The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1913-09-17
HORSES"
Multiply, Extract Square Root Of
Numbers, Add and Spell.

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Berlin Cor. New York World: The
thinking horses" Of Eberfeld have
proved too. much of a problem for the
British Society for Psychical Re-
search. The committee from that or
ganlzation, Edward Bullough, Fellow
of GouVille and Caucus college, Oxford,
and V. ]. Wool1ey, NJ. D., have gone
when they anne. Scientists Of Ger
many, France and Italy are equally
puzzled. No solution seems to fit.
h question these two Investigate
ors came to Germany to solve was:
Have the, thinking horses human I'M
d~erstanding 2" The two English scien-
lists. say they don't know what to
think about the thinking horses.
In a report made to the society DR..
Woolley asserts that there were four
possibilities in regard to these horses:
l. They may really possess the in
tellectual abilities ascribed to them by
their n
=. They may simply nave learned
by heart the answers to all the prob
lens presented to them.
3. They may respond to signals
given consciously or unconsciously by
some person present.
4. They may respond to some sup
ernormal influence eXerted by some
such person.
1Ilele are QlIilCulLISS IN the way or
any of these hypothesis, the commit
tee says.
There are two. or these horses-two
Arab stations, Mohammed and Zarif.
They belong to K. Krail, a wealthy
ieWeler of Elberfeld. He bought them
in 1908 in order to pursue on his own
account experiments which since 1905
he had assisted Herr Won Osten, a re-
tired Berlin schoOlmaster, in carrying
out in the education of two horses,
both known Is Hans. Herr Won Osten
began his experiments in 1890 with a
horse he had been used to ride and
drive. He taught it to go without reins
and to respond to sucn commands as
STOP walk" turn" etc. This horse
died and the schoolmaster, who had
made a small fortune as an expert in
mathematics, bought a 5-year-old
Russian stallion and christened it
Hans. 1t acquired apparent prof.
cheney in arithmetic and spelling.
A commission of German scientists
investigated the second Hans and re-
ported that Won Osten, while believing
himself to be teaching the horse the
rudiments Of arithmetic, reading and
spelling, had actually merely taught
the animal with astonishing precision,
to respond to. certain unconscious and
very small movements on his own
part.
f1erF hidll, WHO HdQ never naQ any
experience with horses until he met
the schoolmaster, proceeded to give
his two Arab stations an elementary
school course, "just as if they were
children" He put them through a
course. in adding and subtracting;
taught them, it is claimed, to multi
ply up to II times II, and even in
structed them, it is asserted, in reck-
on1ne dates and in square and cube
root and then in spelling and read
ing. A kindergarten course in picture
reading was next taken up. =
Acting on the theory that proficien-
cy in mathematics is no test of gener-
al intelligence-some human IDIOTS
having got fame as lightning calculat-
ors-Herr Krall taught his horses
arithmetic only as an avenue to mu-
tual understanding" and as an intro
duction to spelling, reading and spon-
taneous u~tterances on the horses
part. Thus he aimed at proving that
a horse a real intelligence such as
men have. p