Explain The Five Senses Which Horses Use To Influence Their Behaviour

Task two
The five senses which horses use to influence their behaviour are touch, sight, smell, sound and taste.
Horses use their touch sense so they can make friends they would do this by grooming other horses. Mothers reassure their foals by nudging them with their muzzle. Humans can also convey messages through to the horse by touch. The whiskers above their eyes give a warning and protect their eyes because it tells the horse if anything is too close to their eyes. The horses body is as sensitive as our finger tips so they can feel a fly on a single hair and the skin has many nerve endings meaning they can feel any movement from the rider. To desensitise the horse the rider must have done a lot of kicking or pulling the horse around by
The layer of skin on the horse means that it protects the horse from dehydration, injury and invasion of micro organisms. The first thing a foal will feel is a nuzzle from its mother. When the horse has his forehead rubbed this replicates the rubbing on their mother’s tummy whilst suckling. Horses behaviour will alter depending on something different to do with touch. For example foals will feel reassured when their mothers nudge them with their muzzle. Humans can alter horses behaviour by our actions such as gentle stroking on their forehead can calm, comfort and relax a horse due to this being a similar feeling on their forehead when the horse was a foal suckling from his mother. Grooming other horses allows horses to build a mutual
Even though they do not have a perfectly spherical eyeball they do have the largest eye of any land mammal. Horses find it harder to adjust to any sudden changes of light, are sensitive to bright lights and are colour blind so they can see blue, green and other distinct colours however they cannot see the colour red. The vision for horses is primarily monocular vision which means out of each eye they see different things however when the horse looks forwards they can see in binocular vision, this is where they see the same out of both eyes. Binocular vision is used to focus on distant objects just by raising his head. There is three layers to horses eyes which are nervous tunic, vascular tunic and fibrous tunic. There is two blind spots with the horses vision one being between their eyes and the other directly behind them this means that they have almost 360 degrees vision. When the horse was first created their eyes were on the front of their face however they are now on the side of their head so they are able to spot predators approaching them. Horses use vision as their primary detector of danger. Horses behaviour will change depending on their sight. If a horse cannot see or if they have only one eye then they could more defensive and aggressive towards other horses about them coming towards them or if they