|
||||
Riding BlindYou may be surprised to discover that there may be times when you have actually been riding blind. Dr. Alison Harman, a neuroscientist from Western Australia made this amazing discovery while investigating how horses see. She�s a rider and a neuroscientist and her research began after a seeing two horses collide in the ring, while being prepared for a dressage test. While the horses were being ridden in a high state of collection, they crashed headlong into one another at the canter. "At the time I thought, that�s very strange, why didn�t the horse stop or something." Said Dr. Harman. "Well, I heard that the horse had a ramp retina and I always assumed that that was true and I didn�t think about it very much and then one day I started noticing that other animals didn�t have one and I wondered why a horse did." In Dukes Physiology, 1993 Edition, It says that, the horse has an eye unlike any other animal. It�s called a ramp retina and it works a bit like bifocals. The horse puts its head down to see long distances, and up to see short distances. And that�s what most of the textbooks have been saying for the last hundred years. Dr. Harman did some investigation and found that the ramp retina theory was just a load of rubbish. The horse eye has something completely different to what our eyes do. It�s actually got something called a visual streak. The visual streak is a cluster of cells in a long strip. By contrast, the human eye has a cluster of cells in a tiny point. It means we see the world very differently. Dr. Harman tested the limits of the horse�s vision. Just how far could the horse see forward, up, down and sideways? An ophthalmoscope was used to look at the shiny retina, and determine the horse�s field of view. The horse�s field of view actually runs in the direction of the nose. Instead of it being in front of their head the way it is for us, it�s down their nose and sort of towards the ground. Thus, the discovery as to why the two dressage horses collided. Because when the horse�s head is loose, it can put it�s nose up to look forward. But when a horse is ridden in the classical position, its nose points down. "It was a bit of a shock to discover that in fact they can�t see when their heads are pulled in like that. And it�s really rather a scary thought that; people are riding around so much these days with their horses like that." Observed Dr. Harman. Information taken from an article by Jonica Newby.
|
||||
Click here to return to top of this page | ||||