Joy. Fear. Affection. Science has confirmed what many animal owners have long known: animals do have intense emotions. However, what they actually feel is not always what owners are used to thinking. “Advances in the science of animal emotions have had a transformative effect on our worldview,” says Dr Helena Telkanranta, main author of the acclaimed non-fiction graphic novel The Mind of a Horse. Science Meets Comics. “Scientists now know that all mammals, birds, and even fish do experience basic emotions, such as pleasure and fear. Such feelings are strong, regardless of whether the species also is intelligent.”
So, what do horses need to feel good? According to up-to-date science, the most important things for a horse’s well-being are the company of familiar, friendly horses, and the absence of fear and pain in daily life. Right on the heels of these are the other keys to a good life: freedom to move around in a varied environment such as a large pasture. Natural foraging, which means searching for and finding food here and there across a wide area. Constant or nearly constant access to something rich in fibre to eat. And physical comfort, such as a straw-covered floor with enough space to sleep lying down, which gives better quality of sleep than sleeping while standing. Finally, to make it possible for a horse to enjoy companions at a later age, the best thing that can be given to a foal is growing up in a group of other foals and adult horses to learn social skills from.
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Happiness stemming from having to search for food instead of just having it served in front of the horse may sound counterintuitive, but it is because of how their brains work. The ancestors of today’s horses evolved on open grasslands, where a typical day involved strolling for miles while looking for the tastiest plants. Searching and finding elicit repeated releases of dopamine, serotonin, and other natural feel-good molecules in the brain. To feel happy or even normal, any animal, like a human being, needs an opportunity for activities that cause the production of these vital molecules at sufficient levels.
A major challenge for those wanting to improve the well-being of horses and other animals has been the difficulty of accessing scientific knowledge. While there is a large body of scientific research on the subject, many readers just don’t know where to find it—or how to read the technical jargon.
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Some books do exist, though, to build bridges between science and readers with an interest in horses. The newest takes easy access to scientific knowledge to a new level. The Mind of a Horse. Science Meets Comics presents an overview of the inner worlds of animals, using horses as an example, in the form of a colourful graphic novel with relatable protagonists. Each chapter ends with a text page for those who want to know more. The book continues online, with exclusive in-depth content accessible via quick response codes and web links in the book. The book has been designed for young and adult readers, regardless of prior experience. It has been praised by a wide variety of readers, from teenagers to experienced professionals working with horses.
“This insightful book is cleverly constructed with a set of characters designed to illustrate and illuminate the inner world of the horse. This comic book represents a unique and friendly scientific approach,” says Dr Andrew McLean, a renowned horse trainer and scientist. Dr McLean is a co-director of Equitation Science International, Australia, and himself author of several books on horse behaviour and training.
The social behaviour of horses includes friendly scratching among familiar horses. Many horse enthusiasts recognize the scene: two horses scratching each other’s withers with their teeth while relaxing to enjoy the feeling. The scene illustrates another similarity between our felt experiences and those of animals such as horses. A friendly touch is such an important component of a horse’s life that research has shown horse welfare to be better if horses can touch a familiar horse instead of just having visual contact with it, such as across the aisle of a stable.
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Painful sensations are equally real to horses. How much pain an animal can feel does not depend on its intelligence—nor its body size. “Along with the basic emotions, pain is an astonishingly similar experience among us and a wide range of animals. The magnitude of felt pain is the same in horses, humans, and hamsters,” Dr Telkanranta says.
Skin thickness does not have an effect either, contrary to popular belief. This is because the nerve endings sensing pain are located on the skin surface, even in thick-skinned animals such as elephants and horses.
“The absence of pain and fear is a powerful component of a good life,” Dr Telkanranta says. “Recent research has uncovered a lot of valuable, detailed knowledge on how to avoid causing pain to horses. Many cases of pain felt by horses are caused entirely inadvertently, without the owner or rider knowing about it. Steps to a better life include obvious things such as paying attention to things like training and handling methods, including the use of whips and spurs, but also other crucially important things such as saddle fit, noseband tightness, and honing the skills of how to spot signs of surprisingly common health conditions such as back issues or gastric ulcers that require the attention of a veterinarian.
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“The traditional approach of ‘breaking’ a horse is based on a misunderstanding of how horses think about authority,” Dr Telkanranta says. “There also are many situations in which a horse does seem to be ‘spiteful’ or plotting revenge, but the reality turns out to be something else completely. We discuss these and many other familiar scenarios in the book. Several horse enthusiasts have told us their relationships with their horses have improved dramatically as a result of the deeper understanding of horses’ emotions and motivations.”
The book’s popularity is soaring—despite needing a trick to find it on Amazon. Published by Arador Publishing, the book department of the science communications company Arador Innovations Ltd, the book has sold several thousand copies so far. The approach of Christmas has resulted in a marked increase in sales on sites such as Amazon.
“Readers are increasingly succeeding in finding it on Amazon, despite a quirk in the site’s algorithm,” Dr Telkanranta says. She gives a hint: “As it is a new addition, the only way to find it on the Amazon site is to include the name of the publisher in the search words. For example, search words ‘mind horse arador’ are successful.”
Part of the book’s appeal stems from the fact that the team behind the book has long experience in the public communication of science. Dr Telkanranta has a Ph.D. in animal behaviour science and has previously worked at the universities of Bristol, the U.K., and Helsinki, Finland. In her native Finland, she is considered the leading expert in the science of animal minds, and she has won multiple awards in the public communication of science. This book is her international breakthrough, made possible by teaming up with two internationally acclaimed science communicators and artists. Maija Karala is a science journalist and illustrator with a versatile career in public communication of science. For this book, she developed the characters and plot together with Dr Telkanranta and illustrated the book’s graphic novel story. Ville Sinkkonen is an artist specializing in scientific accuracy, whose work has been commissioned by the BBC and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, among others. In this book, he created the painting on the cover, the line drawings on the text pages, the colours of the graphic novel pages, and the three-dimensional computer models that were part of Karala’s process of bringing realistic horses to life on the book’s pages.
SOURCE: PR Newswire
