KNOWING whether a horse is right or left 鈥渉anded鈥� may be the key to beating the bookies鈥� odds.
Horse trainers and riders often say their animals perform better when running, turning or jumping in a particular direction. But whether these preferences were the result of training and experience or an innate, underlying penchant for one side or the other wasn鈥檛 known.
So Jack Murphy and his colleagues at the University of Limerick in Ireland decided to measure how 40 unschooled sport horses, destined for show jumping or dressage, performed on a series of tests. The researchers watched which leg they stepped forward with, which direction they chose to detour around an obstacle or roll over in a bed of hay.
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They found that the majority of female horses seemed to prefer their right side, while the majority of males seemed to be prefer their left. Around 10 per cent of the horses used both sides (Applied Animal Behaviour Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2004.11.001). Other animals have sex-biased preference for handedness, including dogs and chimpanzees.
As a perfectly balanced horse is the most desirable, trainers could use such information to help develop their horse鈥檚 weak side, Murphy says. It could also help trainers, and punters, decide where racehorses will run best, as the direction of each race, and the bends involved, will suit some thoroughbreds better than others.
