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Originally Posted by GenuineRisk
It's an interesting theory, but I think it's anthropomorphizing a wee bit (now there's a three-dollar word on a dollar-fifty budget, eh?). I absolutely believe in animal intelligence and that endotherms (warm-blooded animals) have emotional lives, but I don't think they have that sophisticated a sense of cause and effect, or of the future. I find it hard to believe a filly would go to a farm, see broodmares and think "Hmm, if I stop running, I'll get sent to a farm and get pregnant." I think they experience life a little too immediately for that. I think I'm more in the "they tend to be oversensitive and get sour more easily than colts do" camp. If they aren't enjoying it, they won't do it because they aren't enjoying it; not because they're hoping if they loaf around the track they'll get sent off to Storm Cat. 
Now, while they're in season, I'm sure they're frantic to mate, but I think that's a more primal instinct, and lasts as long as being in season does.
One COULD argue that a predisposition to sourness in female horses is the result of a biological desire to mate, and that colts don't develop it as often because male mammals tend to be sexually mature later than female mammals (and colts tend to be sent to stud by 4 or 5), but I'm doubtful that it's an emotional craving; more an instinctual one. But that would require a heck of a lot of study, and I'd just as soon see that kind of funding go to laminitis research.
Of course, no one knows what a horse truly thinks, so take the above as just opinions from the resident zoo nerd. |
I concur, and as a matter of fact a lot of high performance fillies and mares have a tendency to reject their foals, at least the first one, in race mares add the Steroids to the equation and it's even worse. I HATE steroids given to fillies, ever wonder why Todd Pletchers female runners always look like buffed out Quarter Horses? I would NEVER allow steroid use in my horses, male or female.