To: Mounted search and rescue <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [MSAR] Horse instinct
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 12:27:24 -0700
Is the question "do horses normally avoid charging/harming people"?
Or is the question "is this behavior instinctive or learned", and
"is it natural or artificial"?
Instinct versus learned is another way of stating the philosophical
question of nature (meaning innate, genetically determined trait) vs
nurture (meaning learned behaviors, regardless of how learned).
To bring this back to MSAR, consider how to apply these questions
to use of the horse as a search animal.