Horses possess a remarkable ability to perceive and interpret human emotions.đ„°đŽ
Horse lovers know we can’t fool horses who have a sixth sense and can sense how we feel inside. Studies for this are provided by French Research.
Spring preparations South Shore Equine Clinic Two short video clips without sound were shown simultaneously on one screen, left and right. The woman was shown in one sequence with the positive emotions of pleasure and happiness, and in the other with the negative emotions of anger and rage.
Three cameras were used to capture the behavioral responses of the horses. The heart rates of the horses were also measured.
Through both physiological (heart rate) and behavioral responses, horses responded immediately and rapidly to human emotional states provided visually and auditorily. In addition to the vocal expression of emotion, horses could very clearly distinguish between two different emotions on a human face: pleasure and anger.
Horses can detect and interpret emotional signals depending on their meaning and independent of their modality (optical/auditory). This result was not surprising, as previous studies had already shown that horses can assign the meaning of facial expressions and vocal expressions to the same emotional category.
