Dear all,

This may have been done to death and I just haven't found the post, in which case my apologies, but I have been reading Kelly Marks' 'Perfect Manners' recently and, apart from being struck by the fact that almost everyone says much the same thing but with their own spin on it (having just read both of Richard Maxwell's, John Lyons and Alex's clicker books), I read the statement that dogs and seals, being predators, respond to food rewards in a different manner than horses, who don't compete for their grazing.

Leaving aside competitive feeding in horses, I am curious to know if there is any science to back this up?

thanks all

m



Manda Scott MA CertVA BVMS MRCVS
Shropshire
UK

http://www.mandascott.co.uk

Hi Manda,

Not sure of any scientific refs off the top of my head but re: horse response to food as a positive reinforcer:

Horses expect to be able to eat whenever they want - they are herbivores who naturally live with their food all around them and eat it whenever they want (sorry, I know that's obvious). So the difference might lie in how they deal with frustration if food is not immediately forthcoming because of the reinforcement schedule in place/difficulty of shaping plan. Dogs and seals have to be able to cope with frustration or hunting could become a really unpleasant activity in the face of particularly slippery prey ("... only the fleetest toes and the keenest nose can ever out fox the fox" as the song goes - damn Chris Evans that's been stuck in my head for ages!). Domestic cats are an interesting example in this case. They are not great with frustration because they are designed to eat 15-16 mouse size meals a day. They are deadly killers and don't have to hunt for long to get a mouse/bird. And when they want to eat they just go catch a mouse. Dealing with frustration is a welfare issue in pet cats who only get one/two meals a day - this why they end up behaving like Felix of cat food advert fame. Cats are also trickier to clicker train because if they don't get reinforced fast enough or the shaping paln is too difficult they get fed up and leave.

Does that shed any light? What do others think?

All the best

Jenni

Hi Manda

I don't know about science, although since an awful lot of scientific behavioural research on horses seems to involve working for food rewards I suspect there is little to suggest that grazing animals don't work for rewards in the same way.

I am always suspicious of people who resort to this argument because they usually have a vested interest in encouraging people not to use food rewards.

These same people who say that food rewards don't work with horses will also (on different occasions!) claim that hand-feeding horses encourages them to bite (which we all know is only true if the timing is bad). Well I'm sorry but you can't have it both ways!!!!! If a horse wants a reward badly enough that he will mug for it then behaviourally and ethologically it is no different from touching a target for it. Maybe mugging is a slightly more instinctive behaviour for the horse to try first but, as any half decent clicker trainer will tell you, it doesn't take long for the horse to engage his brain and learn the new set of rules.

This whole issue always makes me think of the Emperor's New Clothes!

Catherine

Hi Manda,
Not sure if there's any research to say that horses and dogs process the click differently, but I'm aware of some work where they showed that in all species, the sound of the click to a CT savvy animal, is processed at least in part, in the amygdala. As you will know this is the part of the brain where emotional memory is processed.
Don't know if that helps but I find it interesting anyway.
cath