ABSTRACT
Like goats and chamoix, horses are extremely curious animals, which like to explore. These behaviors are particularly strongly developed in foals. Aside from playing, curiosity and exploratory behavior are thought to be the “major drives for independent learning”. Curiosity manifests in the form of ogling, sniffing, licking, and nibbling at unknown objects, as well as in testing movements such as careful tapping, pawing, and pushing. When exploring, the horse shows similar types of behavior and behavioral processes. For this reason, applied ethology does not differentiate between curiosity and exploratory behavior.
