Clever Hans

Imagine you have a talking horse named Hans! And Hans is a very smart horse. He can do simple addition, count things and even read humans' body language! People were amazed by his abilities and thought he was the smartest horse ever existed.

But was Hans really that smart? Actually, no. What people didn't realize was that Hans was very good at sensing his owner's clues and reading their body language to get hints on what answers to give.

For example, when Hans was asked to add 2 plus 2, he would start tapping his hoof until he got to the right number of taps for the answer. But what people didn't realize was that when he got to the right answer, his owner was unknowingly giving Hans a sign to stop tapping. This was called Clever Hans Effect.

With more research, people started to understand that animals like Hans could not understand human language, but they had a great ability to observe and learn from their surroundings. Therefore, Clever Hans effect refers to the phenomenon where animals, usually horses, can "read" the body language of humans and interpret it as a cue to the correct answer.