This, while disturbing, actually makes sense. Anytime I showed things to my ponies or horses, I put it by their noses. If you show it to their eyes, they freak out. If you put it to their nose, they actually look at it. Stupid animals. Pretty, very sweet, but not bright.
They certainly won't be outsmarting any corvids or cephalopods, but that behavior makes sense once you know how a horse's eyesight works. They're very far-sighted, with about 350 degrees of vision but they can't focus on anything up close. This includes the area by their nose, but if it's down there they can sniff it, nuzzle it and generally get a better sense of it than they could by eyeballing it from closer than a few feet away.
Horses are basically sensor packs for horizon-to-horizon surveying of plains and steppe.
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Date: 2011-02-02 11:09 pm (UTC)Horses are basically sensor packs for horizon-to-horizon surveying of plains and steppe.