Eat this, Not that...smell and taste

From Jim: Horses' taste buds, like ours, distinguish sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Their taste buds are arranged differently than ours, on the back of their tongue and roof of their mouth, while our pappilae are on our tongue only-front to back. The horse has a sensitive palate and can taste quite well. Like us, their sense of taste is a mixture of smell and taste bud response and it's very discriminating. Horses can easily tell water from different sources and sort out preferred bits of hay. Their sense of smell is far more effective than ours. They can discern differences which would be unnoticable to us. They use their sense of smell for several purposes; for example, to identify one another, to detect predators, to select food items, to signal mating opportunities, to find water, and to locate places by their unique smells. Horses have a Jacobson's organ (vomerona organ) located in their hard palate. (rattlers have one too!) This enhances and amplifies smells and can trigger the Flehman response when pheremones or really unique odors are present. Horses nasal structures are effective in gathering scents and directing them to the olfactory portion of their brain. Closely associated with this part of the the brain is the limbic area-the amygdala and hippocampus. These are linked to emotion and memory. Smells are powerful sources for both emotion and memory. Mares use smell to bond with newborns. It's hard to over-estimate the link between the emotional attachment between mare and colt and the smell of the baby horse to the mom. Same is true of bad smells. Horses have a very different approach to food than us. They eat a lot of the same old stuff with gusto and seem not to tire of the flavor. They are pretty good at refusing "bad" food, but don't let that fool you into thinking they can sort through moldy hay or toxic pasture plants. They can't or don't and colic or worse can happen. Same is true of yucky water. They may drink nasty water, but not enough. Clear clean water is going to help insure they drink enough to avoid impactions from dehydration. Windy days not only interfer with a horse's sense of hearing, they confuse their sense of smell and they don like that. Any time anything advantages a predator, horses grow anxious. Horses' taste and smell abilities exceed ours. They have great memories-(probably better than ours). The way they use these superior abilities is different than we would. There are no equine Ben and Jerries" tasters.