Familiarity, environment and the use of human given cues in horses

We assessed the performance of 57 horses in following a pointing gesture in a two-way choice task with either a familiar (N=28) or an unfamiliar pointer (N=29). We investigated the effects of the length of the relationship between the horse a familiar person (main caregiver), their social environment (living alone, in dyads, or in groups) and their physical environment (living in stalls/paddocks, alternating between paddocks and pastures, or living full time in pastures).

this data contain for each horse, the success (fail = 0, success = 1) to each of the 10 trial they participated in, the familiarity of the human informant performing the cues (familiar or unfamiliar), the age of the horse, their sex, their breed, the time since they know their owner, their social environment (living in groups, in dyad or alone), their physical environment (living in paddock, in field or alternating both ).