On the function of the expression and the concealment of pain in the horse
Zur Funktion der Schmerzäußerung und zur Schmerzkaschierung beim Pferd
Meyer H
DOI: 10.21836/PEM20230406
Year: 2023
Volume: 39
Issue: 4
Pages: 355-369
The present discussion critically explains two assumptions frequently represented in the general accounts of pain in horses. Firstly, the assumption that the purpose of expressing pain is to communicate it to conspecifics. Secondly, that the comparatively low expression of pain in horses results from its concealment in the wild, with the intention and/or the effect of hiding the reduced health and the pain from predators so that they do not become easy targets. By contrast, the facts considered here lead to the conclusion that the phenomena concerning the flight animal “horse” and the behaviour of the predators reveal the assumed deception of the predators to be improbable and a biologically futile measure. In view of the performance of fleeing animals, the wrong information provided to the predators about the health of the prey animals would be irrelevant, independent of the overrating of the mental ability of an equid. Furthermore, it remains hypothetical to what extent the predators, in view of the performance of the prey animals during flight, make an effort to find out about their state of pain, have the necessary ability for such recognition, and specifically smell or visually perceive injuries of the prey animals. Additionally, to what degree information of this kind has an effect on their behaviour during the hunt and when seizing the equids. Concerning the idea of the expression of pain as a communication to conspecifics, relevant facts suggest that, independent of the possibility, which is more or less largely accessible to humans, to infer the state of pain of a horse from its behaviour – which deviates from the norm – analogous to their own expressions and sensitivities, at least the repeatedly assumed purpose of the expressions, namely to inform conspecifics, remains equally hypothetical. In this respect, it is significant that neither the hippological nor the veterinary literature describes horses’ perception of the pain of their conspecifics or individual- and/or species-specific reactions to such perception in an empirically validated manner. In view of the uncertainty corresponding to these circumstances, it can at least be considered to see the purpose of the physical “accompanying” appearances of pain not in the communications to conspecifics, but rather to understand the physical symptoms primarily as genuine components of the psycho-physical phenomenon “pain”, namely as components which interact with the various other components of the complex event “pain”, i.e. which have an effect on them. In this respect, we should speak less of expressions of pain and more of its external aspect. In other words, the physical symptoms of pain presumably acquire their function primarily in the various components of the complex pain process of the affected organism, specifically as effects on the somatic stress existing in the experience of pain and as effects on the psychological process of experiencing and coping with pain.