Horses remember the facial expression of a person in a photo

Scientists have proven that horses not only read people’s emotions, but also remember what facial expression you had during the last meeting: gloomy or joyful. And they react accordingly.

Leanne Proops from the University of Portsmouth (UK) and her colleagues conducted an interesting study in 2016 and proved that horses react differently to photographs of people depending on whether the person is smiling or looking angry. And later they did another study to find out whether horses can remember people and whether a horse’s reaction to a person depends on what emotions this person showed at the moment when the horse last saw him.

The first thing scientists did was show horses a photo of a person. In the photographs, a person showed either joy or anger. A few hours later, the man from the photo personally approached the horse, and the expression on his face at that moment was neutral.

In the photo: a horse participant in the experiment and a person who demonstrates a neutral facial expression

The control group of horses saw some people in the photograph, and others in real life.

It is also important that the people who visited the horses themselves did not know which of their photographs of the horse had been seen before. This was done so that people do not unconsciously tell horses how to react to them, using micro-movements, because horses are very sensitive to such prompts.

It turned out that horses perfectly remember the facial expression of a person seen in a photograph.

Horses prefer to look at threatening and negative stimuli with the left eye, and at positive stimuli with the right eye. In the study, when horses saw a person who was previously frowning in a photograph, they looked at him with their left eye. In addition, the horses in this situation showed signs of stress, such as kicking the floor or sniffing noisily. In contrast, when the horses saw the person who was previously smiling in the photograph, they looked at him with their right eye.

Many other animals show the ability to remember human facial expressions, including sheep and fish. And the Crows for years cherish a grudge against people who treated them badly, moreover, they incite other crows to bully their enemies.

Horses, however, as it turned out as a result of this study, can form an opinion about a person, not only by seeing him live, but also solely from a photograph. This is something that has not yet been sufficiently explored in animals.

Horses themselves have very expressive facial expressions, so it is logical that they pay attention to the facial expression of a person. And given how long horses have lived with us, it’s no surprise that they have learned to recognize what a particular expression on a person’s face means.

The study was published in its entirety in the journal Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.03.035