How Much do Horses Really Know About Us?
Horses are known to be highly intelligent animals, emotionally connect with their special person or rider, and pick up on things which are hidden to human senses, but how large is their capacity?
Horses can sense human heartbeats from 1.2 meters away (4 feet) and are able to adjust their own heart rate to match. This allows them to directly pick up on the emotions of ones standing near by. This is why a calm trainer will have significantly better results with their horses as opposed to one who easily looses temper. Horses rely on this to sense danger and read the intentions of approaching people. Therapy work is especially suitable for horses because they can connect with patients so easily. These magnificent animals act as translators of our emotions; allowing us to read ourselves when observing their body language. (This applies to therapy work and is not the case for natural instincts or factor based reactions such as a horse spooking at a person who is waving around a flag. Hope that clarifies things.)
Horses can remember an individual for many years, decades, or lifetime by facial, smell, or voice recognition. They can differentiate joy from anger and shift their cooperativeness depending on who they are with. Because they use holistic face processing, studies have shown horses are able to recognize people in pictures, even identifying a new person as someone before seen in a 2D picture or vice versa. Other studies show that horses know how other people treat their owners and respond negatively when an unkind person approaches again.
An experiment in Europe proved that horses detect lies. The test horses were presented with two buckets, one with treats, the other empty. On round one the handler gestured towards the treat bucket where the horse discovered treats. On round two they pointed towards the empty bucket and the horse was disappointed to find no treat. For round three, the horse no longer chose the bucket pointed by the handler, having learned not to trust their directions. Horses avoid people who’s general friendly appearance doesn’t match their internal state. These equines can react to multiple emotional layers at once, and precisely interpret each one.
Horses can sense us better than we can sense ourselves and they have helped thousands of people with their exceptional abilities!
Thank you so much for reading!
Some interesting links and more of what I do:
More of my posts: https://naturefoxes.com/blog
My Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@naturefoxes_IrinaS
An in depth study of how horses use holistic recognition: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575808/full
A documentary I found interesting about horse therapy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odh61lbu2hg
