Horses and Humans: Can Your Horse Hear Your Heartbeat?

Can your horse hear your heartbeat? We could not find a study that has tested it. What researchers have measured is closer to the feeling people describe: horse and human heart rates rising together when a handler is nervous, and heart rhythms drifting into step during grooming. And the plain numbers: a healthy adult horse at rest has a heart rate of about 28 to 44 beats a minute, according to the British Horse Society and the American Association of Equine Practitioners. A resting adult person usually runs between 60 and 100.

By The Huds and Toke Editorial Team, Coolum Beach, Queensland. 12 minute read. Published 12 November 2026.

This guide started with a reel. Russell Gibbons, who owns Huds and Toke with Emma, sent it to us on 7 November 2026 with four words: "Could be a good blog". The reel said horses can hear your heartbeat from four metres away, that their hearts beat slower than ours, and that we fall into sync when we stand close. Versions of it turn up all over social media. So we went looking for the evidence, and wrote down what a horse owner can actually use: what the research on horses and human heartbeats really found, what it means for the two of you, and the practical side, a normal horse heart rate, how to find the heart beat and when to ring the vet.

Our line at Huds and Toke is "As good as it gets", and this one is about both ends of the lead rope: you and your horse.

In this guide: Can they hear it?  |  Do we sync?  |  Horse emotions  |  What it does for you  |  Normal heart rate  |  Find the heart beat  |  Pulse checker  |  When to call the vet  |  Treats  |  Questions

This is the claim Russell's reel made, and it is everywhere. Most versions say a horse can hear a human heartbeat from about four feet, a little over a metre; the reel said four metres. We could not find a single study that tested whether horses can hear a human heartbeat, at four metres, four feet or any distance.

The research the claim is usually tied to is the HeartMath Institute's work with Ellen Gehrke, and that work recorded heart rhythms, not hearing. In the first of these, from 2011, Gehrke sat in a paddock with her horse Tonopah while she thought loving thoughts and both of their heart rhythms were recorded. HeartMath read the result as Tonopah sensing the emotional information carried by the energetic field of her heart.

Equine psychologist Antonia Henderson went through that research for HorseSport in 2024. She says it is a stretch to call the 2011 report a study, notes that a later 2016 study had in effect a sample of one horse, and says of the unpublished work HeartMath cites that "without peer-review, these papers carry as much weight as any opinion we might encounter from anyone's social media rantings." Her verdict on the heart-field explanation: "To date, we do not have the evidence to say that this is so."

So the four metres is not a measured fact. What is real, and more interesting, is what happens to heart rates when horses and people are actually together.

The nervous handler study

In a Swedish study published in The Veterinary Journal in 2009, people led or rode horses four times past an assistant over a 30 metre route. Before the fourth pass they were told an umbrella would open as they went by. It never did. Heart rates still rose on that pass, in the people and in the horses, though the rise for the people leading was only borderline.

Nothing changed in the arena except what the people expected. The horses' hearts went up anyway. It was a small study, with 10 horses led and 17 ridden, and the authors' own conclusion was modest: recording horse and human heart rates together is a useful way to study how they interact.

The grooming study

A 2024 Italian study in iScience put heart monitors on 20 horses and on the people with them, each horse meeting one familiar and one unfamiliar person. The sessions ran from no contact, to the horse choosing to interact, to the person grooming the horse.

The authors report "bidirectional synchronization" in heart rate variability between humans and horses, with the direction shaped by behaviour and by whether the person was familiar. They also say their results come from a relatively small number of horses and people. Heart rate variability is the small change in timing from one beat to the next, so this is about heart rhythms drifting into step, not two hearts beating as one.

A third study, from the US, found something similar: when 24 older people took turns stroking one of three horses in guided sessions, sixteen of the horse and human pairs showed synchronised heart rate variability peak frequencies, which the authors called "suggestive of social connection". It had no control group, so it shows the pattern, not the cause.

So, is the reel right?

• Their hearts beat slower than ours: true. About 28 to 44 for a resting horse against 60 to 100 for a resting adult.
• They can hear your heartbeat from four metres: no evidence. We could not find a study that tested it.
• We synchronise when we are close: partly. Small studies show horse and human heart rates and rhythms moving together during handling and grooming, in both directions. The effect is real in those studies, nobody knows yet how strong it is, and it is not about hearing.
• That is why time with them feels so good: that is a feeling, and we would not argue with it. We just will not dress it up as science.

The useful part for owners is the Swedish result. If you are tense at the float, your horse's heart rate may climb with yours. Breathe out before you pick up the lead rope.

If heart rates can move together, the next question is what a horse actually notices about us. Researchers at the University of Sussex in England have spent years asking it. When they showed 28 horses large photos of an angry or a happy human face, the horses looked at the angry face more with their left eye, and in the 17 horses whose heart rates could be analysed, heart rates climbed more quickly for the angry face. It was the speed of the rise that differed: the average change, the peak and the recovery time did not differ significantly between the two faces.

In a 2018 follow-up, horses saw a photo of a stranger looking angry or happy, then met that same person, now looking neutral, three to six hours later. The horses that had seen the angry photo spent more time watching the person with their left eye, 15.2 seconds on average against 3.6 seconds after a happy photo, and the left eye is the side horses tend to use for things they find negative. Heart rates did not differ, and the angry-photo horses were no less likely to walk up to the person.

Horses also put voices to faces: in a 2012 study, when a familiar handler's voice played, horses were faster to look, and looked longer, at that handler than at another familiar person standing beside them.

Do horses love their owners?

It is the question every horse person has asked, and the honest answer is that the science has not caught up with the feeling. An Australian review from the University of Sydney, Federation University and La Trobe University compared what is known about dogs and horses against the four classic signs of an attachment bond, and found "limited alignment for horse-human dyads". A 2026 Swedish pilot with 30 horses found no clear preference for the owner over a stranger across the group, though horses that had been with their owner longer showed a little more owner-directed contact.

So horses notice our faces and our voices, remember how a person looked for at least a few hours, and in one small study their heart rates rose when the person leading them was nervous. Whether that adds up to love is a word for the people in the paddock to decide.

How big is a horse's heart?

In a Japanese study of 61 Thoroughbreds, average heart weights ran from about 4.1 to 4.8 kg, roughly 1% of body weight. The most famous horse heart belonged to Secretariat. Dr Thomas Swerczek, who performed his necropsy, told Sports Illustrated: "The heart of the average horse weighs about nine pounds. This was almost twice the average size." The often-quoted 22 pounds, about 10 kg, was an estimate: Dr Swerczek put it at "maybe over 20 pounds", and we could not find a record of the heart being weighed.

The reel was really about how it feels on our side of the fence, so here is what the research says about the person holding the lead rope. Australians who ride mostly do it because they enjoy it: Sport Australia's AusPlay survey lists equestrian among the sports where fun or enjoyment is the top reason for taking part, at 74 per cent. Pony Club Australia alone supports over 750 clubs and almost 30,000 members.

We will be straight with you about health, though. In 2019 two University of Adelaide researchers reviewed 13 systematic reviews of equine-assisted interventions, covering 79 studies. They called the evidence "equivocal" and "marred by multiple methodological weaknesses", and concluded that "therapeutic interventions that include a horse cannot be asserted as best practice at this time." The Australian Psychological Society's summary of the review reached the same conclusion. So we will not tell you a horse fixes anything.

What small studies have measured is more modest, and more interesting. In a 2025 study from South Korea, six people spent 15 minutes standing with, or gently rubbing, a horse; cortisol, a stress hormone, stayed the same in the people and in the horses, while the horses' oxytocin went up. It was a small study, and the people's own oxytocin did not rise significantly.

In that same US study, at an assisted living residence, stroking a horse for 10 minutes raised the people's heart rates, and they used more positive than negative words about it afterwards. The researchers' reading was that horses "animate seniors without causing emotional stress". So in the one study here that measured it, stroking a horse livened people up rather than calming them down, and none of this makes time with a horse a treatment.

That is the part we care about. As good as it gets, to us, means a horse that is well fed and a person who looks forward to the paddock. Time spent brushing, checking a pulse or handing over a treat after the job is done counts for both of you.

The British Horse Society gives 28 to 44 beats a minute for an adult horse, and so do the American Association of Equine Practitioners values printed by Penn State Extension. The University of Minnesota Extension starts its range at 30, and the MSD Veterinary Manual's table of resting heart rates lists 28 to 40 for the horse. Different books, near enough the same answer: somewhere in the low thirties to low forties for most horses standing quietly.

Foals run much faster

A resting foal sits at 70 to 110 beats a minute on the same Penn State table, well above the adult figure. It falls as the foal grows: the University of Minnesota Extension gives 60 to 120 for a foal under a week old and 40 to 60 from one week to six months. So the adult range is no use for checking a foal, and our pulse checker below asks which one you have.

Why your horse's number is the one that matters

The British Horse Society says every horse has its own normal, because heart rate depends on age, size and fitness. It also says heart rate goes up with stress, anxiety, excitement or exercise, and in a horse in pain or one that is unwell. Its advice is to take your own horse's pulse regularly so you know what normal looks like for that horse.

Some horses sit outside the range all the time and are fine, the Society says, but it is worth having your vet check a horse like that. Nerves count too: the MSD Veterinary Manual notes a nervous horse can have a transiently high heart rate from excitement alone. That is why a reading taken while the float is being backed up, or the farrier's ute pulls in, tells you very little.

Research from Charles Sturt University in New South Wales points the same way. The team analysed 23 studies of horses being trained or handled and, in the studies that had a control group, found mean heart rates of 87 beats a minute in the handled horses against 51 in controls. Horses that had already been through training rose less than horses meeting something new for the first time. Handling a horse changes its heart rate. Keep that in mind for the next section, because it matters for the reel.

You need a watch with a second hand or a phone timer, a quiet horse, and either a stethoscope or two fingers.

With a stethoscope

The British Horse Society's method is to stand on the horse's left side and place the stethoscope against the chest just behind the elbow. Each heartbeat has two parts, as in a person, and on a broad-chested or well-covered horse it can help to move the leg forward. Count the lub-dub as one beat, not two.

By feel, at the jaw

No stethoscope? The facial artery runs over the jawbone at the bottom of the cheek muscle, in between where the noseband and throat lash would sit. The Society describes it as about 1 cm across and tube-like, and suggests fingers on the inside of the jawbone with your thumb outside, because you will feel your own pulse in your thumb. A clinical skills sheet from the University of Bristol's vet school adds that the horse should be standing still and not chewing, and the pressure should be gentle. Light pressure is the trick.

Count and multiply

Count the beats for 15 seconds and multiply by four. Thirty seconds times two works too, if your horse will stand for it. Then put the count in the checker below.

Safety first, especially with a sick horse

If your horse is unwell, Queensland government advice is to isolate it from other horses, people and animals until you have your vet's opinion, and to handle sick horses only after taking appropriate precautions. It says to use biosecurity precautions, protective equipment included, whenever Hendra virus is suspected, even in vaccinated horses, because no vaccine gives complete protection. The British Horse Society's colic guide puts it simply: do not try to take temperature, pulse and respiration if it is unsafe to do so. Your hand on a sick horse's jaw is close to its mouth and nose. Ring the vet first.

Count your horse's pulse, put the number in, and the checker turns it into beats a minute and tells you where it sits. Do it on a few quiet days and you will learn your horse's own normal, which is worth more than any table.

The University of Minnesota Extension table puts it plainly: call the vet if an adult horse's heart rate is over 50 beats a minute. That is at rest, standing quietly, not straight after a canter or while the horse is upset.

A faster heart rate can mean pain, dehydration or low blood pressure, says the MSD Veterinary Manual. Its colic chapter notes that horses with a twisted or displaced gut are painful and have an increased heart rate. The British Horse Society lists an increased heart rate among the signs of colic, alongside pawing, kicking at the belly, fast breathing, fewer gut sounds and a change in gum colour.

Is a heart rate of 60 bpm normal for a horse?

Not at rest. Sixty is well above the 28 to 44 range and above the over 50 line, so a resting adult horse at 60 needs a call to your vet. A horse that has just worked, or a foal, is a different story, which is why the checker asks.

If you are worried, the British Horse Society's advice is to contact your vet immediately. We would add one thing: have your horse's normal heart rate written down before the bad day comes, so you can tell your Australian vet what changed.

We make horse treats in Coolum Beach, so here is the part where we are careful. We know of no evidence that any treat, ours included, changes a horse's heart rate, and we would not sell one as if it did. A treat is a reward for standing quietly while you count.

Our Carrot Cookies carry 449 kcal per 100 g and 9% fat on the label, and they contain molasses and sugar. Neigh Nuggets are 393 kcal per 100 g and 6% fat, with molasses too. Calm O's list L-Tyrosine, whole apple and L-Theanine among their ingredients, along with sugar. We make no claim here about what Calm O's do to a heart rate, because we have no study that says.

If your horse has EMS, PPID or laminitis, ask your vet before any treat, ours included. For everyone else, small amounts, by hand, after the job is done.

More: all our horse treats and our guide to what horses can eat.

What is a normal heart rate for a horse?

At rest, an adult horse usually runs 28 to 44 beats a minute, the British Horse Society and AAEP figures. A resting foal runs much faster: 70 to 110 on the AAEP table, and foal heart rate falls with age.

What is a high heart rate for a horse?

Over 50 beats a minute at rest is where the University of Minnesota Extension says to call the vet for an adult horse. A faster heart rate can mean pain, dehydration or low blood pressure.

Is a heart rate of 60 bpm normal for a horse?

Not for an adult horse at rest. It is above the 28 to 44 range and above the over 50 line, so ring your vet.

How do you take a horse's pulse?

Use a stethoscope on the left side just behind the elbow, or feel the facial artery where it crosses the jawbone, then count for 15 seconds and multiply by four.

Is it true that horses can feel your heartbeat?

We could not find any study that has tested whether horses can hear or feel a human heartbeat at a distance. Small studies do show horse and human heart rates rising together when the handler is nervous, and heart rhythms moving together during grooming.

Do horses love their owners?

Researchers have not shown it: an Australian review found limited alignment between horse and human relationships and the classic signs of an attachment bond. Horses do recognise familiar people by face and voice, and react to our facial expressions.

How big is a horse's heart?

In a study of 61 Thoroughbreds, average heart weights ran from about 4.1 to 4.8 kg, roughly 1% of body weight. Secretariat's was almost twice the average size, according to the vet who performed his necropsy.

Do horses' hearts beat slower than ours?

Yes. A resting horse is about 28 to 44 beats a minute and a resting adult person about 60 to 100.

1. Australian: healthdirect (Australian Government). Bradycardia. healthdirect.gov.au
2. Australian: Sport Australia (Australian Sports Commission). AusPlay: Sports mad Aussies moved by Olympic and Paralympic athletes, 2021. ausport.gov.au
3. Australian: Pony Club Australia. About Us. ponyclubaustralia.com.au
4. Australian: Payne E, DeAraugo J, Bennett P, McGreevy P (University of Sydney, Federation University, La Trobe University). Exploring the existence and potential underpinnings of dog-human and horse-human attachment bonds. Behavioural Processes 2016;125:114-121. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
5. Australian: Stern C, Chur-Hansen A (University of Adelaide). An umbrella review of the evidence for equine-assisted interventions. Australian Journal of Psychology 2019;71(4):361-374. doi:10.1111/ajpy.12246. doi.org
6. Australian: Australian Psychological Society, InPsych, April 2019. The verdict on equine-assisted interventions (summary of Stern and Chur-Hansen). psychology.org.au
7. Australian: Business Queensland, Queensland Government. Reducing the risk of Hendra virus infection. business.qld.gov.au
8. Australian: Henshall C, Freire R, Randle H. Heart rate responses to training and handling activities in horses. Charles Sturt University, abstract, 14th International Society for Equitation Science Conference, 2018. researchoutput.csu.edu.au
9. Overseas (USA): MSD Veterinary Manual. Moore JN. Colic in Horses. msdvetmanual.com
10. Overseas (USA): MSD Veterinary Manual. Equine Emergency Procedures. msdvetmanual.com
11. Overseas: MSD Veterinary Manual. Table: Resting Heart Rates (adapted from Dukes' Physiology of Domestic Animals). msdvetmanual.com
12. Overseas (UK): British Horse Society. Normal temperature, pulse and respiration parameters in adult horses. bhs.org.uk
13. Overseas (UK): British Horse Society. REACT colic pocket guide, 2026. bhs.org.uk
14. Overseas (UK): University of Bristol Veterinary School, Clinical Skills Lab. Locating Equine Pulses. bristol.ac.uk
15. Overseas (USA): Penn State Extension. Recognizing a Healthy Horse (values from the American Association of Equine Practitioners). extension.psu.edu
16. Overseas (USA): University of Minnesota Extension. Basic first aid for your horse and preparing for emergencies. extension.umn.edu
17. Overseas (Sweden): Keeling LJ, Jonare L, Lanneborn L. Investigating horse-human interactions: the effect of a nervous human. The Veterinary Journal 2009;181(1):70-71. research.slu.se
18. Overseas (Italy): Callara AL, Scopa C, Contalbrigo L, Lanata A, Scilingo EP, Baragli P, Greco A. Unveiling directional physiological coupling in human-horse interactions. iScience 2024;27(9):110857. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
19. Overseas (USA): Baldwin AL, Rector BK, Alden AC. Physiological and Behavioral Benefits for People and Horses during Guided Interactions at an Assisted Living Residence. Behavioral Sciences 2021;11(10):129. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
20. Overseas (South Korea): Jung Y, Yoon M. The Effects of Human-Horse Interactions on Oxytocin and Cortisol Levels in Humans and Horses. Animals 2025;15(7):905. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
21. Overseas (UK): Smith AV, Proops L, Grounds K, Wathan J, McComb K. Functionally relevant responses to human facial expressions of emotion in the domestic horse (Equus caballus). Biology Letters 2016;12(2):20150907. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
22. Overseas (UK): Proops L, Grounds K, Smith AV, McComb K. Animals remember previous facial expressions that specific humans have exhibited. Current Biology 2018;28(9):1428-1432. sussex.figshare.com
23. Overseas (UK): Proops L, McComb K. Cross-modal individual recognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus) extends to familiar humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2012;279(1741):3131-3138. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
24. Overseas (Sweden): Rönnow E, Roth LSV (Linköping University). Horses show limited owner bias in reunion and odor tests: a pilot study. Journal of Equine Veterinary Science 2026;156:105755. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
25. Overseas (USA): McGrath C. This side up: the heart of the matter. Thoroughbred Daily News, 14 January 2022. thoroughbreddailynews.com
26. Overseas (Japan): Kubo K, Senta T, Sugimoto O. Experimental Reports of Equine Health Laboratory 1974;11:87-93 (heart weight in 61 Thoroughbreds). jstage.jst.go.jp
27. Overseas (USA): Nack W. Pure Heart. Sports Illustrated, 4 June 1990 (quoting Dr Thomas Swerczek, University of Kentucky). si.com
28. Overseas: Henderson AJZ. Human-Horse Heart Math: Does It Add Up? HorseSport (Canadian magazine), 8 February 2024. horsesport.com