The Equine Ladder of Aggression in practice

In my recent webinar “Understanding Aggression in Horses”, hosted by World Horse Welfare, I talked about the fact that aggression is a complex form of communication that ranges from subtle facial expressions and changes in body posture to overt kicks and bites.

Aggression is costly: it requires energy, can jeopardize social relationships, and even lead to injury and death. Horses will therefore avoid confrontation as much as possible, and have developed complex communication to defuse tense situations and avoid having to resort to overt aggression.

I like to visualise this gradual escalation (and de-escalation!) of aggression as an Equine Ladder of Aggression, inspired by Kendal Shepherd’s Canine Ladder of Aggression:

The 'green zone' behaviours at the bottom of the ladder are so-called 'appeasement' or 'calming' signals. In general, socially competent horses will heed these signals by mirroring them and walking away, and so avoiding any need for further escalation up the ladder.

Now, let’s train our eyes and analyse the video above!

It was filmed by me in October 2020, after I had moved to a new yard. In the video, you can see my pony Turbo meet Cleo, the piebald mare, for the first time.

1. First, they greet each other. (Horses often stand parallel like this when greeting each other, rather than face-to-face.)

2. Then, Cleo finds something about the situation a bit off-putting, which she communicates by lowering her ears to the side, lifting her head, turning her flank towards Turbo, and blinking repeatedly. At this stage Turbo disengages by mirroring her behaviour: he stands with his flank towards her and an elevated head.

3. Cleo still finds him a bit too close for comfort, so she proceeds to escalate further up the ladder by turning her hindquarters towards him. Turbo mirrors this by turning his back to her; he has his ears back and an elevated head, and is also licking and chewing.

4. Cleo is still not happy about how close he is, so she escalates even further to lifting her leg and then kicking the air. Quite politely, she does this twice before finally taking the last step up the ladder and kicking him.

5. They both disengage and walk away parallell to each other showing clear de-escalation and appeasement/calming signals: Cleo shakes her head (barely perceptible), lowers her head, licks and chews, sniffs the ground, and then proceeds to grazing. Turbo is also licking and chewing and just off camera, he stops to graze at a sufficient distance from her.

I think this video is a really neat demonstration of the complexity of equine social communication and the lengths horses will go to avoid a conflict. It also shows that there is individual variability in how skilled horses are at this type of communication (Cleo is clearly more skilled at this than poor little Turbo!).

Importantly, it shows that horses will mix behaviours from the different stages of the Equine Ladder of Aggression, so it’s important to treat it as a visual aid, not a bible (I know I have said this before, but it is worth repeating). The behaviours, escalation patterns, and thresholds will vary depending on the individuals involved and the context.

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