HORSE SENSES - Part One: Eyesight

Horses use various physical stimuli like temperature, and pressure along with their senses of sight, taste, hearing, and touch to familiarize themselves with the environment. This enables them to efficiently navigate and interact with other animals in their surroundings. Gaining insight into how horses perceive their surroundings aids in enhancing our understanding of their behavior.

The horse has the biggest eyes of all mammals and can also see his environment from an almost panoramic perspective.

The Basics

Monocular vision allows the horse to see something different with each eye. Thanks to this, he can see and spook at what is behind him without turning his head. Binocular vision means he can also focus on an object directly in front of him. With both eyes, horses only see below the nose and not straight ahead, so there is a slight blind spot just in front of the horse's forehead. The animal is unable to notice anything standing by his mouth. The horse must turn his head to the left, right, or back up to see it. Therefore, this type of reaction should not be punished and treated as disobedience. The blind spot in front of the horse's nose is lined up from the eye width to about 130 cm on the ground. If he wants to see a sharp and accurate image of something lying on the ground, such as poles, he must lower his neck and head.

The horse's eyeball is slightly flattened. This means that the horse can concentrate simultaneously on the food and his surroundings when grazing. A grazing horse can calmly watch another horse or a human approaching without taking his head off the grass.

Meaning in Flat Work

The horse can focus eyesight very well thanks to the appropriate neck and head positioning. To focus on the obstacle, he must look up. A horse that is ridden "on the bit" is able to see only his hooves. In this setup, he has to rely on the rider and the directions he is taking. The horse works virtually blindly in this position. This is why sometimes horses can collide during training if the rider does not react in time when they find themselves walking facing each other.

Meaning in Jumping

Observing the horses while jumping, you can notice that they raise their heads when approaching an obstacle. They do this to get a better image from both eyes and to see precisely what height and width the jump is. When the horse is at takeoff, he can no longer see the jump and can only rely on what he remembers from looking at it from a distance - in fact; horses are jumping by trusting their memory. That is why horses, to help themselves, often raise their head at the last moment to see better what they will be jumping.

The Night Vision

Horses see at night at least twice as well as humans - this is undoubtedly due to increased vigilance to protect themselves from predators during night grazing.

Horses tolerate intense lighting much better than humans, so they are not blinded by sunlight, especially those reflecting off the snow. However, they get used to changes in lighting more slowly. For example, the horse blinks his eyes after the light suddenly turns on in the stable, or it is difficult for him to overcome an obstacle that stands on the border of light and shadow.

The Colors

Horses distinguish well between red and blue, regardless of the background on which the given color is located. The perception of yellow and green against a lighter background might be more problematic for them to recognize.

Parkour is more difficult for a horse when the jumps are made of uniformly painted poles, e.g., dark blue or wood-colored. It is much easier for the horse to overcome the course, which consists of poles painted in strongly contrasting colors (e.g., red-yellow-white).

It is impossible to understand a horse and handle him properly unless you understand his unusual way of seeing. I hope that thanks to this article, your awareness will increase, and you will become more patient with your horse, understanding his behavior and instinctive reactions.