Research Interests

Dr. Hardy's interest in animal behavior led her to investigate the differences and similarities between the behavior of domestic animals and their wild ancestors and relatives. One species of particular interest to her is the domestic horse. Since the behavior of feral mustangs and of Asian wild horses is well known, she began to focus on the behaviors of domestic horses that seem to have originated during their many centuries of domestication. In pursuit of this area of inquiry, she has gone all over the United States interviewing people involved with horses. She spent 5 weeks in the spring of 2000 in Great Britain where she conducted many additional interviews, primarily of people with knowledge of the rare breeds of ponies and horses that have been part of British culture for centuries. Examples include the ancient Exmoor ponies that she visited on the moors of Somerset in southwestern England and the Eriskay ponies that she visited in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. [This area of research is "Zooanthropology," the study of the relationships between people and animals.] As part of this project, she took many photographs of these animals, including the horses at the Kentucky Horse Park, a large state park in Lexington. The first publication to come from her research will be published in "Discover Horses" magazine this fall; it is an article about the famous racehorse Da Hos, a thoroughbred who forms unusually affectionate relationships with people. She is now writing about other horses of the Kentucky Horse Park as well as a book about rare horses and ponies.