Index of entries

Entry	Section	What it covers	Length	Evidence
Nearly panoramic	The Eye	Eyes set on the sides of the head give a horse close to a full circle of vision with only a narrow binocular strip in front. It is a prey animal's arrangement: enormous coverage, poor depth except straight ahead, and it explains a great deal of behaviour that gets read as temperament.	long	settled
Colour	The Eye	Two cone types rather than three. Not colour-blind, but a different and narrower palette.	medium	partly open
Acuity	The Eye	Lower than human acuity, which is why a familiar object in a new place is a new object.	medium	partly open
Light and dark	The Eye	Excellent in low light, slow to adapt between the two — a dark doorway at noon is a genuine problem.	short	settled
At the nose	Blind Spots	Directly in front of and below the muzzle is unseen, which is why a horse lifts and turns its head to look at something close.	medium	settled
Directly behind	Blind Spots	The other blind area, and the reason approach and voice matter.	medium	settled
Losing a near object	Blind Spots	Something can pass out of view at close range without moving at all.	short	settled
Startle	Response Time	A reflex, not a decision — it happens faster than any deliberate response could.	medium	settled
Flight distance	Response Time	The radius at which an animal moves away, and how much it varies by individual and context.	medium	settled
Settling	Response Time	The physiological climb-down after a startle takes far longer than the startle.	short	settled
Habituation	Learning	Ceasing to respond to something that repeatedly means nothing — the most-used mechanism and the most misread.	medium	settled
Association	Learning	Two things paired in time become linked, including the ones nobody intended to pair.	medium	settled
What gets learned	Learning	Often the timing or the place rather than the thing anyone meant to teach.	short	settled
Ears	Signals	Independently mobile and pointed at whatever has attention, which makes them the most readable signal on the animal.	medium	settled
Eyes and face	Signals	Tension around the eye and muzzle, and the facial coding work that has made this measurable.	medium	settled
Posture	Signals	Weight, height of the head, and which foot is resting.	short	settled
Voice	Signals	A small vocabulary doing a lot of work over distance.	short	settled
Bands	The Herd	Small stable groups rather than large loose herds, with long-term associations.	medium	settled
Who moves first	The Herd	Movement is often initiated by an animal that is not the one the dominance story would predict.	medium	partly open
Space between	The Herd	Individual distance as a constant negotiation.	short	settled
The dominance story	Contested Ground	Widely repeated, weakly supported, and imported from work on other species in captivity. What the field studies actually show.	medium	open
What a study measured	Contested Ground	Small samples, captive groups and short observation windows are the norm.	short	open

Where an entry is marked open or partly open, the literature does not agree with itself and the entry says so on the page rather than choosing a side.