Is fence testing genetic?

Yesterday evening I looked out the window to see my three year old gelding with his head through the fence. Inspecting the ground on the other side. Damn it! I had been working on making spring repairs on the fence and was just taking a break, and he already had his head through.

I was throwing on my coat to get back out there and finish when I had a flash back of another colt doing the same thing. His Sire who I raised from a four month old would also have his head through the fence the minute the power went out. None of the other horses I have owned including my three year old's mother have this behavior. I sold his sire when this colt was still a little foal. So it is not a behavior he learned from another horse. Just something I was wondering about.

Could he have inherited fence testing along with his spots?
What do you guys think?

LOL... I doubt it... but it's possible he inherited a "different" type of intelligence from dad... I've certainly met some horses who tend to "think outside the box" - and I would assume that's a heritable trait.

There are traits and things that are inheritable. It wouldn't surprise me if something like that was. I know that there was/is a TB stud that you could walk down a row and know which horses were by him... They were all stall kickers (like continuous nonstop stall kickers).

Yes, both father and son are more curious than cautious. Which makes introducing new things a piece of cake. Maybe it is just a type of temperament/intellegence that is inherited that makes it more likely for him to behave this way.

Oh Ndappy I'm glad the dad wasn't a stall kicker!