Rørvang, Maria Vilain and Bach Nielsen, Tina and Christensen, Janne Winther
(2020).
Horses failed to learn from humans by observation.
Animals. 10
, 1-12
[Journal article]
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Abstract
Animals can acquire new behavior through both individual and social learning. Several studies have investigated horses’ ability to utilize inter-species (human demonstrator) social learning with conflicting results. In this study, we repeat a previous study, which found that horses had the ability to learn from observing humans performing an instrumental task, but we include a control for stimulus enhancement. One human demonstrator and thirty horses were included, and the horses were randomly assigned to one of three treatments: (A) full human demonstration, (B) partial human demonstration, and (C) no human demonstration. The task was for the horses to touch an object situated 1 m away from a feed box, to open this feed box, and thereby obtain a food reward. The success of each horse, the behavior directed towards the apparatus and the human, and behaviors indicative of frustration were observed. The results showed that horses observing a full and partial human demonstration were not more successful in solving the instrumental task than horses not observing any demonstration. Horses that did not solve the task expressed more box- and human-oriented behavior compared to successful horses, which may be an indication of motivation to solve the task and/or frustration from being unable to solve the task.
Authors/Creators: | Rørvang, Maria Vilain and Bach Nielsen, Tina and Christensen, Janne Winther | ||||
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Title: | Horses failed to learn from humans by observation | ||||
Series Name/Journal: | Animals | ||||
Year of publishing : | 2020 | ||||
Volume: | 10 | ||||
Page range: | 1-12 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 12 | ||||
Publisher: | MDPI | ||||
ISSN: | 2076-2615 | ||||
Language: | English | ||||
Publication Type: | Journal article | ||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||
Version: | Published version | ||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 106 Biological Sciences (Medical to be 3 and Agricultural to be 4) > Behavioural Sciences Biology | ||||
Keywords: | horse, cognition, social learning, welfare, training, social transmission, inter-species | ||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-104992 | ||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-104992 | ||||
Additional ID: |
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ID Code: | 16812 | ||||
Faculty: | LTV - Fakulteten för landskapsarkitektur, trädgårds- och växtproduktionsvetenskap | ||||
Department: | (LTJ, LTV) > Department of Biosystems and Technology (from 130101) | ||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||
Deposited On: | 04 May 2020 11:52 | ||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 15 Jan 2021 19:46 |
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