A few weeks ago I set Ms Madeleine Nunan one of our budding Gooromon Park riders some horsey homework and she did such a fantastic job I wanted to share. Well done Maddie! The Equine eye: is the largest of any land mammal. Its visual abilities are directly related to the animals behaviour and the fact that the horse is a flight response animals. Both strengths and weaknesses of the horses visual abilities should be taken into consideration when training, as an understanding of the equine eye can help discover why the animal behaves the way it does in various situations. COLOUR VISION (Danielle Ffrench - my homework) Horses are not colour blind, but have two-colour, or dichromatic vision. This means that they see two of the basic three wavelengths of visible light, compared to the three-colour (trichromatic vision) of most humans. In other words, horses naturally see the blue and green colour of the spectrum and the colour variations based upon them, but cannot distinguish red. The research I have done indicated their colour vision is like green-red colourblindness in humans, where certain colours, especially red shades, appear more green. Dichromatic vision is the result of the animal having two types of cones in their eyes: a short wavelength sensitive cone (s) that is optimal at 428 nm (pastel blue-grey), and a middle/long wavelength sensitive cone (M/L) which sees optimally at 539nm, more yellowish. This structure may be because horses are most active during dawn and rush, a time when the rods of their eye is especially useful. The horses limited ability to see colour is sometimes taken into consideration when designing obstacles for a horse to jump, since the animal will have a harder time distinguishing between the obstacle and the ground if they are only a few shades off. Most people paint their jump rails a different colour from their footing or surrounding landscape so the horse can judge the obstacle better. My research also shows that horses are less likely to nock a rail if the jump is painted with two or more contrasting colours, rather than a single colour. I hope this information has answered your question, and I hope I got the homework right! It took me ages to do — feeling accomplished. :)
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 02:05:56 +0000
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