Are Users Good Assessors of Social Dominance in Domestic Horses?

Abstract

Horse users and caretakers must be aware of the risks of mixing social groups. The current study investigated whether eight equine practitioners can assess the social dominance rank of 20 horses. The horses’ feeding time and agonistic/aggressive and submissive behaviours were observed during the feed confrontation test, and the dominance index (DI) was calculated. Kendal’s W, Spearman correlations and factor analysis were applied to test the raters’ agreement, the relationship between dominance ranks and the behavioural variables, and to determine the clustered behaviours. The agreement between all raters in the classification of dominance order ranged from moderate to perfect. The ranking by every rater was strongly and negatively correlated with the time of eating in feed confrontation tests and with the DI, evidencing shorter feeding times for more submissive horses. The withdrawal of the horse when threatened was the behavioural variable that was most often correlated with raters’ ranking. The current study confirmed the abilities of practitioners to categorise the horses under their care according to their social interactions. Additionally, rolling when denied access to feed was proposed as frustration-releasing (redirected) behaviour.