http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/hot-headed-chestnuts-link-coat-colour-behaviour-531247
Not hotter but braver and more inquisitive.
Is this junk science?
Sounds like junk science to me. An on line questionnaire? Where’s the control? Where’s the double or even single blind? Very poor study design which IMO renders the result so biased as to be junk.
Yeah, I don’t know that I’d call that a “study”, either. Results of a questionnaire, yes. LOL
I will say, I have two personal chestnut mares. They are both the most courageous horses I own–bold and curious.
The one I think is bold and curious because she’s dumb. She gets into more trouble than any horse I’ve EVER had–including trying to crawl through a fence when she was a foal instead of using the gate that was literally 6 feet away. I came home one day to find that she had somehow gotten a plastic flower pot that had blown into her field stuck around her pastern, a 3 foot branch stuck in her forelock, and a plastic bag stuck in her tail that she kept trying to bite. All in the same day. And she was not phased by any of the 3 things. Can you tell the pasture was right on the road?
The second is whip smart, (knock on wood) never gets hurt, is ALWAYS in the front leading the way in new situations, super athletic, bold, brave, will go anywhere I point her and jump anything AND is a complete quirky freak. She only tolerates certain people, and even then, she’s weird. I love her to death and would never sell her, but most people would probably call her crazy, and a typical chestnut TB mare. To me she’s bold and quirky, but sweet.
Surveys can provide valid study results if the questions are properly developed and assumptions defined. If participants were simply rating their horses behavior, and providing a description of said horses, without knowing the intent of the study to correlate the two, it’s possible a sufficiently sized survey could produce valid results. However, I think as the article notes, more research is warranted. I do think the data is interesting, and worth investigating further.
I’m with you, Chestnut Run. My one chestnut mare has a flaxen mane and tail, so when she does something funky I just call her a dumb blond. :lol: Love her to death, but damn is she a goof ball.
I have a Chestnut Mare who is very smart, very clever and very brave. She just had a Bay filly. I firmly believe that beneath that Bay exterior, beats the heart of a Chestnut Mare:lol:
The findings suggest a plausible link between melanin-based colouration and behaviour, but the theory that chestnut horses are more inclined to behave badly is not supported.
This seems contradictory - “behaving badly” is a behavior. This seems to imply that only certain behaviors - behaving well? - are linked to color.
The study was done in Australia - participants were also only in Australia? Lots of stock-horse types there which, as a breed in general, are more laid back.
I’d bet if you did a similar survey in the US, one done by, say, the AQHA, and one by the USEF, one might find different results between the 2 purely because of the tendency of each registry to have a different type of animal - less indication of “crazy chestnut” from the stock-type people, more from the land of USEF where you have Jumpers and Eventers and Dressage, where horses can easily have a reputation for being “hot”.
We’d need to know a lot more about the questions, whether breed was part of the data gathered, what discipline the horses were used for, etc.
They definitely didn’t use my chestnut in the study. He’s the biggest chicken!
This study may have some validity, depending on the methodology.
What is interesting to me about the results is that since they are based on opinion, it is not necessarily whether chestnuts display different behaviour in reality that’s important but the fact that despite the persistent stereotype about chestnuts, owners of chestnuts don’t seem biased by this stereotype.
Is the chestnut stereotype less pervasive than we think? Is it familiarity with chestnuts that reduces bias (or lack of familiarity that breeds it - in other words, is it primarily people who have little actual experience with chestnut horses who perpetuate the rumour about chestnuts)?
[QUOTE=Nevada10;8611954]
They definitely didn’t use my chestnut in the study. He’s the biggest chicken![/QUOTE]
I’m with you, Nevada10! I have a sea of bays, and my one chestnut was definitely the least brave of the group. Very inquisitive, kind, and charming as heck, but definitely not brave by any stretch of the imagination.
I would be curious, as JB points out, about what that would look like in the USEF world versus the stock horse world.
And to that point, one of the bravest horses I ever owned was a chestnut Quarter Horse who took me through the big Grand Prixes as a teenager. My much-less-brave chestnut was a warmblood in a breed registry where, up until recently, the ideal was a plain bay. So with a history of color bias (however slight), I wonder how that impacts the overall impact of color on brains.
