Horses Learning to Understand Humans

There has been some talk recently about the fact that horses can indeed read, and interpret, facial expressions in humans!

This is a very exciting development.

I suppose one shouldn’t really be surprised at this at all!

Especially when you consider an intelligent animal such as the horse has been around humans for more than 5000 years!

Imagine how this could affect both the experience one has with their pony if one takes the time to truly understand what this means?

You see, even though we can’t actually talk to them in any language, we do share emotions……and this is integral to communication…….

However, it’s not just a one-way street here. It’s not just us understanding their emotions…….research has recently uncovered evidence that they also can understand our emotions……

Further to this, it has also been discovered that they can sense our stress, or lack of, via our heart rate.

In the report “The effect of a Nervous Human” it was found that a horses heart rate increased when it’s riders heart rate increased. This happened not as a result of verbal changes but through some other sense.

In a biology letters paper it has also been reported that it has been discovered that horses can, indeed, also read our facial expressions.

It makes sense that they are starting to work us out. They are heard animals with quite complex social relationships and hierarchies………as are we!

And, lets face it, we have been around them for such a long time that we have changed our attitudes towards them significantly as a direct result of our own studies about them.

Take, for example, how we “break them in”……. Once upon a time it was just standard practice to use whips and bad language………NOW its about rewarding their behaviour with Treats and gentleness…….

Once it was about deprivation of their soul and now it is about showing mutual respect via body language we have learnt from them in the wild…….

As I mentioned above, we have co-existed for over 5000 years…….. I imagine we will be living with our Equine partners for another 5000 years more; so lets keep the research and the learning moving forward…..we all benefit from it!