Horses (Equus caballus) successfully solve an object choice task using a human pointing gesture and a physical marker: A partial replication of Proops et al. (2010).

Abstract

Like other domesticated species, most notably dogs, horses have been reported to follow human gestures and successfully use them to gain rewards in an object choice task. Empirical support for the hypothesis that a domain-general mechanism may underlie this ability comes from studies in which horses have successfully solved the task by using not just a human pointing gesture but also an arbitrary physical cue, namely a wooden marker. Here, we replicated the two conditions in which these two cues were used by Proops et al. (2010) with two critical changes: first, we positioned the marker out of the horses' sight, and second, we positioned the marker such that it was in the same position where the gesture would be when the experimenter showed the pointing gesture. Horses successfully solved the task using both the pointing gesture and the marker, and their performance did not differ statistically significantly between these two conditions. The robustness of this result was corroborated by complementary model comparisons, which further showed that the horses' performance was not significantly influenced by their age or sex. Our findings thus support the consistency of previously reported findings in these specific testing conditions and suggest that at least part of the horses' ability to solve the object choice task with different types of cues is based on a domain-general mechanism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).