"Can't go over it, can't go under it, have to go around it." No, your horse isn't on a bear hunt; he's on a bucket hunt, trying to reach his food around an experimental barrier. Italian equitation science researchers set up this obstacle game to see how horses respond to the next question: "Around it, yeah, but which way?"

Whether horses go right or left around barriers and other kinds of obstacles–called "detour behavior"–appears to be based on spatial reasoning or laterality (side preference), or a combination of the two, according to Paolo Baragli, DVM, PhD, researcher in the department of physiological sciences at the University of Pisa and primary author of the study. Baragli and his colleagues set up asymmetrical barriers, meaning one side is much longer than the other, to see which behavior is stronger–spatial reasoning or laterality. They switched things up by putting the longer side on the left and other times on the right. Then they tested 10 Italian saddle horses to see if they chose the shortest way around or if they had a preferred side.