Horse Welfare, Laterality, Hair Whorls, Cognitive Bias The Paradox of Double Whorls Part I: The Investigation

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Because of the overwhelming interest in horses with two side-by-side hair whorls, I decided to interrupt my series on training young horses with my new-school approach and tell the story now. How I learned about the double whorls is as important as what I learned, so I’m starting from the beginning. Follow my page for part II.

It was the summer of 1982, and I was training a young Arabian filly for a young woman when I commented to her about how intelligent I thought her horse was. She said to me, “I know she’s smart. My grandpa told me the high swirl on her head meant she was smart.” I had never heard of this, and I asked her to explain. Her grandfather said that American Indians placed great significance on hair whorls and believed the position of the whorls could predict how friendly or intelligent a horse was. I thought it was silly, but I was always curious to learn other people’s ideas and opinions about horses. I wanted to understand horses better. Understanding and controlling horse behavior was a big part of my job. I couldn’t understand why teaching horses something as simple as standing still for shoeing was so hard. What the girl told me was interesting, and I wondered if there was anything to it. I was shoeing 20 or more horses a week. It only took seconds to look at the whorl, and I dealt with horse behavior daily. The position a farrier works in while holding a foot off the ground is close-up and personal. Cooperation is necessary. I’d know if a relationship existed between hair whorls and behavior before too long. Before long, I noticed that the side location of the whorl was almost always the same side the horse gave me the most trouble.

In any case, my three horses’ behavior and hair whorls convinced me to take whorls seriously. Murphy was a 10-year-old Appaloosa gelding with a hair whorl below the eyes. He was as calm as a horse could be. I bought Murphy for my nieces and nephews to ride when they visited the ranch. Murphy had a carefree and casual expression—he only worried about where his next meal was coming from. My other Appaloosa gelding, Dell, was just the opposite of Murphy. His whorl was high above the eyes. Dell was flighty and reactive. He would jump 10 feet if a mouse crossed the trail, and he was insecure and became very nervous when separated from the other horses. Dell was big and strong but timid, reactive, and alert. He held his head high and oriented toward any unusual sight or sound. On the trail, Dell spotted deer on hillsides half a mile away before other horses noticed the movement. He would stop and point with his ears and eyes. My third horse was a race-bred Quarter Horse mare named Jenny, with two high side-by-side whorls. Her behavior was similar to Dell’s but less nervous: Dell’s vigilance seemed motivated by fear, whereas Jenny’s vigilance was more like a curious attention to her surroundings. She didn’t always need the company of other horses and was independent. Unlike Murphy’s carefree nature, Jenny had a confident, independent nature.

When I bought Jenny and turned her out to pasture with Dell and Murphy and a herd of 15 horses I boarded on my 30-acre field, all the horses came up to meet the new horse. Usually, a new horse was nervous and unsure about entering a new herd. Still, Jenny walked out confidently to meet them as they got near her. It was like watching Moses parting the Red Sea. The herd split down the middle as she walked straight through and settled on a patch of grass to graze. I was puzzled but knew I had bought an extraordinary horse right then. As the dominant horse in the herd, she rarely exercised her authority by force: a slight pinning of her ears was all it took to make other horses back off. When challenged, Jenny let out a little squeal that caused other horses to scatter. On the trail, she refused to follow another horse. Always the leader, she’d throw a fit if I tried to make her follow. She had an air of authority I couldn’t pin down.

The behavior differences between my three horses were not subtle; neither were the hair whorls. When I saw similar hair whorls in other horses, I would ask the owners if their horses had identical behaviors. Clear patterns of hair whorls and behavior began to emerge.

When I encountered double whorls in my farrier work, I always asked people the same questions; “Is your horse a leader? Does it demand to be in the lead going down the trail? Does it show little or no side preference?” The answers were invariably, “Yes, how did you know?” I always answered with a slippery reply designed to deflect from the truth. I didn’t want people to think I was a nut job, or as one professor a few years later at Utah State University called my ideas, “hair-brained.”

After a year or so, I started to notice something else: the paradox that intrigued me and took several years to figure out. When the double whorls were good, they were outstanding. But when they were difficult, they weren’t just difficult; they were dangerously difficult. In my last post, I discussed the double whorl “Hell Bitch” that bit me on the rump. Like many hard-to-handle doubles, the Hell Bitch had a menacing look about her. I was a strong and confident horseman, almost fearless around troublesome horses. Still, the brooding and sinister behavior of the dangerous doubles truly frightened me. I prided myself on my ability to handle any horse. Still, that menacing look terrified me, and I turned down one or two every year. I even told one client, “I can’t work on your horse; he scares me, and if I’m scared, he’ll know it.”

I was determined to learn more about them and started to seek them out, and I had a lot of fun doing it. My best friend John Moon (R.I.P. buddy), an excellent horseman and my only confidant, and I would drive the 90 miles from Salt Lake City to Evanston, Wyoming, on weekends, where there was a two-bit race track called Wyoming Downs. I’d wear a sports jacket with a tie, carry an official-looking clipboard, and B.S. my way past the security gate to the back side of the track where they stabled the horses. In the area where they tacked up the horses before the race, I’d walk by every horse, note the hair whorls on my clipboard, and make my picks. If there were no doubles, I’d pick the calmest-looking high whorls. (Both John and I noticed the nervous-looking highs rarely won.) But the doubles were almost a sure thing. After making my picks, I’d walk over to the fence that divided the crowd from the stables and hand John my picks. John handicapped the horses with the Racing Form and, combined with my choices, made our bets. We didn’t have much money to bet, but we always went home with more money than we started with, and in turn, learned how the hair whorls linked to performance. The lows and middles rarely won against the highs.

Back at work, I was still intrigued by the paradox of double whorls and what caused the contradiction between the good and bad ones. One of the problems was there were so few of them that I would go months before meeting a new one. I had spent a few years by then trying to figure it out but was getting nowhere. About that time, I started to notice hair whorls on people, mostly children or guys with short hair. I saw left, right, and occasionally double whorls and wondered if they were connected somehow. When I noticed a kid with doubles in the grocery stores or out and about, I’d ask the parents if their children were ambidextrous (like the horses). Most times, they said yes.

All I had was curiosity and a high school education, but I knew I was onto something; I just didn’t know what. I finally got a clue that helped me begin to solve the paradox.