doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00306 Do horses expect humans to solve their problems?

univ-rennes1.fr Domestic animals are highly capable of detecting human cues, while wild relatives tend to perform less well (e.g., responding to pointing gestures). It is suggested that domes-tication may have led to the development of such cognitive skills. Here, we hypothesized that because domestic animals are so attentive and dependant to humans ’ actions for resources, the counter effect may be a decline of self sufficiency, such as individual task solving. Here we show a negative correlation between the performance in a learning task (opening a chest) and the interest shown by horses toward humans, despite high motiva-tion expressed by investigative behaviors directed at the chest. If human-directed attention reflects the development of particular skills in domestic animals, this is to our knowledge the first study highlighting a link between human-directed behaviors and impaired individual solving task skills (ability to solve a task by themselves) in horses