the most popular equestrian discipline. In order to establish whether horses are naturally motivated to jump, we examined strategies of negotiating obstacles used by horses in a free choice situation.
Eighteen leisure (L) and 16 sport (S) horses were subjected to two choice tests. In the ‘free choice test’, the horses were presented with two optional routes to reach the stimulus food and social contact: the shorter one (over the obstacle) and the longer one (around the obstacle). In eight consecutive trials the horses were subjected to an increase in height of the obstacle in every second trial (0, 20, 35 and 50 cm). In ‘under the rider test’, after the initial conditioning, the horses were let to choose in three consecutive trials between arms of the ‘Y-maze’, one of which contained an obstacle.
The strategy most frequently used by all horses was walking or trotting over the obstacle (59.9%), while jumping was used in only 11.1% of cases. For both the L and S horses, the motivation to traverse the obstacle decreased relatively to its rising height (only 44.1% of horses cleared the obstacle of 50 cm). The L horses chose walking or trotting over the obstacle more frequently than jumping it, as compared to the S horses (Pearson exact Chi-square test, Chi-square=11.74; df=1; P<0.001). In total of three trials under the rider, the L horses chose the arm of the Y-maze that contained no obstacle more often (Chi-square=12.52; df=1; P<0.001), while S horses showed no preference (Chi-square=1.33; df=1; P>0.05). No relationship was found between the total number of choices of the arm of the Y-maze that contained the obstacle and the number of successful trials (walking/trotting over or jumping the obstacle) in the ‘free-choice test’ (Spearman rank correlation, rs=0.08; P>0.05).
Both L and S horses preferred to avoid unnecessary effort. Higher frequency of jumping in S horses could be related to initial selection for jumping ability and to the previous jumping training. Considering the reluctance to clear the obstacle of increasing height, it can be hypothesised that the horses may often be exposed to excessive demands and then their welfare should be carefully monitored.
-- 2011 ISES Conference Abstract
Photo © Dirk Caremans
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