Man and horse: is mutual understanding possible?

 How do you express joy? What about resentment? Can you understand what emotions the other person is experiencing? Maybe yes. What about the emotions of a caterpillar? Here one would learn to distinguish the head from the tail … But what about horses? 

The horse is not a caterpillar, of course, and, having accumulated some experience of interaction, we begin to understand what she wants to tell us. But beginners or not very observant people (as well as those for whom a horse is just a working tool) often get into trouble. Horses also have a hard time: after all, in her opinion, we are constantly fussing, demanding something, and what is not always clear . Because we make strange movements and make too many sounds. In the end, of course, we understand that we should not approach an unfamiliar horse from behind, put our fingers in our mouths or wave our arms. Horses also learn something next to us. But misunderstanding often still remains. 

The thing is, we are too different.

Our ancestors were tree-dwelling monkeys. Therefore, we have such a structure of the hand, movable fingers, three-dimensional vision and other acquisitions useful for survival. Horses lived in different conditions and chose completely different priorities. The distant ancestors of horses lived in dense thickets, their limbs were equipped with fingers. But the climate changed, the soil became hard, and hard stems had to be fed. Therefore, horses acquired hooves and learned to move, albeit not as fast as predators, but for a long time. And if they managed to notice the predator in time, the chance to escape was great – it means that it was important to have a wide view, sacrificing the three-dimensionality of the image. That is, we literally look at the world differently. The question arises: if we are so different, can we reach mutual understanding? Numerous examples show that we can. Experience and knowledge help build a bridge of mutual understanding. But for this we need to know well who we are dealing with, look at the world through the eyes of horses and become understandable to them. But it’s not for nothing that our species is called Homo sapiens?You might also be interested in:Do horses recognize people?«