Ambidextrous Grazing Posture in the Catalan Pyrenean Horse

Abstract

Motor laterality has been often studied in non-human animals, including ungulates, and it has been noted that adult animals tend to be ambidextrous. Therefore, the current study aimed to study the laterality of grazing posture when standing in a quadrupedal position. To this end, a total of 106 horses (24 foals, 8 yearlings, 14 subadults and 60 adults 53 females and 7 males) of Pyrenean horse from 11 grazing areas farms were observed and their forelimb preference when grazing was recorded (1-3 times for each animal). The obtained results revealed that approximately half of the horses were right-handed and half left-handed, and females were equally lateralized than males. Moreover, lateralization was not affected by age. Therefore, it seems that forelimb ambidexterity in Pyrenean horses is probably due to the lack of human contact. As the presentation of unevenness may be crucial to orthopaedic health and the compensatory mechanisms used by uneven footed horses are currently unknown, data presented here have a complementary crucial interest.