Second report on Lady, the "mind-reading" horse.

Abstract

I N THE January number of this JOUKNAL we reported on a study of Lady, a "mind-reading" horse. This study was made at Richmond, Va. during the academic year of 1927-28. The (then three-year-old) filly had been claimed by the owner, Mrs. C. D. Fonda, to be of such superior intelligence as to be able to reply to questions by touching lettered blocks, and to execute mentally simple arithmetical problems. Of this superior intelligence we obtained no evidence; on the other hand we were able to show that Lady did not even recognize the letters of the alphabet.The horse was advertised by Mrs. Fonda as being capable also of "mind-reading", that is, able to receive mental influence from others without the use of its ordinary senses. She claimed that it was able to answer unexpressed questions by touching lettered or numbered blocks with its nose, the letters or numbers being mentally chosen by Mrs. Fonda or other persons present. It was to the investigation of this claim of telepathy that our principal efforts were directed.There was some movement on the part of Mrs. Fonda, inclination of the body, and movements of arm and whip; she also spoke frequently to the horse. While we did not discover any significance to these movements and while they appeared quite natural, they were at once suspected, and systematically eliminated. That is, Mrs. Fonda was gradually restricted to the point where all recognized possibilities of guiding the horse to the correct block by voice or visual cue were removed, not only individually but finally all together. Nevertheless the horse was successful. Good results were obtained with F (Mrs. Fonda) silent, motionless, and with eyes controlled, and with F separated from the horse, or with a screen between her and the animal. More than this, Lady was successful with F entirely ignorant of the block chosen, and with Dr. William McDougall and R as agents, or R alone, controlled and guarded against the giving of unconscious signals. It did not seem possible that any system of indications, conscious or unconscious, could operate under these conditions, and we felt ourselves com-287

In Dogs We Trust? Intersubjectivity, Response‐Able Relations, and the Making of Mine Detector Dogs

“…In 1928, accompanied by his mentor William McDougall, Rhine was invited to attest to the paranormal abilities of Lady Wonder, a “mind reading” horse. Though initially convinced that this was an authentic case of cross-species telepathy, Rhine later concluded that Lady Wonder was actually responding to subtle unconscious physical cues (Rhine, 1929a , 1929b ). The problem of unconscious communication, the so-called “Clever Hans effect,” was particularly challenging for parapsychologists because communication was not restricted to subtle physical cues.…”

The responses of horses to the situation of a closed feed box.

“…Nothing was discovered that failed to accord with it, and no other hypothesis proposed seems tenable in view of the results." 4 Later in the same year Lady was again investigated (4) with a revision of the former view. After 500 tests the investigators were forced to conclude "that the telepathic ability we earlier found the horse to possess has been now almost if not entirely lost and that Lady has become merely a trained animal conditioned to a system of signals made up of indicative body movements, voice inflections and whip movementt."…”