"Using a substantial number of trials, Pfungst found that the horse could get the correct answer even if von Osten himself did not ask the questions, ruling out the possibility of fraud. However, the horse gave the right answer only when the questioner knew what the answer was and the horse could see the questioner. He observed that when von Osten knew the answers to the questions, Hans got 89 percent of the answers correct, but when von Osten did not know the answers to the questions, Hans answered only six percent of the questions correctly."
Still pretty amazing capabilities, actually indicating advanced communication skills.
As far as im concerned the horse is effectively outsmarting people by finding easy and unanticipated ways to answer hard questions. If a human child did this it might be considered clever.
Comments
From the "Clever Hans" Wiki article [0]:
"Using a substantial number of trials, Pfungst found that the horse could get the correct answer even if von Osten himself did not ask the questions, ruling out the possibility of fraud. However, the horse gave the right answer only when the questioner knew what the answer was and the horse could see the questioner. He observed that when von Osten knew the answers to the questions, Hans got 89 percent of the answers correct, but when von Osten did not know the answers to the questions, Hans answered only six percent of the questions correctly."
Still pretty amazing capabilities, actually indicating advanced communication skills.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
As far as im concerned the horse is effectively outsmarting people by finding easy and unanticipated ways to answer hard questions. If a human child did this it might be considered clever.