New Research Proves That Horses Can Read Human Facial Expressions
Horses can tell the difference between when you're angry and when you're happy, new research from the University of Sussex in the U.K. reveals.
Researchers found that horses react differently to seeing angry faces - evidence of their "functionally relevant understanding" of negative human facial expressions, according to study findings published Feb. 10 in the journal Biology Letters.
Psychologists observed how 28 horses responded to seeing photographs of happy versus angry human faces. When presented with angered expressions, the horses' heart rates increased and they looked more with their left eye, a behavior experts say is associated with "perceiving negative stimuli."
"The reaction to the angry facial expressions was particularly clear - there was a quicker increase in their heart rate, and the horses moved their heads to look at the angry faces with their left eye," said Amy Smith, a doctoral student at the University of Sussex and one of the study's co-authors.
Although scientists have previously established a link between horse and human facial expressions - their facial muscles are similar to ours - this is the first time the effect of human facial expressions on equine heart rate has been studied.
"Horses may have adapted an ancestral ability for reading emotional cues in other horses to respond appropriately to human facial expressions during their co-evolution," said study co-author and doctoral researcher Jennifer Wathan.
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