Test to find out if horses suffer from depression

Can a horse suffer from depression or poor sleep?

Researchers at Aberystwyth University are hoping to find out, after developing a test using touch screens.

Horses use their noses to distinguish and match images, and are rewarded with food when they get this right.

The study could have implications for how horses are cared for, and kept in stables.

Breeder Gwenan Thomas is in no doubt horses can suffer from depression, and said understanding it could help improve the performance of elite horses.

In the project's initial stage, researchers were working with 20 horses at the university's equestrian centre in Aberystwyth.

They plan on taking it into the wider community to work with hundreds of others.

"Behavioural depression is difficult to get a sense of in horses," said lead researcher Dr Sebastian McBride.

"If you look at a horse in a stable with its head down, is it in a state of drowsiness? Is it sleeping or just resting? Or is it in a state of behavioural depression?

"It is difficult to clinically identify it and is something that we are working on to improve our understanding."

He hopes to develop a method of identifying whether behavioural depression in horses exists, and if so, assess its prevalence.

The researchers are using two cognitive tests similar to tests used with humans.

In the first test, the horse is shown two images on a screen.

If it touches the correct one, a researcher will release food as a reward.

In the second test, a single image is shown on the screen before disappearing.

It then reappears alongside three other images.

The horse gets a reward if it remembers the original image and touches it on the screen.

Dr McBride said these exercises test different cognitive mechanisms in the horse's brain to see how well those parts of the brain are working.

"If you're getting neurophysiological changes that are maybe to do with stress or depression or sleep disturbance, then this is a great way of being able to quantify all of that," he said.

The researchers are trying to discover if results are affected by the horse's environment and possibly a lack of sleep, and also its mental state.

Dr McBride said "Everybody knows that if you've had a bad night's sleep, how that affects you the next day in terms your emotional state, but also your cognitive capability.

"Being able to accurately measure sleep as well as the cognitive consequences of poor sleep is crucial to this important research area."

But what about depression?

Dr McBride said it can be difficult to diagnose in humans who can verbalise how they feel.

It is more challenging with animals. But he said the tests will provide information to give the researchers a better understanding.

"You get all of these biomarkers that come along with being depressed - changes in behaviour, changes in physiology, changes in cognition, and those changes may indicate that the animal is in a depressed state," he said.

Gwenan Thomas runs Talgrwn Stud, a horse breeding service in Llanwnnen near Lampeter.

She believes horses suffer from depression because of issues including their environment, company or a lack of it, chronic pain or stress.

"An unhappy horse usually means an unhappy owner as well," she said.

"So it is really important to figure out why the horse is depressed and treating the cause rather than the symptom."

Ms Thomas also believes the research could be relevant in the training of elite horses, adding: "If it's a race horse or a show jumping horse or a dressage horse - if they can improve their performance in show jumping by a few inches or in racing by a few seconds faster, and better mental health does that, we have a duty to recognise it and to deal with it."