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Video: "Clever Hans": How was the fate of the horse, whose intellect in the last century was equated to human
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
He was considered a genius animal and was equated with a man in intelligence. Newspapers wrote about him, people from all over the world came to see him. Alas, the glory was not long, and it was followed by exposure. In the last years of his life he was consigned to oblivion. It is not known whether horses are capable of feeling in the same way as humans, but if so, then the horse, nicknamed Clever Hans, could only sympathize.
The horse is a genius?
At the end of the 19th century, retired mathematics teacher Wilhelm von Austin caught fire with the then fashionable idea of developing intelligence in animals. At first he tried to teach cats to count arithmetic, but to no avail. Then he took up the bear, but also in vain. Then Austin decided to try to train the horse.
In 1888, the old man bought a foal of the Oryol trotter breed, which was considered the most contact and trainable among equestrians.
Austin named the pet Hans and started his studies, and behaved very irritably in the "lessons". He often shouted at his horse and even beat him. And suddenly a miracle happened: during one of these classes, the old man wrote the number "three" on the board, and the horse in response hit its hoof three times. Austin was happy. From that moment, Hans began to demonstrate incredible abilities to the owner. Whatever the owner asked (whether it was an arithmetic problem or some date on the calendar), the horse answered everything correctly, tapping his hoof the required number of times.
Von Austin began performing with Hans in front of street audiences, and each time these performances made a splash. The horse calculated examples with fractions, could guess the name of a person from the crowd, distinguish colors, denominations of coins, faces of people, and could even distinguish a pure musical chord from a dissonant one. Surprisingly, Hans correctly answered not only oral questions, but also written ones, which meant that he could read German.
Rumors of an extraordinary horse spread all over Germany. However, Austin wanted not only popular fame, but also recognition at the official level. But here's how to get the government's attention? And then the old man came up with a clever move.
In the summer of 1902, he advertised in a military newspaper: “A beautiful stallion for sale. He distinguishes ten colors, reads, knows four arithmetic operations, etc. Naturally, Austin had no intention of selling Hans, but his trick worked: the very next day, cavalry officers knocked on his house. In fact, they came more out of curiosity, and at the same time because of the desire to laugh at the eccentric, who thinks about his horse, no one knows what. However, after Austin demonstrated Hans' unique abilities to the officers, the desire to joke immediately disappeared and they left under a huge impression.
Soon the entire army was already talking about the horse's abilities, and the information even reached the Minister of Education, not to mention foreign journalists. The New York Times even wrote about Hans, however, its headline sounded somewhat ironic: “Wonderful Berlin horse! He can do everything, but he just doesn't speak!"
To investigate the horse phenomenon, a special commission of "experts" was created, consisting of 13 people. Among them were a veterinarian, a circus trainer, a cavalry officer, the director of the capital's zoo, and even several school teachers. The commission was headed by an authoritative psychologist Karl Stumpf. After several months of "research", a verdict was delivered: no signs of fraud were revealed on the part of the owner, and his animal really gives the correct answers on its own with a probability of almost 90%.
Exposure
Karl Stumpf, as a very educated person, could not believe his eyes, but he personally did the research! To make sure that he was not crazy, Stumpf asked his student Oskar Pfungst to study the horse phenomenon in more detail.
Hans was again subjected to experiments that took place in the courtyard of the Berlin University of Psychology. According to the methods developed by his teacher, Pfungst diversified the conditions in which the horse was interviewed. For example, Hans answered the questions of both Austin himself and strangers, without the presence of the owner. He also "worked" both alone and in the presence of other horses. During another block of experiments, his eyes were even closed, demanding that he tap his hoof blindly.
The horse was extremely exhausted by endless research and at times refused to work. Several times he even kicked the experimenters with his hoof, but they were adamant.
Finally, Pfungst succeeded in identifying a curious pattern. The horse always answered correctly if the owner himself asked him a question and if Hans saw him. If Hans heard only the voice of the old man, his human intellect disappeared without a trace. In addition, in those cases when the owner asked the animal to solve a problem for which he did not know the answer, Hans was able to answer correctly only in 6% of cases. The same thing happened in working with strangers: Hans coped with the task only if he saw the "examiner" and if he knew the answer to his question.
Research has shown that Hans is an ordinary horse, just unusually sensitive and cunning. After each banging of his hoof, he closely monitored the reaction of the person, catching when to stop. Neither facial expressions, nor expression of eyes, nor posture escaped his attention. As it turned out, if a person knows the answer to his question, he involuntarily gives himself away, even if he tries to seem impartial.
To consolidate the result, Pfungst successfully taught the same technique to his dog Nora, and then he himself learned to "read minds."
In his report “Smart Hans. Contribution to the experimental psychology of animals and humans "Pfungst said that, having studied the behavior of a horse, he can now, at will, evoke any reaction from Hans, even without asking the appropriate question, but only with the help of his facial expressions and certain movements."
Meanwhile, Austin himself was very offended for his horse and did not believe Pfungst's conclusions, calling them a "scientific joke." For some time he still toured with Hans in German cities, and then left for Prussia, where he soon died.
The further fate of Hans was sad. A wealthy jeweler became interested in him, who nevertheless decided to prove that the horse is a genius. He took Hans for himself, put him in a stall with two other horses and "tested" the animals for hours.
Since 1916, no one has heard of Hans. It was rumored that in the First World War it was used "for its intended purpose" - harnessed to carts, forcing it to transport ammunition. And his amazing ability to catch a person's reaction in the scientific community was called the "smart Hans effect."
And in our century, the most intelligent animal was recognized gorilla Coco, who knew about a thousand words.
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