previous theories that equine brains respond only to immediate stimuli and are not complex enough to strategise
Who held those theories? And have they ever been around horses?
Just this weekend my spouse and I had to move our mare and almost 4 month old colt. She’s quite used to riding in a small horse trailer, but the little guy was terrified of getting into it. When his mom realized it, she started getting on and off the trailer several times to show him it was fine. Then she went behind him and kept nudging him towards the trailer. Seemed pretty obvious to me that she knew what was going on and was trying her best to help the little guy understand it was all ok.
I’ve certainly met some horses that could have made me question the species’ intelligence if they were the only ones I knew. But there are plenty of intelligent horses out there. I’m really surprised that the prevailing theory was that they only respond to immediate stimuli.
Tough question, because there are some great ones.
A recent favorite from the Netflix era has been “Cry Wilderness”. The movie was laughably bad in the first place, but that just made it great for the MST3k treatment.
So many great lines in there. Like the old man talking about how all the animals and nature are his family and friends and they voice the bird responding with “He’s not my friend. I’m not indigenous to this area. Please call the police.” That cracked me up so bad the first time I didn’t hear anything else for at least the next few minutes.
And also the running gag around terribly unsafe firearm handling: “BANG!”
That now goes through my head whenever a show just waves a gun around like an obvious prop instead of at least pretending it could be dangerous.