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 goes 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 that he could see the pride of victory in his cult, Trojan Nation, after the Wood Memorial, even 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 as 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 Haleski, coordinator of the Horse Management Program at Michigan State University, told USA Today that she does believe some horses want to beat other horses in a racing scenario, though 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 Dravnik told Sports Illustrated in 1955, horses have more intelligence than some humans.
01:12They don't bet on people.