Anim Cogn (2008) 11:457–466 DOI 10.1007/s10071-008-0136-5 123 ORIGINAL PAPER Comprehension of human pointing gestures in horses (Equus caballus) Katalin Maros · Márta Gácsi · Ádám Miklósi Received: 6 February 2007 / Revised: 4 January 2008 / Accepted: 17 January 2008 / Published online: 5 February 2008  Springer-Verlag 2008 Abstract Twenty domestic horses (Equus caballus) were tested for their ability to rely on diVerent human gesticular cues in a two-way object choice task. An experimenter hid food under one of two bowls and after baiting, indicated the location of the food to the subjects by using one of four diVerent cues. Horses could locate the hidden reward on the basis of the distal dynamic-sustained, proximal momentary and proximal dynamic-sustained pointing gestures but failed to perform above chance level when the experi- menter performed a distal momentary pointing gesture. The results revealed that horses could rely spontaneously on those cues that could have a stimulus or local enhancement eVect, but the possible comprehension of the distal momen- tary pointing remained unclear. The results are discussed with reference to the involvement of various factors such as predisposition to read human visual cues, the eVect of domestication and extensive social experience and the nature of the gesture used by the experimenter in compara- tive investigations. Keywords Human–animal communication · Pointing · Horse Introduction The comprehension of the human pointing gesture as a communicative cue indicating the location of hidden targets has received increased attention recently (for a review see Miklósi and Soproni 2006). The domestic cat (Miklósi et al. 2005), the domestic goat (Kaminski et al. 2005), the domestic horse (McKinley and Sambrook 2000), and diVer- ent “wild” animals [e.g. chimpanzees (Itakura and Tanaka 1998), orangutans (Call and Tomasello 1994), monkeys (Vick and Anderson 2000; Neiworth et al. 2002), dolphins (Herman et al. 1999), seals (Pack and Herman 2004), wolves (Virányi et al. 2008), foxes (Hare et al. 2005)] have also been tested in some versions of the two-way object choice procedure (Anderson et al. 1995, and see below). Extensive experimentation found that domestic dogs were very skillful with various forms of the pointing ges- ture (including distal momentary pointing, pointing with contra lateral hand, pointing to the contra lateral side etc, see also Soproni et al. 2002), which led some authors to suggest that this might reXect a special evolutionary history of this species (Hare et al. 2002; McKinley and Sambrook 2000; Miklósi et al. 1998, 2003, 2005; Soproni et al. 2001). Alternatively, the relatively good performance of other domesticated species like cats and goats led others to argue that domestication in general could have promoted the abil- ity to rely on human visual gestures. Although the compa- rable level of performance in cats and dogs could be explained by similar amount of social experience with peo- ple (Miklósi et al. 2005), in goats, the performance could not be the result of the extensive experience of the individu- als, because the experimental subjects were living in a zoo with relatively little human contact. The goats could rely on touching and distal dynamic-sustained pointing with gazing gestures during their choices. Moreover, young goats were K. Maros (&) Department of Organic Agriculture and Animal Welfare, Szent István University, Páter Károly u. 1, 2103 Gödöllö, Hungary e-mail: maros.katalin@kti.szie.hu M. Gácsi · Á. Miklósi Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, 1117 Budapest, Hungary