Team hopes findings will help improve equine welfare after showing cognitive abilities include being ‘goal-directed’

Team hopes findings will help improve equine welfare after showing cognitive abilities include being ‘goal-directed’

  • booty [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    3 months ago

    Of course they can? They’re animals? They have brains? They need to think strategically in order to survive attacks by predators in the wild???

    Do people really think that horses are just here to get humans around faster and that there’s nothing going on in there?

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      Humans love to seperate ourselves from the animal kingdom. We minimize them and pretend they are not capable of anything. We convince ourselves that no one else is even remotely close so we can attempt to justify our often horrific treatment of non-human animals

      (Or at least some subset of the population anyway)

    • EddoWagt@feddit.nlEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      They need to think strategically in order to survive attacks by predators in the wild???

      Do they really? I think most prey animals default to predator = run, which seems sufficient in most situations

      • booty [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        That’s all well and good until there evolve predators that have complex brains and can think about how best to approach you such that you don’t know they’re there

        If you think just running away from predators you see and otherwise putting absolutely no thought into the existence of predators is sufficient you would not last long in the wild lol

        • EddoWagt@feddit.nlEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          and otherwise putting absolutely no thought into the existence of predators

          That’s absolutely not what I said and that’s also not what “Thinking ahead and planning strategically” entails

    • Classy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      It’s mind boggling how much people (especially Christians and very especially Amish) look at animals as lowly, base creatures with no sense of anything whatsoever. Like they’re complete automatons.