Horses Can Read Human Emotions: Study

A new study reveals that dogs are not the only animals that humans can be emotionally connected to. Turns out, horses can also read human emotions more than we thought.

Time reports on the study conducted by psychologists at the University of Sussex where they try to find if horses have certain connections with humans. Indeed, horses have the ability to distinguish between positive and negative human emotions, the report said. This is the first ever evidence of horses responding both behaviourally and physiologically to the facial expression of people, the study claims.

Findings were published in the journal Biology Letters. According to the paper, when a horse is shown a photo of a negative human face, the horse's heart rate increases significantly. This indicates an increase in its stress levels. To put it simply, horses seem stressed when they perceive humans to be mad at them.

More so, they also tend to look at negative faces primarily with their left eye. This means that the image is being processed by the right side of the brain. Dogs have been known to look at angry faces with the left eye as well. In horses and in dogs, this side of the brain is generally used to process and react to threatening stimuli. This clearly suggests that horses can understand human emotions.

To reach these conclusions, researchers studied 28 horses from riding and boarding stables in Sussex and Surrey, reports NY Mag. Observations were recorded between April 2014 and February 2015. Each horse was measured twice using sets of stimuli. The second set was measured two months later.

Each horse was led to a stable stall on a loose lead rope. Its baseline heart rate was measured. It was then shown pictures showing either a happy face or negative face. The horses' heart rates were monitored and recorded five seconds before the pictures were shown and five seconds after pictures were shown. Researchers also recorded a laterality index or how much each horse turned to the left or right after seeing a photo, said the report.

The study reportedly followed set forth by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. It was also approved by the ethics committee.

"Horses may have adopted an ancestral ability for reading emotional cues in other horses to respond appropriately to human facial expressions during their co-evolution," Karen McComb, head of the research group and co-lead author of the study, said to the Guardian. "Alternatively, individual horses may have learned to interpret human expressions during their own lifetime."

Check out the video courtesy of The Guardian: