Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Introduction: Compared to the 55–65 million years of evolutionary history of the horse, some 4000 years that horses have been domesticated is quite a short period. During the time they have been in contact with humans, the natural behaviors and needs of horses have not significantly changed, and therefore the new environment and everyday cooperation with humans can conflict with these needs. In the breeding of racehorses, athletic and physical characteristics have long been the main focus, but it has been increasingly noticed how temperament and mental abilities affect not only the horses' athletic performance, but also their general functioning and everyday co-operation with humans.
In order to enable harmonious coexistence, it is critical to understand horses’ behavior. During the last decades, the research of behavior and temperament in animals has been a growing field. Both objective behavioral tests and subjective questionnaires have been developed to study tempera-ment traits in animals. For centuries, there has been a belief among equestrians that hair whorls on horse's forehead can be indicative of its behavior and temperament, and recent scientific studies support this assumption.
The aim of this study was to determine whether the results from behavioral tests and the questionnaire responses correlate, and to further investigate the connections between different types of facial hair whorls and horse temperament.
Materials and methods: This study included a total of 56 Standardbred trotters, stabled in seven different professional racing stables in Sweden.
Three objective behavioral tests were used in this study; Reactivity to human, Novel object and Novel surface tests. Reactivity to human, as the name says, assessed the horse’s reactivity towards humans, Novel object test measured behavior associated with nervousness, while the fearfulness trait was assessed in Novel surface test.
The subjective method to assess temperament traits in this study was an online questionnaire on Netigate. Temperament traits studied in the questionnaire were nervousness, fearfulness and reactivity to humans. The questionnaire also covered topics related to cognition, cooperation, concentration, learning and memory. Additionally, questions about the horses’ background, living conditions, appetite and health status were included.
The facial hair whorls were inspected live and/or from photographs, a protocol was filled out and photos were taken on the horses’ forehead.
In order to investigate the associations between questionnaire answers, results from behavioral tests and hair whorls, comprehensive statistical analyses were conducted. Analyses involved various statistical methods including correlation tests and association analysis ANOVA.
Results: This thesis could not find significant correlations between questionnaire responses and behavioral test scores. However, several associations between different hair whorl types and tem-perament traits were revealed. The results indicate the following: feather-shaped facial whorl was linked to higher compliance, courage, and a good appetite. Also, horses with a whorl with longi-tudinal position medium (between the eyes) appeared to have quicker learning abilities compared to horses with a high whorl.
Conclusion: In this thesis, significant correlations between questionnaire responses and behavioral test results were not found. However, some significant correlations between facial hair whorls and certain temperament traits were found. This study represents a small step toward validating the use of questionnaires in horse temperament research, but to get more reliable results more studies with the larger number of horses are needed.