A friend of mine told me about horses. I do not know anything about
them. Debbi, how true are these statements?
Unlike dogs and cats, which are predators, horses are prey animals.
This makes horses very different. (Humans are both predators and
prey.)
For example, horses' reason for grouping together is different from
wolves.
For horses, the bigger the herd, the safer each is.
For wolves, on the other hand, an overly large pack provides little
food for each member. An appropriately sized pack can bring down an
elk and feed comfortably. Too few wolves, the elk escapes and the
wolves do not eat. Too many wolves, and the dead elk does not provide
enough for all.
She also said that both dogs and horses are hierarchical, but horses
are less hierarchical than dogs.
In a herd, stallions protect the others and breed, but the individual
horse who finds good grass is often a mare.
Unlike dogs in packs, in a herd, every horse breeds.
Horses have the equivalent of left and right handedness. That is to
say, they have different acuities on the left side and the right.
Some horses prefer to be approached and mounted on the right rather
than the left.
Horses have magnifying lenses in eyes. People and things look bigger
than they are.
Even though horses may not see colors as such, individual horses have
a desire for certain colors. Perhaps they really do see colors or
perhaps they have come to like a certain shade and texture of grey, a
shade and texture that a human sees as a color.
"Where horses' ears are, their eyes are." Horses move their ears in a
manner that indicates where they are focusing their attention. A
horse's ear may come back so horse can see his or her rider.
Moreover, while horses enjoy overlapping sight, or binocular vision,
they also have a 3 foot blind spot right in front. If you approach a
horse in its blind spot, you may startle it.
To jump, a horse and its rider need to team together: the horse needs
to look for ahead to see the jump; when it actually jumps, it is
showing faith in the rider.
Horses are very sensitive to body language and smell, and if they have
adopted a human, are very protective of him or her.
--
Robert J. Chassell
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http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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