Conversations in Equine Science

This week Kate and Nancy discuss using smartphone apps to help in the recognition of emotions and pain in horses.

Research Reference/Link

Corujo, Luis A., Emily Kieson, Timo Schloesser, and Peter A. Gloor. (2021). "Emotion Recognition in Horses with Convolutional Neural Networks" Future Internet 13, no. 10: 250.

https://doi.org/10.3390/fi13100250

Equine Pain and Welfare App:

Link to Training Program for EPWA:

https://training.epwa.nl/

Nancy and Kate talk about Dr. Manfredi's equine metabolic research at Michigan State University.

Reference/Link to article:

Manfredi, J. (2023). Horse health research will help humans stay healthy, too, with insights on reining in diabetes and obesity, The Conversation; Michigan State University.

https://theconversation.com/horse-health-research-will-help-humans-stay-healthy-too-with-insights-on-reining-in-diabetes-and-obesity-205185

This week Nancy takes a look at the use of Bell Mares during the 1800s up to WWII.

Research References:

L. Proops et al (2012).Social relations in a mixed group of mules, ponies and donkeys reflect differences in equid type, Behavioral Processes.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635712000654

Górecka-Bruzda A, Jastrzębska E, Drewka M, Nadolna Z, Becker K, Lansade L (2022) Female Horses are more socially dependent than geldings kept in riding clubs. Appl Anim Behav Sci 254:105714. 

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2022.105714

This episode Kate and Nancy discuss a listeners' recently published research. This research is a 2024 update to our past episodes on Equine Assisted Therapy.

Research Reference:

Seery, Rita, and Deborah Wells. 2024. "An Exploratory Study into the Backgrounds and Perspectives of Equine-Assisted Service Practitioners" Animals 14, no. 2: 347.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14020347

This week Nancy and Kate discuss a listeners' email request via a recently published paper on the effects of weather on pastured horses.

Research Reference and Link (not open access-snippets available.):

Keller, G.A.; Nielsen, B.D.; Vergara-Hernandez, F.B.; Robison, C.I. Tracking the Impact of Weather on Equine Activity While Pastured. J. Equine Vet. Sci. 2022, 116, 104052.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0737080622001903

Kate and Nancy discuss using the EBPI to manage osteoarthritis in horses.

References and Link:

Howard DL, Lancaster B, de Grauw J. Development and Preliminary Validation of an Equine Brief Pain Inventory for Owner Assessment of Chronic Pain Due to Osteoarthritis in Horses. Animals. 2024; 14(2):181.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ani1402018

Nancy and Kate discuss the horses role in 1872 and how an equine flu epidemic shut down the US economy, but also led to improved horse welfare.

Research Reference/Link:

Freeberg, Ernest (2020). How a flu virus shut down the US economy in 1872 – by infecting horses. The Conversation US, Boston, MA. December Issue.

https://theconversation.com/how-a-flu-virus-shut-down-the-us-economy-in-1872-by-infecting-horses-150052

Nancy and Kate review their favorite episodes and then reveal the favorite episodes of the listeners.

Welcome Everyone to 2024 - Season 5

Kate and Nancy discuss their recently published research paper on the preliminary results of their Conversations in Equine Science listener survey.

Reference and Link: Acton, K., McLean, N. & MacKay, J.R.D. (2023) Preliminary evidence supporting the use of equine science podcasts to bridge the gap between scientists and horse enthusiasts to improve horse welfare. Equine Veterinary Education, 00, 1–11. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/eve.13926

This week Nancy and Kate discuss how horses are once again helping humans navigate the new frontier of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Research Reference and Link:

Eakta Jain and Christina Gardner-McCune. 2023. Horse as Teacher: How human-horse interaction informs human-robot interaction. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 536, pp. 1–13.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3544548.3581245