Equine Psychology and Its Application to Veterinary Practice

Each species acquires, by means of natural selection, genetically fixed physical and behavioral characteristics that help to insure its survival in its natural environment. Speed is the principal physical characteristic, which has helped horses survive, and when it is combined with the behavioral characteristic of flight, speed becomes an asset to the wild horse. The wild horse was a grassland-dwelling species. Its major natural predators were the great cats, and its primary means of survival is instantaneous flight when frightened by an unfamiliar sensory stimulus. The stimulus may be visual, olfactory, tactile, auditory, or a combination of any of these. Flightiness is the reason horses so often injure themselves or the people who handle them, and it is the reason horses may be perceived as a stupid animal. To the contrary, flightiness has evolved to help the horse survive in a natural open environment. Flight observed by other horses can be a stimulus and seems to be a survival mechanism in wild horse herds. It is the reason that a young horse gets excited when another is observed running. In the author’s opinion, the horse is a timid creature, and this timidity and flightiness are genetically fixed traits, which have been modified but not eliminated by generations of domestication.