REAL LIFE NEWS: HORSES REMEMBER IF YOU ARE ANGRY
by Hazed
Horses not only remember the faces of people – they also remember their facial expressions. New research shows that if you look angry, then horses will be more wary of you in the future.
The research was carried out by a team from the University of Sussex in the UK. Previously they had examined facial expressions of horses and compiled a dictionary, but now they have discovered that horses can read human emotions. This is a phenomenon also seen in dogs.
Karen McComb, co-author of the study and professor of animal behaviour and cognition at the University of Sussex, explained: “We knew that horses could register emotional expressions, so we wanted to know if they could remember them, so that they can actually use those memories to guide their future interactions with specific individuals.”
The team worked with 11 horses who had been shown a picture of a human making an angry face, and 10 horses shown a picture of a smiling person. The horses were each shown the image for two minutes. Then three to six hours later the horses encountered the actual humans they had seen in the photos, this time with a neutral expression.
Analysing the data from the experiment showed that the horses who had been shown the angry face spent longer viewing them with their left eye than those viewing the happy face photo. This is significant because information from the left eye goes to the right side of the brain, which processes potential threats and dangers.
It was the other way round for the happy-face horses: they spent longer looking with their right eye, connecting to the left hemisphere of the brain which is more specialised for positive social reactions.
The horses who had been shown the angry pictures also displaying more stressful behaviours in the face-to-face meeting.
“It is quite an amazing result really,” said McComb. “It is really interesting that animals are picking up on the subtle emotional expressions that humans are revealing on a moment to moment basis” she added. “Crucially in taking it in they don’t just forget it, they use that information – they have a memory for the emotional states that they have seen in humans and they use that information.”
So if you interact with horses, try not to show your bad mood on your face.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/26/beware-the-long-face-horses-remember-your-mood
