Leadership and Dominance in Horses

Like all grazers equids feed on rather evenly distributed resources, but compete for several scarce resources such as water, mating partners and shelter. We suggest that individual memorization of previous encounters affects the entire social behaviour, and especially the display of leadership behaviour, among the members of social groups. We suggest that the integration of social behaviours, such as approaches, leadings and followings in equids, generates a larger and more reliable sample size for dominance evaluations and may therefore be meaningful and beneficial for the evaluation of social relationships in animals that feed on rather distributed resources.