Need or opportunity? A study of innovations in equids.

Debate persists over whether animals develop innovative solutions primarily in response to needs or conversely whether they innovate more when basic needs are covered and opportunity to develop novel behaviour is offered. We sourced 746 cases of "unusual" behaviour in equids by contacting equid owners and caretakers directly and via a website (https://innovative-behaviour.org), and by searching the internet platforms YouTube and Facebook for videos.

Basic Needs in Horses?-A Literature Review.

Every animal species has particular environmental requirements that are essential for its welfare, and when these so-called "basic needs" are not fulfilled, the animals suffer. The basic needs of horses have been claimed to be social contact, social companionship, free movement and access to roughage. To assess whether horses suffer when one or more of the four proposed basic needs are restricted, we examined several studies ( = 38) that reported behavioural and physiological reactions to these restrictions.

Animal behaviour in a human world: A crowdsourcing study on horses that open door and gate mechanisms.

Anecdotal reports of horses opening fastened doors and gates are an intriguing way of exploring the possible scope of horses' problem-solving capacities. The species' natural environment has no analogues of the mechanisms involved. Scientific studies on the topic are missing, because the rate of occurrence is too low for exploration under controlled conditions.

Horses' () Laterality, Stress Hormones, and Task Related Behavior in Innovative Problem-Solving.

Domesticated horses are constantly confronted with novel tasks. A recent study on anecdotal data indicates that some are innovative in dealing with such tasks. However, innovative behavior in horses has not previously been investigated under experimental conditions.