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Clever Hans was a stallion who was taught how to compute math problems with 90% accuracy. Obviously the horse did not talk, so the way he answered each problem was to stomp his foot. Without further investigation I would think that Hans actually did have the ability to compute these math problems; therefore coming to the conclusion that some animals do have a greater sense of thinking that we humans often believe. I would not say that Hans’ abilities were supernatural due to the fact that his owner, Wilhelm von Osten, did somewhat taught and showed him how to compute the various math functions.
There were some skeptics to Hans’ ability. One of these skeptics was philosopher and psychologist, Carl Stumpf. Stumpf and a panel of 13 others tested Hans’ abilities by isolating him from the questioner and all specators, making sure that von Osten was not in the room, using blinders on him, and varying whether the questioner knew the answer to the question in advance. During this experiment, Hans’ was able to answer correctly even if his owner was not present. This then ruled out any fraudulent claims against von Osten. However, he was only able to answer this question correctly only if the questioner was present. These researchers then came to the conclusion that Hans’ was not really able to compute the numbers. They found that he could only answer correctly when the questioner knew the answer. However he did not have any supernatural ability. In fact, it was found that as Hans stomps came to the right answer, the questioner’s facial expression and posture changed where in which a release of tension cued Hans to stop stomping. The way that Hans recognized these subtle posture changes could possibly be the way of social communication that horses use. The researchers continued this type of testing on humans, however with the researchers playing the horse and participants as questioners. They found that 90% of participants gave sufficient cues for the...