Horses should be thought of as social beings, just like humans, meaning that it can be scary for a horse to go out without their friends. Discover how a horse's friends provide the safety of the herd with information from an applied behavioral ecologist in this free video on horse behavior.
Hi! I'm Mary Ann Simonds. I'm an applied behavioral equine ecologist and I live in Vancouver, Washington. I'm here to talk to you about why horses need their friends. Oftentimes people complain about having a horse that's burn sour or they can't take them out on trail along and they think that's a problem. Well, as a behavioral ecologist I get called in a lot to solve behavior problems. Think about it, would you want to go out by yourself without your friends? Horses and humans are both social creatures. We're social beings and we want to stay with our friends. Why? Because we feel safe. The priorities for a horse are very simple. They want to feel safe and they want to have a social bond or a relationship with another animal. The idea that they're going out with you and they're being taken away from their friends even if they don't get along with their friends is often very scary to a horse. Because their friends provide the safety of the herd. Horses live in a herd, in a group. A lone horse set in the wild will not survive very well. It's a very scary place to be so horses will form friendships with other horses and even a horse's worst friend sometimes is better than no friend. Horses that do not have friends usually are anti-social. When you have good horse-human relationships, your horse will turn you into its best friend and then it doesn't need its other friends as much if you're around. So, horses are going to seek the company of their own social creatures but the amazed thing about horses being a social being just like humans is that sometimes their friends can be people, sometimes their friends can be another animal. Horses can form cross-species friendships with dogs, cats, chickens, oftentimes at the race tracks we use goats, little pygmy goats and they form very deep friendships. So, horses would prefer to have some horse friends for safety but they'll actually take any friends so the saddest horse is a horse who lives alone and usually the happiest horse is a horse who lives with a lot of friends.
Specialty: Holistic Horse Health
