Do horses understand what it means to be in a race? A new article argues they don’t. Veuer’s Matt Hoffman has the story.
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00:00Do racehorses know what it means to be in a race?
00:02Lecturer Catherine Henshaw says no.
00:05Henshaw is with the School of Agricultural, Environmental, and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University.
00:10In a new article on The Conversation, she argues that the concept of racing
00:14goes against horses' natural inclination to group together as a protection against predators.
00:19And jockeys only overcome this inclination by use of their whips.
00:22Not everyone agrees.
00:24Horse owner Aaron Soans told the Los Angeles Times in 2016
00:27that he could see the pride of victory in his cult, Trojan Nation, after the Wood Memorial,
00:32even though the horse had actually lost in a photo finish.
00:35But in the same article, jockey Mike Smith interpreted much of the horse's post-race behavior
00:40as a reaction to the emotions of the people around them, saying,
00:43If you walk into your house and you're sad, your dog knows it.
00:46In 2015, Cammie Hileski, coordinator of the Horse Management Program at Michigan State University,
00:52told USA Today that she does believe some horses want to beat other horses in a racing scenario.
00:58Though she admitted this was mostly conjecture.
01:00In the end, that may be all we have, since we can't go inside a horse's brain.
01:04And that's a shame.
01:05As photographer Henry Travnik told Sports Illustrated in 1955,
01:10horses have more intelligence than some humans.
01:12They don't bet on people.