Say What, Horse?

How We’re Starting to Hear What Horses Have to Say
 

- Jessie Haas

Humans have been communicating with horses since we first domesticated them, around 5,500 years ago. But the conversation has been pretty one-way. We gave orders. They behaved as if they understood—or not. Meanwhile horses have been watching us, reading our moods, and communicating in ways that we usually fail to understand. But science is finally catching on to that and taking a fresh look at the horse-end of this long relationship.

I See What You’re Saying

Horses are highly visual animals. In groups, they establish a pecking order, mainly by making threats. The longer the horses have known each other, the more subtle the threats become, until just a squinty-eyed look from a boss can get a lower-ranked animal to move away. So it makes sense that facial expressions would be important to them, but horse facial expressions went unstudied until very recently.

Research at the University of Sussex in England has identified 17 different facial expressions in horses. That’s more than dogs (16) or chimpanzees (14). Some horse expressions are similar to those of humans—for instance, both horses and humans raise the skin above their eyes when experiencing negative emotions.

Next, the Sussex researchers wondered whether horses recognize human facial expressions. They showed horses photos of people with angry or happy faces. Horses turned their heads to view the angry expressions with their left eyes. Dogs also tend to look at angry faces this way. The horses’ heartbeats sped up while viewing angry faces. Smiling expressions didn’t prompt either a head turn or a change in heart rate. Scientists were interested to learn that, though horses and people have very differently shaped faces and skulls, horses appeared to accurately read human emotions.