title: Social learning across species: horses (Equus caballus) learn from humans by observation.
abstract: This study examines whether horses can learn by observing humans, given that they identify individual humans and orientate on the focus of human attention. We tested 24 horses aged between 3 and 12. Twelve horses were tested on whether they would learn to open a feeding apparatus by observing a familiar person. The other 12 were controls and received exactly the same experimental procedure, but without a demonstration of how to operate the apparatus. More horses from the group with demonstration (8/12) reached the learning criterion of opening the feeder twenty times consecutively than horses from the control group (2/12), and younger horses seemed to reach the criterion more quickly. Horses not reaching the learning criteria approached the human experimenters more often than those that did. The results demonstrate that horses learn socially across species, in this case from humans.
authors.affiliation: Department Equine Economics, Faculty Agriculture, Economics and Management, Nuertingen-Geislingen University, Neckarsteige 6-10, 72622, Nürtingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Aurelia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schuetz
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Neuroscience, St Andrews University, St Mary's Quad, South Street, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JP, Scotland, UK.
authors.forename: Kate
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Farmer
authors.affiliation: Department Equine Economics, Faculty Agriculture, Economics and Management, Nuertingen-Geislingen University, Neckarsteige 6-10, 72622, Nürtingen, Germany. Konstanze.Krueger@hfwu.de.|Zoology/Evolutionary Biology, University of Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31, 93053, Regensburg, Germany. Konstanze.Krueger@hfwu.de.
authors.forename: Konstanze
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9120-680X
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Krueger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006736:Horses / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000067570:Social Learning
keywords: Equus caballus; Human demonstrator; Interspecies-specific learning; Social enhancement; Social learning