THAT'S A BUNCH OF BULL

Covid is still being covid, and I was feeling a bit cooped up in the house. It was time for me to do something I had not done in a while like visiting a Sports Bar. A Sports Bar is the perfect place to visit during Olympic competitions. There is only one problem, choosing a sport, there are so many channels and so many events to watch. Nevertheless, it is a good problem, just being among fellow sportsmen and women is reward enough. Entering the bar, I noticed the atmosphere was very jubilant and festive. In the background, there was an assortment of TVs with various Olympic programming.

If you have ever visited a Sports Bar, you will know having a variety of TVs going all at once presents a problem when trying to listen. The sounds from the TVs compete with each other, making it hard to really enjoy the event you're trying to watch. Therefore, most Sports Bars turn off the volume on the majority of TVs and feature one or two. The highlighted TV is normally the event that has piqued the interest of the majority of patrons. By doing so, the atmosphere will stay jovial which makes for a good time. Naturally, I was hoping the event would be track and field, basketball, swimming, or volleyball; however, it was an Equestrian event, Dressage.

Dressage is a French term, most commonly translated to mean training. The dressage tests performed at the Olympic Games are called Grand Prix, requiring top-level skill and concentration from both horse and rider. You can say the Dressage is the Grand Prix of the Equestrian events. To be watching the Dressage, I was thinking someone must have a relative in the event or there were plenty of horse lovers in the bar. As I listened in on several of the conversations, most of the people were impressed with the teamwork of the horse and rider.

As I moved through the bar, my eyes became glued to the TV. The event was very interesting. I watched one rider’s performance from beginning to end with a commentator giving the name and a brief description of each test. The first was Piaffe a calm, composed, collected, and elevated trot in place. Second Passage, a very collected trot, in which the horse has a great elevation of stride and seems to pause between each stride. Third Extended Gaits, usually done at the trot and canter, the horse lengthens its stride to the maximum length through great forward thrust and reach. Fourth Collected Gaits or Trot and Canter is a shortening of stride in which the horse brings its hindquarters more underneath himself and carries more weight on his hind end. Fifth Flying Changes In Sequence informally called tempis or tempi changes at this level. Sixth Pirouette is a 360-degree turn in place, usually performed at the canter. And finally, Half-pass is a movement where the horse goes on a diagonal, moving sideways and forward at the same time, while bent slightly in the direction of movement. Each movement of a test receives a numeric score from 0 to 10 and the resulting final score is then converted into a percentage, by a panel of seven international judges.

One of the patrons, Mark, said, “That was amazing. For someone to train a horse to do all of those maneuvers I’m sure will take a very long time.”

Another, Gary, said, “Training is the keyword here.

“How will the horse learn to do all the skillful maneuvers without training?” asked Mark.

“What if an animal was not trained could do all those things and more?” asked Gary.

“That’s not possible. To perform moves like that an animal will have to be taught. I have a friend that witnessed someone training a horse for dressage. He said, ‘Dressage is actually the art of training a horse so that he is flexible, balanced, and obedient to the rider. Dressage horses must demonstrate willingness, impulsion, and smoothness at all gaits tested. Training a young dressage horse begins with groundwork in short 10 to 20-minute increments on the lunge line followed by many hours of practice in a riding arena.'”

“What’s a lunge line?”

“A lunge line is a 20-meter rope used in the lunge training of the horse.”

Gary was staring at Mark with a blank face.

“From that look, you want to know the meaning of lunging,” said Mark.

“It would be good to know if you are trying to make a point.”

“Lunging is a method of horse training that involves driving a horse in a circle around the trainer on a lunge line. Lunging builds respect and trust between horse and rider, and can also be an excellent source of exercise for your horse to build up his muscles. The trainer also uses the line to familiarize themselves with the horse's gaits, and take note of areas where he may need additional training. You should now understand the time and effort it will take to train an animal to perform at that level of skill.”

With all the back-and-forth bantering, I knew this conversation was going to progress into a story of some sort. Me being the Chronicler who collects and writes stories, I was primed and ready to listen to an interesting story. Gary did just that when he decided to tell a story about a dancing bull.

Gary said, “A bull name Angus inspired a scientific study of rhythmic dance. Angus’ hilarious dance moves went viral on YouTube when he burst into spontaneous dance to the song Beat It by Michael Jackson. Intrigued by the video, a group of researchers studied the bull to gain insight into how animals process music, which in turn could shed light on the evolution of human musicality. Showing he spontaneously synchronized his movements to the beat of the music, something seen in every human culture but which had never been observed in a nonhuman animal. The research team played other songs for the bull and found that he consistently synchronized his movements to the beat. Angus even came up with brand new dance moves, improvising different movements to go with specific tunes. The researchers suggested that Angus’ dance moves indicate that humans and some animals may share certain musical, social and cognitive abilities.”

“How does that compare to the Dressage?” asked Mark.”

“The study revealed that Angus can do more than just bust moves; whether headbanging, wildly tapping its' hooves, or gyrating its' head in sync with the beat of the music. The bull has also created his own steps as well. He's doing all of this without being taught how to do these things by a human. Just looking at the Dressage competition, you said it had to take a long time to train a horse to do those things. This bull is making his moves without training.”

“The bull is more than likely repeating the same movements over and over.”

“That is exactly what many people would think. However, a researcher said, “This entertaining finding has profound implications for our understanding of animal intelligence. In effect, the discovery indicates that spontaneous dance isn't a human invention, but rather something that occurs when certain cognitive and neural capacities align in animal brains. Angus is absolutely amazing in his human-like abilities and, though not related to us, has a similar understanding of rhythms to us in terms of musical, and other abilities. Responding to your same movement comment. Like I said earlier, Angus came up with new dance moves. Angus surprised the researchers. They noticed him doing new movements to music that he hadn't heard before. These new moves were Angus’ own creations; they weren't modeled after any cavorting from his owner, nor was he trained. And, there were no food rewards involved in getting him to dance. Angus created his new dance repertoire on his own.”

“How did the researchers gather and determine this was factual information about the dancing bull?” asked Mark.

“They filmed the 3-year-old bull dancing to two hit songs from the ‘80s, Billie Jean by Michael Jackson and Super Freak by Rick James. The team played each song three times, for a total of 23 minutes. Then, the researchers thoroughly examined the film frame by frame to label Angus’ different dance moves. The research team was led by a senior researcher, who’s a research professor of psychology with a double-major in cognitive science and dance. The team found that Angus has 15 distinct dance moves and five composite moves, more than one might see at an awkward junior-high-school dance. However, unlike with typical human dance, Angus tended to groove in snippets lasting just 15 to 20 seconds. Moreover, every time he heard a specific tune, he danced slightly differently, showing that he wasn't tied to certain music-move combinations, instead of exhibiting flexibility and even creativity when thinking of new sequences. One of the researchers said, ‘Angus didn't just stomp his hooves or bob his head; both movements that have other purposes and are easily adapted to dancing; but created new moves with other body parts. He didn't get stuck in any particular pattern but went on improvising. It's possible he learned some of it from his human owner’s dance moves, but even that is impressive as it means he would have worked out the functional equivalence of head, legs, and hooves.’”

“The owner dancing in front him, he was being trained.”

“The researchers didn’t classify watching his owner dancing as Angus being trained. He mimicked some of the moves he liked from the owner, but he had to decide how he wanted to move to the rhythms using his body parts.”

“Maybe Angus was special. Did the researchers give a reason why Angus could dance?”

“The senior researcher proposed that five traits together allow both humans and nonhuman animals to dance. The ability for complex vocal learning, which creates strong links in the brain between hearing and movement. The capacity to learn imitation of nonverbal movement. A tendency to form long-term social bonds. This relates to the fact that nonhuman animals and humans seem to dance for social reasons. The ability to learn a complex sequence of actions. ‘This requires sophisticated neural processing since we're talking about movements that aren't innate,’ said the researcher. There is attentiveness to communicative movements, which relates to the structure of movements and not just the consequences of these actions. He added ‘While Angus is a wonderful animal, he's not unique. There are examples of other animals making diverse movements to music on the internet, but Angus is the first to be studied scientifically in this regard.’”

“That's a very interesting story,” said Mark.

“What are your thoughts on the skills of the dressage horses compared to Angus’ skills?”

“I’m not aware of Angus the dancing bull. I’m not a guy that listens to a story and consumes it as fact without doing a little research. So, while your story is very interesting, for now, I will assume your story is just a bunch of bull; pardon the pun.”

This is a typical conversation in a Sports Bar. One guy will tell a story and another guy will tell a story to top the other guy's story. This will go on all day until the bar closes. On cue, a guy named Pete chimed in with another bull story.

“I heard a story about a bull that wouldn’t eat if you stare at him. Did any of you hear of this story?” asked Pete.

"Why didn't he eat?" asked Gary.

"He feared a person staring at him. They called it gaze repugnance."

“A story is exactly what that is. I find that hard to believe. A bull fears nothing and will do whatever he wants. Who’s going to stop him?” asked Mark.

Mark was right; bulls fear nothing or no one. I’m not going to listen to that story. I know that’s a bunch of bull; pardon my pun.