Table of Contents
Foreword to the French Edition ix
Foreword to the English Edition xiii
Preface xvii
1 What We Know about the Nature of the Horse 1
Then and Now 1
Discovering the Real Life of Free-Ranging Horses 5
Equine Ethology Studies to Pursue 11
The Emergence of a New Field of Research: The Cognitive Ethology of the Horse 14
2 Equine Intelligence 22
Are Horses Smart? One Question, Several Answers 22
A Rash of Clever Horses 28
3 Animal Intelligence, Cognition, and Representation 40
Intelligence and Cognition 40
Animal Behavior, Cognition, and Representation 46
4 The Equine Brain 71
Nervous Tissue and the General Organization of the Mammalian Nervous System 70
Brain and Mind in the Light of Evolution 99
5 The Nature of Equine Perception 111
Perception: A Dynamic Process That Constructs the World 111
A Few Issues Regarding the Study of Equine Perception 122
6 The Anatomical and Physiological Basis of Equine Visual Perception 125
Size, Arrangement of the Eyes, and Visual Field 126
Anatomical Structure of the Eye 129
A Short Tour of the Anatomy of the Retina 132
Structure, of the Retina and Visual Quality 137
Optical Pathways and Cortical Distribution 145
Chromatic Theory and Color Perception 148
7 The Behavioral Exploration of Equine Visual Perception: Perception of Shapes and Movement 160
Experimental Procedures 160
Visual Acuity 162
The Visual Field 167
Night Vision 172
The Visual Apparatus: An Integrated System 176
… In the Context of Cerebral Hemispheric Specialization 179
Perceiving the Third Dimension 194
Image Recognition 203
Object Recognition 207
Perceiving Movement 211
The Equine Visual Environment: Seen as a Whole or the Sum of Its Parts? 213
8 The Behavioral Exploration of Equine Visual Perception: The Quest for Color Perception 217
Brightness: A Vexing Dimension 218
A Pioneering Study (Grzimek 1952) 221
An Inconclusive Replication (Pick et al, 1994) 225
An Apparent Confirmation of Grzimek's Results (Smith and Goldman 1999) 226
New Uncertainties Centering on Brightness (Macuda and Timney 1999) 229
The Evidence for a Neutral Point (Geisbauer et al. 2004) 233
Color Preferences (Hall et al. 2005) 236
Do Horses Perceive the Entire Color Spectrum? (Hall et al. 2006) 237
The Neutral Point: Break or Continuity? (Roth, Balkenius, and Kelber 2007) 244
Equine Dichromacy: A Qualification (Hanggi, Ingersoll, and Waggoner 2007) 250
A New Experiment in Chromatic Discrimination (Blackmore et al. 2008) 255
How Well Do Horses Discriminate Color in Half Light? (Roth, Balkenius, and Kelber 2008) 262
Colors That Can Be Fairly Well Discriminated across the Light Spectrum (Timney and Macuda, 2009) 265
A Provisional Summing Up 270
9 Hearing in Horses 272
Nature, Representation, and Characterization of Acoustic Information 272
The Equine Auditory System: Anatomy and Physiology 280
Behavioral Exploration of Equine Auditory Perception 289
10 Equine Chemical Perception: Odors, Pheromones, Tastes, and Flavors 330
Olfactory Perception in the Horse 331
From Taste to Flavor 354
11 Tactile Perception in the Horse 369
Structure and Function of Horse Skin 369
Receptors: Equine Sensory Pathways and Skin Sensitivity 374
Mutual Grooming and Neuro-physiological Response 378
Tactile Stimulation and Interspecific Social Relationships 385
Conclusion 388
References 393
Acknowledgments 425
Index 427
