Horse Drooling Experiment

A.) Experimental Design:
Experimental Variable- Drooling.
Dependent Variable- Honking a car horn for 5 mintues at the horse.
Controlled Variable- Pupils dilated, ears are up.
Controlled Subject- This horse does not hear the horn.
Experimental Subject- This horse does hear the horn.
B.) The Scientific Method:
Observation: Horses drool.
Question: Why do horses drool?
Hypothesis: The sound of the car horn will induce the sympathetic nervous system of the horse therefore causing distress and anxiety within the horse which will then lead the horse to stop drooling (McKinley, 2016).
C.) Experiment: The purpose of this experiment was to test which variables affected the horses sympathetic nervous system leading the horse to stress and drooling. There were multiple variables tested such as the dilation of the horses eyes, if the horses ears were up and lastly if the horse drooled. In order to conduct this experiment, we had one horse getting honked at by a car and then testing those variables to
see if any of those were shown. Then we did have a controlled subject which was a horse just doing it is daily activities we tested those variables on this horse too therefore helping us to examine if there were any differences between the horses. The experimental variable also known as the independent variable is drooling and the dependent variable is the honking of the car horn at the horse.

D.) Our fictitious Data Collection and Analysis: Throughout our experiment our fictitious data showed that honking did cause the sympathetic nervous system to react in a horse and it did not cause the parasympathetic nervous system to react therefore since the horse stopped drooling we concluded that it was in distress (McKinley, 2016).
Variables Horse 1 Horse 2
Pupils dilated Not dilated Not dilated
Ears up No ears up No ears up
Drooling drooling drooling
Figure 1: Both of the horses states before drooling.

Variables Horse 1 Horse 2
Pupils dilated Not dilated Not dilated
Ears up No ears up No ears up
Drooling No drooling drooling
Figure 2: 5 minutes of honking and then checked the state of Horse 1. Then 5 minutes of horse 2 just grazing and not experiencing the honking.

Conclusion: Our results concluded that our hypothesis was supported throughout this experiment.
E.) Fictitious Article:
After a recent study of horses stress levels scientists were able to conclude that horses with dry mouths are more likely to have their sympathetic nervous system react when they are in distress.
This study was also able to show that horses who were drooling therefore causes their parasympathetic nervous system to react. This study basically consisted of testing two horses one horse was the controlled subject the other horse was the experimental subject. One of the horses experienced the honking and the other one did not. The study showed that horses being honked at were more likely to have dry mouths which is a sign of stress. In conclusion, this study was able to predict that drooling does not cause stress in horses that it is actually a sign of relaxation and also that a dry mouth is a sign of a horse being in distress. Therefore, this study is important in the horse world because it will help horse owners to be able to identify stress or non-stress in their horse’s
behavior.