do ponies develop a preference for a helpful human or an unhelpful human and is there an influence of age on persistence in Shetland ponies?

Master thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna - 2021

Little research has been conducted on cognition in horses and ponies when compared with the amount of research carried out on cognition in other species. However, horses are a domesticated species and share a long history with humans. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate their relationships and interactions with humans, but also their performance in human-made problem-solving tasks. We conducted two different studies: one examining whether ponies discriminate between a person that feeds them and a person that refrains from giving food to them, and a second study exploring the influence of age on persistence during a problem-solving task in Shetland ponies. As these two studies are thematically distinct, the thesis treats both studies separately. Recently published results suggest that horses possess the ability to infer intentions in human behavioral actions and that ponies eavesdrop on human-pony interactions seen in a video. Furthermore, horses respond differently to happy and angry human faces and are able to use human communicative cues, including visual and auditory cues. Thus, it was interesting for us to conduct a study to see whether ponies would also discriminate between two persons that behaved positively or negatively towards them based on direct experience. Two unfamiliar humans either fed a pony with carrots or presented carrots to the pony and ate them themselves in front of the pony. Afterwards, we conducted a preference test, in which the ponies could choose between the two humans in twelve trials. Additionally, we performed ECG recordings and analysed their heart rate and heart rate variability. The ponies did not discriminate between the two humans. The ponies neither developed a preference for either of the persons, nor displayed a difference in heart rate or heart rate variability between the two humans. Additionally, we were interested in ponies’ persistence during a problem-solving task. Persistence has been shown to influence problem-solving success. Various factors have been shown to influence persistence. One of them is age. Younger horses have already been found to be more persistent than older horses in a solvable problem-solving task in a study investigating observational learning effects on the ability to solve an operant task in horses. However, it might be that older horses were just faster in learning the task and were less motivated to interact with the task as a result of earlier saturation. A common method to investigate persistence is the unsolvable task, in which tested subjects do not receive food from the manipulated object. In this study, ponies have been presented with a Ball Feeder containing carrots that could not be accessed by the ponies, to investigate the influence of age on the duration spent trying to solve a task. An influence of age on persistence in solving a task could not be detected in this study.

Masterarbeit - Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien - 2021

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