Horses’ Senses Involvement in Food Location and Selection

• Main Authors: Carla Andreea CULDA, Alexandru Nicolae STERMIN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AcademicPres 2019-11-01
• Series: Bulletin of University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca. Animal Science and Biotechnologies
• Subjects: taste; smell; seeing; selecting; behaviore; nutrition.
• Online Access: https://journals.usamvcluj.ro/index.php/zootehnie/article/view/13493

Senses are an important part of the interaction with the environment. Previous studies has been established that horses use smell and taste in the selection of their food. The involvement of sight in the selection process has not been clarified up to this study. Here, we investigate the involvement of senses in the selection process of food, also the proportion in which, each senses are involved and we evaluate the horses preferences for different colors. Two experiments have been designed and carried out with two racing horses The results obtained have demonstrated that the sight is the main sense in the location of the food, followed by the sense of olfactory organ involved in selecting plants ingested and the sense of taste which contributes less to the selection. There has also been identified a preference of the envolved horses for the pink color used in this experiment.