They wouldn't be Friesians. Freisans are uniformly (99.4% pure) black, with "feathers" (long hair) on their lower legs...

... "Smart" and "Dumb" is relative to a creature's needs. What serves a horse well in the wild (run like heck at the first hint of a predator) doesn't work well on, say, a crowded street, or in a building. We tend to judge intelligence by how well it serves human needs. Perhaps dogs seem intelligent to us because their predatory intelligence resembles what we also need to survive....

...Did ya'll read about the recent heretical conclusion some scientists reached that dolphins are dumb, dumb, dumb? They (the scientists) claim the fact dolphins can be trained to perform says more for the trainers' intelligence than the dolphins'. Example given was dolphins are commonly kept in captivity in adjoining pools with a barrier that's no more than a foot or two higher than the water. It never occurs to the dolphins' pea brains to just jump over the barrier. Those horses don't seem so dumb by comparison.

Cheers all.

And thanks for the link, Ed. I would have loved it even if I wasn't a horsey person.

Great video! And yes, horses are my newest passion (like dogs weren't enough!) Those women were fantastic and it was wonderful that they used their horses to gain the wild horses trust.

I like horses, they just make me nervous is all, large prey animals, with prey instincts take some getting used to.

Well, as a horse lover with dial-up this is rather frustrating!!!!

Bummer dudette! Is there a library close by where you can go & see it there?

Or go running to a friend who has DSL--my mom is coming here to view it, as she read about the story in the paper. The video is definately magnificent--I sent it to everyone I know, with many "thanks for passing it along" following in my inbox.

I keep thinking about the people in the Netherlands who experienced that event firsthand...witnessed it, not only the one who had the camera, but all the onlookers and the readers of the daily paper/tv news there. Wow. The video shows too, the intensity of the horses, it's like you can feel them breathing, the nervous energy. Ed said it...magnificent.

 Quote: AnitaGard

...Did ya'll read about the recent heretical conclusion some scientists reached that dolphins are dumb, dumb, dumb? They (the scientists) claim the fact dolphins can be trained to perform says more for the trainers' intelligence than the dolphins'. Example given was dolphins are commonly kept in captivity in adjoining pools with a barrier that's no more than a foot or two higher than the water. It never occurs to the dolphins' pea brains to just jump over the barrier. Those horses don't seem so dumb by comparison.

hehe, while i will agree with your statement that more or less says intelligence is relative, i just wanted to point out that i've seen dogs and horses both jump to amazing heights - my mum had a dog that when he was excited about dinner, would jump straight up and down, the lowest part of his body at the peak of the jump had to have been at least 5 feet off the ground, yet it never occurred to him to jump the fence; and i've seen horses that jump high bars that are held in by three-wire electric fences - that don't seem to feel the need to escape.

i thought scientists a while back were saying that dolphins might be the second most intelligent animals on the planet? (the quite biased opinion having us being the first)

So, if dogs and dolphins can't figure out they can just hop over a harmless barrier to go have some fun with the neighbors, why are those horses dumb for not wanting to cross water that experience tells them isn't safe? Seems like a pretty good survival strategy to me, not lack of intelligence.

Yes, the conventional wisdom has always been that dolphins are extremely intelligent. I have no personal experience with which to agree or disagree, I just like to challenge people to question the conventional wisdom now and then. Often the conventional wisdom is sound, but sometimes it's spectacularly wrong ("the earth is flat" comes to mind). When conventional wisdom is correct, it will stand up to examination, and by examining it I think we develop a greater understanding of WHY it's correct, and how to apply that understanding.

As for the conventional wisdom that horses aren't very bright, the Equine Research Foundation ( http://www.equineresearch.org/index.html ) is busy challenging some of those assumptions. Take a gander at http://exn.ca/Templates/Story.asp?ID=1999090953 . The scientist in the study makes the point that horses kept in stalls all the time or are only given repetitive tasks frequently develop behavioral problems not seen in horses that get to wander around and/or are kept intellectually stimulated. If that happens to "dumb" horses, what happens to our "smart" dogs if we keep them in crates or isolated with nothing to do for a vast majority of the time?

I used to adamantly believe animals, including dogs, couldn't think. Then several years ago I put the rest of some flavored yogurt I didn't like into my GSD's supper dish. Later in the day, at supper time, I told her to "Bring Bowl". I waited and waited for her to bring it to where I was waiting at the storage bin. She finally appeared with, not her dish, but the top to a large plastic storage box from my closet. I walked in the house and checked her bowl - the yogurt was still in it. Apparently she didn't like the flavor either and had brought me something else to use instead of her bowl. I had a LOT more respect for her intelligence after that.

Being open-minded doesn't mean falling for every new fad that comes along. It means being willing to think about new ideas, test them, and accept whatever (if any) value there is to them before relegating them to the dust heap.

I was afraid this was getting a bit off topic, but then decided to rationalize my verbosity on the grounds this all started with four women who saved some horses because they took time to apply their knowledge of equine behavior / intelligence to the problem at hand. I hope that's not too much of a stretch....

Cheers!

I'm going to my husbands office next week, after I call DirectTV to get their internet service. I tired of missing all the cool videos!!

There are some definite disadvantages to living in the sticks!!!!

 Quote: AnitaGard

I used to adamantly believe animals, including dogs, couldn't think.

i wholeheartedly believe they can think, but not necessarily reason.

 Quote: Debbie High

I'm going to my husbands office next week, after I call DirectTV to get their internet service. I tired of missing all the cool videos!!

sorry to take this thread even further off topic, but:

you sound like the ideal candidate to test ed's test video (thread here) when you get your shiny new direcpc (or whatever it is they're calling it now) connection. i know that a lot of things - online video game play being the main one i've seen - really hate the long latency of a satelite connection, and ed's video might need further tinkering to get it to play as good as i imagine youtube or google video do.