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Equestrians Have a Science Denial Problem
Why the horse industry won’t embrace evidence that would improve equine welfare, and how we can change that.
More than a century ago, the concept of a “pecking order” among chickens was proposed by a zoologist. The study launched a flurry of scientific interest in dominance not just among animals, but in human-animal relationships as well. In the 1970’s, research on alpha wolves bolstered animal training approaches that filtered behavior through the lens of dominance hierarchies and hyper-focused on aggressive competition between animals.
Popularized among the general public by oversimplified science, dominance theory flourished in animal training spaces. To control and teach animals, dominance theory purported that you needed to establish yourself as the “alpha” — through whatever means necessary, usually violent. Celebrity trainers like Cesar Milan (in the dog world) and Clinton Anderson (horses) rose to popularity with their dominance-theory based training models that placed humans as alphas.
The problem is, researchers who study behavior are continuously finding that social structures in animals are much more complex than the simplistic “pecking order” mistakenly applied to them. This isn’t to say dominance doesn’t exist, just that it’s often…
