Renate Larssen - The Equine Ethologist

22/12/2023

Celebrating a milestone today! 🥂 Over 1000 people now subscribe to The Equine Ethologist which feels really weird and really cool at the same time.

When I started this project in the spring of 2022 I had no real concept of what it was going to become, just a feeling that I needed a platform on which to disseminate the intricacies of equine behaviour in a more in-depth way than Instagram.

It's been growing steadily since then, and at the start of this year I set a clear goal for myself: I wanted to reach 1000 subscribers by the end of the year. And I have!

I'm thrilled and so grateful that there are so many people out there who want to support this project. Thank you! ❤️

20/12/2023

In my final Substack this year - just in time for Christmas 🎄 - I take a look at the issue of geldings displaying stallion-like behaviours.

It is often pathologized as something 'bad' or 'odd', but it is in fact completely natural and normal - geldings, after all, do not know that they are geldings.

Behaviour is complex and adaptive, and hormone levels are just one small factor among many.

Stallion-like behaviour is about more than just hormones

19/12/2023

PLEASE READ

Last week, I blocked a person from this page.

I run The Equine Ethologist for free, in my spare time, and I have neither time nor energy to deal with people who come here just to vent their own guilt and anger. I want this to be a place of courteous and productive disagreement, not a space to air personal grievances against me (or anyone else) just because I have a different opinion on a topic.

I always hesitated having a page in addition to my Substack and Instagram account, because this is a more toxic place. So, as this page is growing, here are some house rules for engaging with my content:

1. Please read (and understand) the full post before commenting. If something I or someone else has said is unclear, ask for a clarification.

2. Please assume that nothing is personal and that everyone means well.

3. In an exchange, please be sure to respond constructively to the arguments the other person is making - don't just repeat things you've already said in an increasingly hostile manner.

4. Please know when to let it go and move on.

If we all stick to these simple rules, we can have both interesting and productive discussions about important issues! 😊

08/12/2023

A new research paper by Ijichi et al (2023), "Work it out: Investigating the effect of workload on discomfort and stress physiology of riding school horses", highlights why we need to rethink the current riding school model.

In my latest Substack post, I write about their research and suggest some ways that we can re-imagine how to teach people about horses - not just about riding.

I know it is a big ask, but it is a necessary one.

Link in comments!

19/11/2023

Train your eye: what can the Equine Ladder of Aggression look like in practice?

Here's a video of my pony Turbo meeting Cleo, the piebald mare, for the first time. I filmed this in October 2020, just after we had moved to a new yard.

1. Initially, the two greet each. Horses often stand parallel like this when greeting each other, rather than face-to-face.

2. Then, Cleo finds something about the situation a bit off-putting, which she communicates by lowering her ears to the side, lifting her head, turning her flank towards him, and blinking repeatedly. At this stage Turbo disengages, but remains standing while mirroring her behaviour with his flank towards her and an elevated head.

3. Cleo still finds him a bit too close for comfort, so she proceeds to turn her hindquarters towards him - a clear escalation up the ladder. Turbo mirrors this by turning his back to her; he has his ears back and an elevated head, and is also licking and chewing.

4. Cleo is still not happy about how close he is, so she escalates further by lifting her leg and then kicking the air. Quite politely, she does this twice before actually taking the final step up the ladder and kicking him.

5. Finally, they both disengage and walk away parallell to each other showing clear de-escalation and appeasement/calming signals: Cleo shakes her head (barely perceptible), lowers her head, licks and chews, sniffs the ground, and then proceeds to grazing. Turbo is also licking and chewing as he walks off. Just off camera, he stops to graze near Cleo, but at a sufficient distance.

I think this video is a neat demonstration of the complexity of equine social communication and the lengths horses will go to in order to avoid a conflict. It also shows that there is individual variability in how skilled horses are at this type of communication (Cleo clearly more so than little Turbo!).

Additionally, it demonstrates that horses can mix 'green' and 'amber' behaviours from the Equine Ladder of Aggression, and that the escalation pattern will be different depending on the individuals involved and the context.

16/11/2023

Here's The Equine Ladder of Aggression that I showed in the 'Understanding Aggression in Horses' webinar for World Horse Welfare yesterday.This is a visual aid that I have put together based on general ethology, equine ethograms, behavioural studies, and personal observations.

The purpose is to illustrate the complexity of equine communication and the fact that aggressive behaviours are not all-or-nothing. Overt aggression is almost always preceded by warning signals of gradually increasing intensity.

The 'green zone' behaviours are the earliest signs that your horse isn't comfortable with whatever is currently happening. These are so-called 'appeasement' or 'calming' signals, used to de-escalate and resolve potential conflicts. If you heed them, there will never be any need for your horse to escalate further into more overt aggression.

Please feel free to save it, share it, and use it, just remember that it's a tool, not a bible 😊 Not every horse will show all these behaviours in exactly this order, but the general pattern of escalation from very subtle changes in facial expression and posture to more overt aggressive behaviours will be there.

31/10/2023

Sleep deprivation in horses is a serious condition, and more common than we like to think. In order to get proper sleep, horses need to feel safe and comfortable enough to lie down. Prolonged sleep deprivation can lead to collapse, which can endanger both horses and humans.

This is a short ISES conference video from a few years ago, which highlights research on sleep deprivation and collapse. Worth a watch! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VCcjkLZqFc

Equine Behaviourist Justine Harrison has a longer post summarizing the research which can be found here: https://www.equinebehaviourist.co.uk/blog/2019/3/27/is-your-horse-sleep-deprived

Sleep is essential for life. The quality and quantity of a horse’s sleep directly affects their health and well-being. However, sleep is rarely considered as...

28/10/2023

The next thing we need to normalise in the horse world is ugly clips. Function before form!

Horses don't like being clipped very much - in fact, clipping is such a reliable stressor that it is often used in behavioural studies to induce a mild stress response.

We should spare them that stress as much as possible. Clipping should only be a functional thing, and once the hair has been removed, function has been achieved.

There's really no point in spending extra time making the clip look nice - your horse won't care and it will have no real-world benefits.

Normalise ugly clips! Turbo and I will go first 🦄

12/10/2023

Vet visits can be stressful for both horse, owner, and vet - luckily, there are ways to make them safer and more pleasant for everyone involved!

In a 2018 study, Watson and McDonnell tested whether three non-confrontational handling techniques (feeding, scratching the withers, and rubbing the eyes/face) could help horses stay calmer during a sham veterinary procedure. They found that all three did - but the effect was most pronounced with food.

More on this study and some tips on how we can make veterinary visits less stressful for horses in my latest Substack post - link in the comments 😊

08/10/2023

Dwell on this for a while.

There is unprecedented interest in animal emotions right now, both in the scientific community and among the wider public. Primatologist Zanna Clay called it an "era of affectivism" in her plenary talk at the Behaviour 2023 conference earlier this year.

Today, scientific consensus (at least among ethologists) is broadly in agreement that emotions, like other traits, have an evolutionary origin and will therefore exist - in one form or another - in other species, just as locomotory apparatuses or eyes do.

WHAT these emotions are and HOW they manifest, however, is still subject to debate, and the question remains whether we will ever truly be able to study emotions in non-human animals.

As with any research, we are limited by our innate humanness: we can only understand the world as we experience it through our sensory and cognitive processes.

We study animal emotions through a comparative approach, using human self-reported emotions as a baseline and then translating these concepts to animals. But this is an anthropocentric approach that assumes some sort of linear progression from primitive to advanced, with us at the pinnacle.

What if there are emotions we are not even CAPABLE OF COMPREHENDING because they are so far removed from our world? How can we study them? Would we even be able to study them?

These are the things that keep me up at night.

07/10/2023

Five years ago I switched to training with food rewards and never looked back!

Positive reinforcement is the new frontier in horse training, and it has so many benefits - horses learn faster, are more eager to work, can maintain more bodily autonomy and choice, and have a more positive attitude to people in general.

Here is a short clip showing our progress with the shoulder in. I am using my hand as a cavesson to get J to flex and bend while moving forwards. This is still early days, but to get to this stage has only taken us four short training sessions.

At this stage I am not fussed about things such as bend, head position or speed - I just want him to figure out how to focus on two things at once: following my body with his body and my hand with his head. The blue buckets help him maintain direction.

28/09/2023

There is no rider in the world that can use a running gag without causing harm. Not one. It is cruel and abusive by design, simply due to its mechanical effect: it applies downward pressure to the poll AND upwards pressure to the corners of the mouth, simultaneously.

In traditional horse training, pressure is our primary way of communicating with our horses: we teach them from an early age that pressure MEANS something, that they are supposed to DO something in response to it. Throughout early training, horses learn to step forward when they feel pressure on both sides of their rib cage, to stop when they feel even pressure on their bars and tongue, to turn when they feel pressure on just one side of their bars and tongue, and so on.

The reason we can teach our horses to respond to pressure is because they find it inherently aversive, so they are prepared to work to get relief from it. The scientific term for this is negative reinforcement. Importantly, it is not the pressure but the RELEASE of the pressure that teaches and maintains behaviours. Horses learn that when they respond to our leg aids, we stop squeezing, and when they halt, we stop pulling.

Now think about the mechanical effect of the running gag. What will this mean to a horse that has learned to yield to pressure?

Downwards pressure at the poll is a cue to lower their head.

Upwards pressure in the corners of the mouth is a cue to lift their head.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that simultaneous pressure on both the poll and the mouth will send mixed messages to the horse. It will literally be impossible for the horse to comply with the rider's requests, because it can't both lower and lift its head at the same time.

This is bad training, because horses that are given contradictory cues like this will respond by either becoming dull to the aids or overly reactive.

But this is also cruel, because there is nothing the horse can do to get any relief from the pressure. The horse is literally sandwiched between two opposing and unrelenting sources of discomfort.

This is why a running gag is inherently abusive, regardless of how 'soft' the rider's hands are. It causes constant, contradictory, painful pressure on extremely sensitive areas of the horse's head without giving the horse ANY way to get relief.

Running gags are awful bits and should be banned. They have no training value and they cause physical and psychological harm by their very design.

It is absolutely baffling to me how a reputable equestrian magazine such as Horse & Hound can promote them without a second thought to the actual meaning of the words they are printing. And as a Waterford model, no less, to add insult to injury!

Photos are screen shots of the Horse & Hound post and the article.

17/09/2023

Is standing still always a sign of relaxation?

Not necessarily. Depending on their coping style, flight threshold, and previous experiences, some horses may remain 'quiet' and appear calm even when experiencing significant inner stress.

Here's a video of my pony Turbo earlier this year. While he seems to stand calmly, he is showing signs of tension and stress, such as:

🔸High head carriage
🔸Widened nostrils
🔸Tense muzzle
🔸Eye whites
🔸Flicking ears
🔸Jerky movements

He finally settles down to eat, which probably serves the function of a self-soothing behaviour similar to how we humans can comfort eat when stressed or worried.

09/08/2023

Bit-related injuries and discomfort are common, but is switching to bitless really enough to ensure better welfare for the horse?

Unfortunately, it is not that straight-forward. A recent study measured noseband pressures in bitless bridles and found that they have the potential to restrict blood flow and cause tissue damage if used with 'standard' rein tension.

Rather than simply switching tack, we need to start riding with LESS pressure, regardless of whether that pressure is on the horse's mouth or nose.

I dive into this in my latest post on The Equine Ethologist - link in comments 😊

11/06/2023

So happy to hear that the episode I recorded for the River Tiger podcast has been so popular that it is now the most listened to! ✨

My guest this week is the fabulous equine ethologist, Renate Larssen. We covered so many topics exploring the intersection of equine ethology, learning and skill acquisition. I know that this is a long podcast again, but it was so worth it. We del...

10/06/2023

This quote was originally posted by Concordia Equestrians - A Voice for Horses a few years ago. I couldn't find the original post, so I'm taking the liberty of sharing the photo as it is such a poignant message.

This quote makes me think of

the lesson ponies that get kicked in the ribs when they try to slow down because their young riders' bouncing is hurting their backs,

the show jumpers that get sawed in the mouth by sharp bits when they rush at fences in a desperate attempt to get away from the pain in their mouths they know is coming,

the dressage horses that get smacked on the face because they try to rub the sore spots where the tight noseband pinched their nerves and cut off their blood supply,

the race horses that get whipped over and over again because they can't run from the pain faster than they already are,

the stallions that get yanked around by a chain on their nose or gums because they have so much stress and pent-up energy due to the way they are kept that they become hard to handle.

Then I think about what would happen if I replaced "horse" in the above examples with "dog" or "cat" - or even "cow".

Would we still find it acceptable to hit them with whips, hurt them with chains - or keep them in forced social isolation like we do with the worst criminals of our kind?

With knowledge comes insight, and with insight, hopefully, comes change.

07/06/2023

This is such a powerful statement.

If you ask an ethologist about a behavioural issue you are experiencing with your horse - any behavioural issue - chances are the first thing you will hear us ask is "have you had the vet out?"

That's because pain is always a factor. Always.

Unfortunately, it will still be a factor even after you have ruled out every single physical issue you possibly can.

This is the problem with pain: it is a subjective embodied experience that manifests differently in each individual. You can never rule out pain, but you should always suspect it if your horse is fearful, aggressive, lazy, frustrated, uncoordinated, resistant, unfocused, or very quiet - especially if it is a change in their behaviour!

The way we keep and ride our horses has a massive physical and physiological impact on their bodies. Sadly, in my experience, it is always more likely that they are in pain than that they are not.

I’m still processing all I learned from Bellus’s dissection. It gave me a closure I’m extremely grateful for, because as you can imagine, it was a very hard decision to make. Putting a beloved horse down is never easy, but there are always the complicated feelings of guilt, wishing you’d done more and known more, regret, and mourning for the life you know your horse deserved. I think I did the best I could, but facts are facts- he suffered, and didn’t deserve it.

The one thing I am certain of is that he was an incredibly generous, beautiful soul. Upon discovering the details of his body, I am also certain that horses are experts in surviving at any cost. Bellus was in chronic pain and thus chronic stress- my priorities might have been good posture and bend and the like, while his were just surviving.

I am confident in saying that we must do better in understanding. We have to take interest in what lies under the skin before we can take the reins and insist on forward, or bend, or collection, because without an idea of the inner workings of a horse, we have no way of monitoring the damage possible.

The things I’ve seen will change me forever - places his body remodeled, places that adhered, places that atrophied, places that were unable to function. It was never a question of not wanting to - it was a case of unable to.

I don’t believe we shouldn’t ride them, or that any refusal is a reason to quit.
But I firmly believe we need to be brave enough to face the repercussions of our ignorance, no matter how well meaning. I believe we have to face our every flaw squarely and stare it down until we are what a horse needs.

They are so generous - you know this only as a nebulous idea until you stare directly at the evidence of all a horse gave even without the ability. The least we can do is give back half that much in growth, in knowledge, in personal change.

The horses deserve it

06/06/2023

Sometimes trailer loading practice can look like this 🌞

J has never loved trailers (understatement), but with consistent practice he has gotten over his worst fear and was able to successfully travel from Sweden to the UK last summer, as well as move yards this winter.

The experiences were clearly unpleasant for him though, as he's back to being very suspicious of the trailer again.

This setup allows him to progress at his own pace - there's loads of treats and feed all over the ramp and the trailer floor so he can start building positive associations with the trailer again, but he can leave and graze whenever he wants to as well.

I just stay in the background doing yard chores and leave him alone to self-train ☺️

05/06/2023

I was recently given the opportunity to speak to Marianne Davies about - well, mostly the horse-human relationship but we touched on all kinds of things! Animal emotions, riding schools, our Neanderthal heritage, maths problems... I have to say this podcast turned out incredibly well. So many interesting conversations! I'll put the link in the comments for those who are interested in listening to it 😊

05/06/2023

Not horse related, but this is such a lovely video that speaks volumes about the inner lives of non-human animals that I wanted to share it anyway! 🐘

I'd like to direct your attention to two things particularly:

1. When baby falls over she immediately runs over to what I presume is her mother for comfort. This is a very common behaviour in both human and non-human infants, who tend to explore the world from the safe base of the parent figure, orientating back to them when life gets too real.

2. Mama elephant is unbothered by her baby's antics UNTIL she falls over - then she immediately hurries to her. These are not the actions of an unemotional biological robot without higher mental capacities.

With that said, an important side note: our empathy is selective. Most people (including myself) find this video charming because we focus on the elephant baby, not on the poor birds who are being harassed and are probably quite terrified. We don't consider their inner lives to the same extent as those of species we deem "higher", or more familiar to our own.

It's important to be aware of this emotional bias in ourselves, and expand our empathy to include all species.

11/05/2023

Donkeys and horses belong to the same family, but are different species with different evolutionary and domestication histories, and different behavioural biologies. The Donkey Sanctuary is a great resource for donkey owners and keepers interested in learning more about their longears

When your donkey starts displaying challenging behaviours, it can be difficult to know who to turn to for advice. ❓🤔

Find out the importance of seeking professional help early, with insight from our Senior Behaviour Lead, Ben Hart ➡️ bray.news/3HUfelW

07/05/2023

Spring is baby season, so a post about the mare-foal bond feels appropriate 🌱

In a natural state foals will nurse until they are about 9 months old, and mares and their foals remain close for years after weaning. Youngsters don't leave their natal band until they are about 2 or 3 years old, and some fillies will even stay with their natal band or join a group on the same home range to remain close to their mothers.

Unfortunately, mares and foals are rarely given the chance to maintain these bonds in modern breeding operations where early and abrupt separation is the norm, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence for how traumatic early weaning is.

When we breed, wean, and train horses we are dealing with living, feeling, thinking beings with rich inner lives. This is worth considering.

A recent study by Lansade et al., for example, investigated whether abruptly weaned foals will remember their dams even after several months apart. Somewhat unsurprisingly, they do. Weaning severed the physical ties, but not the emotional ones.

Yet another study to add to the growing body of evidence for the profoundness and complexity of equine social lives.

Link in comments if you want to read the whole post!

07/05/2023

This is very important! Please do not buy over-the-counter diagnostic tools from unauthorised sellers. If you suspect your horse has a medical condition, always consult a vet and follow their advice.

Expert vets are “strongly advising” horse owners against using independent and unvalidated genetic tests for certain conditions – stating that “seemingly normal animals” have been put down as a result of their use. The British Equine Veterinary Association (BEVA) cited tests for myopathies...

06/05/2023

So nice to see The Royal Family centre the horses and acknowledge their roles in the ceremony!

Horses have been an involuntary yet indispensable part of human rituals in many cultures across many centuries, without ever being asked whether they care about the strange behaviours of our species.

It's nice to see them getting some recognition. Hopefully this will lead to more consideration for their needs and desires, too.

05/05/2023

Eating is not a mechanical behaviour, it's nuanced and full of active choices! 🌱

Horses eat for many reasons: to not be hungry, to get the nutrients they need, to stay occupied, to investigate their environment, as a social behaviour, and because food tastes good.

While there are some species-specific aspects related to their behavioural biology that will apply to all horses (like eating small amounts frequently and a forage-based diet), there will also be individual differences in eating patterns and preferences.

Here, my horse J gets to spend some time foraging outside the paddock before coming in for the night. I'm always interested to see what he likes.

Also, if you have the patience to watch the whole clip, you can see him spit out a small plant towards the end - clearly he tried it but changed his mind. Perhaps it was too bitter?

A word of warning: when allowing your horse to browse, monitor the plants they can access to make sure they don't ingest something toxic! Not all horses will avoid poisonous plants like ragwort, which is very common in the UK (there's a ragwort plant in the video which I discovered while filming this, for example - will be dug up and burned first thing)!

29/04/2023

How well do horses hear? 🐴👂

(This is an English version of my post for the Swedish Association of Academic Ethologists).

Like everything else about them, their hearing is adapted to a life on the steppe, where every rustle can be an approaching predator.

Horses have large, cone-shaped ears that capture sounds from far away - sometimes several kilometres. They can move them 180 degrees, independently of each other, to catch sounds from different directions, but they can only locate the source of a sound to within c. 25° which isn't very precise.

Interestingly, there seems to be an inverse relationship between vision and hearing: species that have a larger area of high resolution on their retina (like horses) are worse at pinpointing the location of a sound than species with a smaller area of high resolution (like humans), probably because they can rely on their vision instead of their hearing to locate the source of a sound.

In general, horses and humans hear roughly the same frequencies (20Hz till 20 kHz for humans and 55Hz till 33.5 kHz for horses). Horses can hear slightly higher frequencies than we do, whereas we hear slightly lower frequencies than they do. This can be good to remember if your horse spooks "for no reason" - they may simply be hearing something you don't!

Just like for us, their hearing deteriorates with age. Horses can also have congenital deafness. This is most common in horses with a white face and one or two blue eyes, and in horses with a lot of white on their bodies, for example some Paint horses.

Identifying a deaf horse can be tricky and reported behaviours are contradictory, ranging from droopy ears to ears forward. It's likely that a deaf horse will be more reliant on vision, however, so they may behave in a more alert way than other horses in the herd.

Further reading: Magdesian, K.G., Williams, D.C., Aleman, M., Lecouteur, R.A., Madigan, J.E. 2009. Evaluation of deafness in American Paint Horses by phenotype, brainstem auditory-evoked responses, and endothelin receptor B genotype. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 235(10), 1204–1211.

Blatter, M., Haase, B., Ge**er, V., Poncet, P.A., Leeb, T., Rieder, S., Henke, D., Janett, F., Burger, D. 2013. Klinische und genetische Befunde bei einem männlichen Freiberger mit der neuen Fellfarbe Macchiato [Clinical evaluation of the new coat colour macchiato in a male Franches-Montagnes horse]. Schweizer Archiv fur Tierheilkunde, 155(4), 229–232.

28/04/2023

I've been a guest on The Equestrian Podcast! Tune in for a conversation about how to understand horse behaviour. Available on Spotify and other podcast platforms (Spotify link in comments) ✨

22/04/2023

✨ LOOK at Turbo's weight loss progress from February to April!!! ✨

I almost can't believe my own eyes. The top photos are from 5-11 February, the bottom ones are from this morning.

✅ Weight tape has gone down from 350kg to 298kg

✅ I can feel his ribs

✅ The fat deposits on his back, rump and shoulder are nearly gone

There's still a way to go in terms of fat deposits, particularly in his crest (even though that's markedly reduced, too) and rump, but we're on a good trajectory here.

Weight loss in horses needs to be slow and can feel impossible, but it absolutely can be done with a strategic, evidence-based approach!

I'm so proud of us I needed to share! 😊

21/04/2023

How good is your horse's vision? 👀🐴

I sometimes come across statements that claim horses don't see as well as we do. I assume they're based on comparisons between horse and human visual acuity: in general, horses need to stand closer to an object than we do in order to perceive small details.

This is often expressed as 20/33, meaning a horse needs to stand 20 metres away to see a detail that a human can spot from 33 metres away. (If the human has perfect vision, that is - there are plenty of people who don't, and who might well have poorer visual acuity than some horses.)

Does this mean horses have poor eyesight? Not at all. Their visual acuity is far better than that of both dogs and cats, for example.

Importantly, their vision is perfectly adapted to the steppe life they evolved to live. They have a wide field of vision that spans almost 360 degrees around them (the narrow "blind" areas immediately below their nose and just behind them can easily be covered by adjusting the position of the very mobile head and neck). Their eyes are placed high on their head (or their noses are very long, depending on how you choose to look at it) to enable them to keep an eye on their environment even when they're grazing in tall grass.

They also have a horizontally oriented pupil with a visual streak on the retina behind it (similar to our fovea centralis). The visual streak has a high concentration of ganglion cells, which give good resolution along the horizon where potential predators would come from.

Interestingly, the concentration of ganglion cells seems to vary depending on the shape of the skull. In horses with a longer skull, like standardbreds, the ganglion cells tend to be more evenly distributed in the retina, potentially giving them better periferal vision but lower resolution in the visual streak (and vice versa for horses with shorter skulls, like arabs).

Horses also see much better in the dark than we do. They have both cones, which pick up colors, and rods, which pick up light, in their visual streak, which means they can see with good resolution even in dim light conditions. (By comparison, we only have cones in our fovea centralis, which means we loose a lot of resolution as light conditions deteriorate.) In one study, horses were able to identify shapes and navigate obstacles in light conditions too dark for humans to see in!

So, to sum up: no, horses don't have "worse" eyesight than we do - what's "good" or "bad" depends on which parameters we consider 😊

If you want to read more: Hanggi, E.B., Ingersoll, J.F. 2009. Stimulus discrimination by horses under scotopic conditions. Behavioural Processes, 82/1, 45-50.