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THE LANGUAGE OF HORSES

 

It is already clear that there is a great deal of com­munication between man and horse in the ordinary process of handling. First man communicates with a horse with his voice in his basic training of his animal. He teaches him certain words of command: 'whoa,' 'walk on,' 'trot on,' 'steady,' and so on. These words the horse learns and his rider hopes that he will obey them. In turn, man learns the significance of some of the sounds used by the horse. He quickly learns to recognise the whicker of welcome, the neigh saying 'is anybody about,' and the squeal of anger.

Man also teaches his horse a number of signs: he touches the horse with his heels to tell him to go forward and pulls at the reins, that is he exerts pressure on the horse's mouth, to make him stop. He caresses him when the horse is good and he hits him when he has done wrong. These exchanges are all basic to communicating with any animal. A vet trying to diagnose an illness will observe other signs made by a horse: for instance if a place hurts the horse will wince if you touch it. The horse will also tell you if you are hurting him by a sharp intake of breath. You can also tell if the horse is sick and out of sorts by his listless and dejected attitude. All these are the ways a horse communicates by signs with you. He will equally tell you if he is excited and he will tell you if he is tired, by the way he carries himself.

When we started research into animal communication, we decided to try to compile a short dictionary of horse messages, and for this we started by following the path that had been trodden by most people in the same field. Since we use sounds ourselves to communicate, it seemed obvious to start by studying horse sounds, so we decided to try to deduce some pattern from the sounds horses make. In these early stages we had a certain degree of success. We found that the whicker of welcome and the neigh of alarm were sounds that were common to very nearly all horses. But the more research we carried out, the more we dis­covered that we could not rely on set patterns as a guide to interpreting the sounds used by horses as a species. It became clear that different horses use the same sequence of sounds to convey different meanings, each horse having its own language, only similar to that of its associates and not identical. So we had to go back and start again.

We did this first by looking at how human beings com­municate, and we discovered that as much is conveyed by the tone of voice and the manner of delivering a phrase as by the actual words themselves. For example, an English­man, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman all speak English. They can understand each other, but their means of conveying any meaning is different. They will use different words, different phrases in different forms. In other words, people of different cultural background, even though they speak the same basic language, will use different words and phrases to convey a single meaning. And even within one culture, people of different nature and temperament will use divergent word-forms to convey a single meaning. Certain sounds on the other hand are standard to all people of the same race and are used at certain times: the word 'hello' for instance is common to all English-speaking people. It is in the same sense that the whicker of welcome is common to all horses. And just as the cry of 'help' is used by all people who speak English, most horses have a neigh or scream of alarm.



We also looked at the importance of the tone of voice to meaning. We found that the tone of the voice used by human beings to convey a standard message can vary both its meaning and its force. For example, a man or a woman using the phrase 'come here' can vary its whole sense by the tone of voice. If the words are murmured by a woman in a soft and seductive voice, it can be an invitation to make love. If the tone of voice is sharp or harsh it is a command to be obeyed instantly, and if screamed 'come here' can be a cry for help. In the same way the horse can vary its message by a raising and hardening of the voice, so that similar sound can mean anything from 'come here, darling' to, in its highest and hardest imperative, 'if you do not come here immediately I will have your guts for garters'. And exactly the same message can be used as a cry for help.

The second thing we found we had to take into account was that habits of communication vary according to sex; and whereas among human beings there are only two sexes, male and famale, among domesticated horses there are three sexes, male, female and neuter. This is important, since the note and tone of each sex is different: the range of notes used by a stallion and a mare are completely different, and the gelding will come somewhere between the two. This is not so important when you are in contact with a single horse, but it is extremely important to re­member if you are handling a large number of horses, or are trying to understand what a strange horse is saying, since the same sequence of notes used by a mare, a gelding and a stallion can mean different things.

Before you can even start to interpret a message made by sound, therefore, you have to know the sex of the animal. We also discovered that it is important to take into account the age of the horse, because obviously the range of tones and notes used by a foal is completely different from the notes and range he will use as a stallion four or five years later.

On the other hand the stallion, mare, gelding, foal and yearling will all have the same number of tones and notes, and they will be made in eleven different ways. Nine of the eleven different tones of voice are made by exhaling, that is to say they are made by breathing out. First there is a snort, which is made by using the nostrils alone as a sound box, and at times the imperative is expressed by crackling the nostrils at the same time. The stronger note with the crackling of the nostrils is used to draw attention as a signal of alarm, as a sign the horse is excited or to denote strong emotions. The whicker is also made by using the nostrils as a sound box, but this is a much more caressing note and can vary from a gentle blowing through the nostrils to quite a strong sound, used usually as a greeting or to show affection of some sort. Then there is the whinney, which is a much higher-pitched enquiring sound, and the neigh, which is stronger again than the whinney. In these two the voice box is used. In addition we know the squeal of the mare, and the bell of the stallion, each of which can have a distinctive sexual tone to them, or may sound aggressive or be used as a warning. These both come from the upper nasal regions of the voice box and are used in sex play, in anger or to display temper. The stallion has a whistle which he uses to call the mare; and all horses have a scream of fear, pain or anger which comes as a gust of terror from the lungs. These are all exhaling sounds. The breathing-in sounds consist of a snuffle, which corresponds to the gentle blowing out, and a sniff, which corresponds to the snort. Each of these notes has a definite meaning for another horse.

The stallion has the greatest vocal range, and some of his notes are frightening, while others will be very beautiful to hear. But he has a somewhat limited range of messages to deliver with his voice, simply because in his natural state he is concerned only with three things: sex, danger and food. So his messages are confined to these three subjects. In fact you might say he has only got three subjects of conversation, fear, food and female, which makes him very like man, except that man has one further topic of con­versation, and that is how best to avoid work. So in addition to 'let's eat', 'let's make love', 'let's bugger off', mankind also adds 'let's strike'!

A mare on the other hand, while she has her sexual sounds and her sounds for food and danger, also has a range of sounds for the care and protection of her foal, and probably her yearlings as well. She has to call her young to her for food, she has to call them in case of threatened danger and she has to teach them discipline, so her range of messages will be far greater than that of the stallion. A gelding, which of course does not exist in the wild, has a vocal range which may vary from that of a stallion, if it has been cut very late, to that of a mare if it is over-protective to the person who looks after it. A foal equally will have its own messages and vocal range concerning food and fear; it will have no sexual messages but it will have a range of sounds asking for protection and reassurance, and these will change as he gets older. He will retain some of his foal phrases as a yearling and even as a two-year-old. Then, when he starts feeling a man in his two-year-old summer, and certainly as a three-year-old, unless he has already been cut, his messages and voice will change to that of a stallion; or a filly will develop the language of a mare.

Contact with man too increases a horse's vocal range. This makes for complications, since it is almost impossible to differentiate between the messages that are natural to the horse and those that result from contact with man. If feeding is late, for example, a horse that has been in contact with man will whinney or bang his manger, or make some other sign to remind you it is time to feed him. This action is completely unknown to the horse in the wilds, since his food is always there, and he does not have to draw man's atten­tion to the fact that he is hungry. We note from observation that when a horse discovers the messages that he is trying to convey are understood, either by another horse or by man, he will use it again: that is, he extends his own vocabulary. The most extensive vocabulary we have ever come across was that of Cork Beg whom we owned for twenty years, and we observed that other horses who had had little or no contact with man learned phrases from him and thus ex­tended their vocabularies.

We were taught just how much one horse can learn from another by another horse belonging to my wife, Rostellan. When Cork Beg was getting somewhat arthritic and stiff and no longer enjoyed a long day's hunting, it was import­ant to get another horse to help him out. We were very fortunate in that we had a registered Welsh Cob, Trefais Dafydd, who seemed to fill the bill perfectly. Trefais Dafydd being such a mouthful, we called him Rostellan after an estate near my wife's home in Ireland. (Cork Beg had been named after her home.) He arrived at our place in a lorry-load of nine horses, none of which had ever been handled in any way. He was a big, black three-year-old. By the autumn, when we decided to keep him, he had filled out considerably and had established his own par­ticular place in the establishment. The only way my wife could find time to exercise two horses during the winter was to ride Cork Beg and let Rostellan follow behind with her labrador, Dora. He soon learnt to follow very closely to heel and never tried to pass Cork Beg. If he did Cork Beg would swing his head round and threaten to have a large piece of his anatomy for breakfast. Having established the correct order in the herd of two, Cork Beg was quite pleased to take on an apprentice and to teach him the tricks of the trade, and just how much the pupil was learning from the master I discovered one day when I went out after lunch. Cork Beg had a habit of standing with his head out of the stable door with his bottom lip flapping in the wind. This particular day was a nice sunny day and I came round the corner, and there were the pair of them, Rostellan imi­tating Cork Beg with his lip flapping completely relaxed. Rostellan had added his own touch to it by sticking two inches of tongue out as well.

Some things however were not quite so easy to teach. For example Cork Beg had a habit of standing with his hind legs crossed, that is with one hind leg resting in front of the other. The only time Rostellan tried it he ended up sitting on his bottom in a very undignified position, and he did not try that particular trick again. But mostly Cork Beg concentrated on teaching Rostellan the things he needed to know: for example he taught him exactly what he had to do when my wife was depressed. She, as everyone else, at times feels the weight of the world very heavy on her shoulders, and on these occasions she used to take Cork Beg out and Cork Beg would proceed through a whole gamut of tricks to make her laugh. The first one he would try on going out through the gate was to make a dive at Dora, who used to bark, pretending to bite his nose. Then he would walk sedately down the road until he saw a con­venient object to shy at. He would shy right across the road as if it was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen. It might be a fencing post or it might be a leaf blowing along the road, or a robin flying out of a fence, but Cork Beg would react to it with one bound and jump from one side of the road to the other, and stand cowering and shivering in the ditch. If this did not succeed in cheering my wife up a little bit, he used to take even sterner measures. He would wait until there was a grassy stretch on the roadway, then he would jump forward in a series of bounds, and gallop off in pursuit of Dora. Having gone five or six strides and made sure my wife was quite firm in the saddle, he used to proceed to put in a series of four or five bucks. I have even seen him on occasion, when he had unseated my wife, dodge to one side on landing and catch her as she came down. This trick was almost infallible, because he would not stop bucking until he had her laughing.

One of the greatest advantages we have for working a horse is the fact that we live on the edge of 2,000 acres of v Forestry Commission land, where we have the benefit of any number of grassy rides. One of the things the old man loved doing was to walk along pretending to be half asleep until he came to the corner of one of these rides, then he would suddenly dodge to one side round the corner and dash flat out as fast as he could with Dora in pursuit, and this was another infallible trick for making my wife laugh. One of the amazing things about him was that no matter how arthritic and stiff he was, even after he had broken his leg, he still used to go through the whole gamut of his tricks, and after doing them he would dance along as if he was a completely unmanageable and unschooled three-year-old.

Another thing he had to teach Rostellan was of course that whenever I appeared on the scene in the stable, set on doing something, he had to put up a show of being a wild unmanageable horse, completely terrified of the boss. I could go into the stable fifty times to do my stable chores, and have a job to get the old man to move over. But if I went in with a brush to groom him,, to get the worst of the mud off after a day's hunting, then it was a case of battle stations.

Yet another thing the old man had to teach Rostellan was that when you are competing, if the missus was on board everyone was out to enjoy themselves. It was not important whether you won a prize or not, provided a good time was had by all. But when the boss got on you were really competing and you had to get down to it and give every ounce you had. I used to compete with the old man once or twice a year and I never took him anywhere with­out winning a prize with him. He was placed three times point-to-pointing, won several hunter trials, and I even used to play polo on him. He was an absolutely superb horse.

Whilst Rostellan was not as intelligent as Cork Beg and was built diff erently, being a Welsh Cob instead of a three-quarter thoroughbred, he was a very willing pupil and over the course of the next three years he learnt most of what Cork Beg could teach him. This was a case where over a period of time one horse took on part of the personality of another.

The story of how Rostellan's character was changed by the influence of my wife and Cork Beg is only one example of how the character and behaviour pattern of a horse can be completely altered by a change in environment. And an alteration in the horse's environment has of course con­siderable consequence for equine communication, since change in his needs and habits means also that the horse needs a new and extended vocabulary to meet these new demands. Perhaps I can best explain what I mean in human terms. I live on Llanybyther mountain in North Carmarthenshire, my neighbours are farmers, as I was myself at one time, and the topics of conversation are horses, hunting, the weather, sheep and cattle, in that order – together with the latest bit of local gossip of course. The words we use are relevant to these subjects. Now if I were to move to London or the Midlands and take a job in an office or a factory, the topics of my conversation would change to football, cricket, cars, the theatre and music, and I would use words and phrases which at present I never use. Equally, when horses are in their natural en­vironment they live witliin a group with a fixed pattern of behaviour and a distinct social structure, descending from the lead mare to the lowliest yearling – the stallion will be outside the herd, usually unattached temporarily, though there may be immature males within the group – and their communication will be conditioned by the needs of that situation. When that herd of horses is gathered off the mountain and confined within a field its behaviour pattern is broken. The horses' freedom of movement has gone, which means that the signs concerned with that movement will no longer be used; and they will be in much closer proximity to each other and so certain signs and sounds will be used less and others will be used more. When they have been broken and handled by men the variation in the signs and sounds used will be even more marked, especially if the horses are permanently stabled. Some signals, such as those of alarm and those of movement, will almost never be used, and others such as those signalling impatience or demand for food will have to be evolved by the horses themselves, either through imitating other horses or out of their own ingenuity. Since the horse has only eleven different tones of voice and is unable to create new tones to convey new messages, this means that he has to adapt and duplicate his existing vocal messages to meet his new needs. Whilst he will be able to adapt a large number of his ex­isting signs, he will also need to invent a number of new signs, and this he will do either by imitating a sign used by another animal usually, but not necessarily, another horse), or he will find that a sign he uses at random gets a particular response and he will then use that sign again to gain that response.

One of the experiments we used to show how a horse extends its vocabulary is very simple to reproduce. We would take a wild pony from the mountains and put him or her with my wife's hunter, then, when it was feeding time, old Cork Beg would whinney for food, and within a very short time his companion would be whinneying in imitation. When segregated the young horse would still ask for food when hungry, but not necessarily in the same way as Cork Beg. Of some one hundred and twenty-two ob­served cases, only three had not learnt to ask for food within seven days of contact with horses who were already asking for food. We found that there are four basically different ways of doing this and it is unlikely that any two horses within a small group will ask for food in precisely the same way, but in each case there will be little doubt as to what he is saying, and he will be easily understood. Since we found it almost impossible to differentiate between those sounds learned from association with man and other domesticated horses, and those messages which are natural to the horse, we decided in our dictionary of horse mess­ages, which we were then beginning to compile, to list the meanings of all signs and sounds used, as they are all in­tended to convey a meaning and can be understood by other horses and by man. The distinction between 'natural' language and language learnt in domestication is further obscured by the fact that some sounds may be used com­paratively rarely in the wild, then after contact with human beings and domesticated horses become common. One example is the message of welcome. In the wild the horse will stay in a reasonably settled herd, and a horse returning to the herd is greeted by gentle blowing through the nos­trils, or a low whicker, or a nuzzle, all of which mean 'welcome'. The same phrase will be used by a mare calling her foal to her, by a mare reassuring her foal, and occasion­ally by other horses in the herd greeting each other, but it is not in common use. As a result of contact with man, it becomes very commonly used. When I pass my horses, I talk to them, I say 'hello' and they greet me in return. Some will blow through their nostrils, some will nuzzle me, some will give me the whicker of welcome, and my mare lantella will kiss me. They will use the same phrases also when I feed them, and they will greet their friends on return to the stable with the same whicker of welcome.

To anyone interested in academic research, it is crucial to discover whether a particular sign or sound is natural to an animal in the wild, or merely acquired from association with man. But to the practical horseman who only wants to understand his horse, the distinction between natural and acquired language is unimportant.

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR


Date: 2015-04-20; view: 626


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