Night Time

So in a recent article from Equus, I learned some very interesting things about Equine Night Vision. Did you know that horses can see better than humans at night? Well I guess that's not suprising, especially since most animals can see better than us. Some of the terms might not make sense to you, but it was an interesting article.

The article talked about how new physiological studies show that horses are equipped for functional scoptic (dim light) vision. The equine retina, where the rods and cones are kept, whats responsible for seeing colors basically, to sum it up, has MORE RODS AND CONES, and the horse has a reflective structure called the TAPETUM LUCIDUM, which increases light-gathering properties...and I'm almost positive that we don't have that structure. Though evidence suggests that they can see better in the dark than we can, BUT they have a harder time distinguishing objects apart in the dark.

So....The Equine Research Foundation, in Aptos, California, designed a study to test the ability of horses to discriminate between onjects at various light levels. Then in a windowless building....horses were trained with two images...a black circle on a while background, and a black triangle on a white blackhoard. They trained some horses to go to the circle, and some to the triangle.

THEN>> once the horses were choosing the right one every time, they slowly started diminishing the light. THEN...only when it was almost pitch black could horses not distinguish between the shapes..BUT they could walk and maneuever fine..and knew where the walls, etc. were.

Very interesting article I thought...I wish we could see that good at night : ) I'll leave the navigating to my horse when I have to ride at night. haha.