This primary ethic of the applied humane disciplines of medicine, nursing and veterinary science is also the fundamental ethic of applied ethology and the one which can embody guidelines and codes of ethics for the use of horses. Modern horse usage is in need of its own ethical code to provide guidance in these less anthropocentric times. Organized behaviour is now recognized in horses as a major part of the genetic programming of the species. Innate social and spatial behaviours represent major behavioural outputs, which can be viewed as ethological needs in the interests of the animal's functional integrity. Thus, circumstances such as separation and crowding can be seen to be stressful.
Ethology recognizes that behaviour in animals is governed by motivation.
Such behaviour implies the existence of animal emotions. Excitement or arousal is one, which depends upon perception and the senses. Horses are anatomically and physiologically similar to man, and the sense organs, with which the horse is wellendowed, facilitate the experience of sensations. In horses some senses are much keener than the equivalent in man. Acknowledgement of emotions, although different in degree and quality from those of humans, is reasonable and logical in recognizing the horse as a highly sentient animal.