Do horses with poor welfare show 'pessimistic' cognitive biases?

Area of Science:

• Animal Welfare Science
• Cognitive Ethology
• Equine Behavior

Background:

• Challenging living conditions, including social, spatial, and feeding constraints, may negatively impact animal welfare.
• Cognitive biases, such as judgment biases, have been proposed as indicators of an animal's emotional state.
• Assessing welfare through cognitive measures can provide deeper insights into an animal's subjective experience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test if domestic horses in poor welfare conditions exhibit pessimistic judgment biases.
• To compare welfare indicators and cognitive biases between horses in restricted versus naturalistic environments.
• To explore the correlation between welfare status and judgment biases in horses.

Main Methods:

• Field study involving 34 domestic horses housed in either restricted riding school or naturalistic conditions for over 3 years.
• Welfare assessment included health-related, behavioral, and postural indicators.
• Judgment bias was assessed using a location discrimination task with positive and negative food locations, followed by ambiguous probe trials.

Main Results:

• Horses in riding school conditions showed significantly higher levels of behavioral and health problems.
• Riding school horses exhibited a pessimistic judgment bias.
• Horses in naturalistic conditions displayed good welfare indicators and an optimistic judgment bias.
• Pessimistic bias strongly correlated with poor welfare indicators.

Conclusions:

• Chronic challenging living conditions in horses are associated with poor welfare and pessimistic judgment biases.
• Cognitive biases, particularly judgment biases, serve as sensitive indicators of an animal's mood and the impact of its environment.
• This study highlights the utility of cognitive bias measures for assessing the welfare implications of different housing systems for horses.