Developing methodologies to explore neurocognitive aspects of the equine stereotypy phenotype.
Orchard, Emily Louise (2025) Developing methodologies to explore neurocognitive aspects of the equine stereotypy phenotype. Doctoral thesis, Royal Agricultural University.
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Abstract
Stereotypic behaviours such as crib biting and weaving are traditionally viewed as unwanted behaviours that lead to health and performance reductions in the animals that perform them. Stereotypy horses are often reduced in monetary value as people are unwilling to purchase them, this project investigated the barriers that people in the UK face when deciding to purchase a stereotypy horse. Dopamine is a key neurotransmitter involved in cognition and learning and has been indicated to play a role in stereotypic behaviour. A noninvasive method of inferring dopamine transmission is spontaneous blink rate, but currently there are no reliable automated method of collecting blink rate in horses. To address this a computerised object detection method of counting blinks was created and tested against human participants. Whilst existing research demonstrates the physiological differences in key brain structures and dopamine function that controls cognitive function in stereotypy horses it fails to practically relate the results to real world scenarios. To address this issue, this project aimed to further investigate the cognitive differences between stereotypy and control horses, including both oral (crib biting) and locomotor (weaving) stereotypies and relate the findings to real world scenarios. Three studies were conducted, first a survey was created to ask participants their thoughts about training and performance of stereotypy horses, their beliefs about stereotypy aetiology, and their willingness to purchase one. The findings from the survey show that the biggest barrier to purchase is health concerns such as colic, 51% of participants surveyed stated they would not purchase a crib biter despite the overall conclusion that stereotypy had no effect on training or performance. The second study tested a custom-made object detection model to identify blinks in video footage against three human participants. The custom-built blink rate model had significantly reduced error rates in terms of False Positives and False Negatives detected (p= 0.029 and p= 0.003) compared to human participants. The final study used a Three Choice Serial Reaction Time Task to determine cognitive differences between controls and stereotypy horses, in terms of accuracy, impulsivity and compulsivity. Crib biters had a significantly lower level of accuracy (p=<0.001) and made more mistakes (p= 0.003) during the cognitive task compared to weavers and controls. Crib biters also performed more compulsive responses (p= 0.018) during the beginning stages of task training, but there were no significant differences between the groups in impulsive or compulsive choices made during the final task. The results from this thesis contribute to previous work investigating cognition and stereotypy and provide a novel solution to counting blink rate to ensure higher accuracy. It emphasises that crib biters may rely on habitual learning processes and require more careful training compared to weavers and controls to ensure that inflexible habits are not manifested. Given the success of the automated blink rate counting system future work should seek to build upon and improve this method further. Finally, this thesis re-evaluated public perception of stereotypy horses and the results suggest that people think stereotypies are caused by stress, environment and boredom, meaning that welfare reducing approaches to prevent stereotypy in light of this are becoming increasingly outdated as management tools.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
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| Keywords: | Equine stereotypy phenotype, Neorocognitive |
| Divisions: | Agriculture, Science and Practice |
| Depositing User: | Ms Susan Baker |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Jul 2026 14:28 |
| Last Modified: | 22 Jul 2026 14:28 |
| URI: | https://rau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/17120 |
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