The study of emotions in horses involves understanding the behavioral, physiological, and psychological responses of horses to various stimuli. Emotions in horses can be inferred through observable behaviors, such as vocalizations, body language, and interactions with their environment and other animals. Physiological indicators, including heart rate, cortisol levels, and other stress-related biomarkers, are also used to assess emotional states. This research area explores how emotions affect horse welfare, training outcomes, and human-animal interactions. This page compiles peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that examine the identification, measurement, and implications of emotional states in horses.
Christensen JW, Malmkvist J, Nielsen BL, Keeling LJ.In fear-eliciting situations, horses tend to show flight reactions that can be dangerous for both horse and man. Finding appropriate methods for reducing fearfulness in horses has important practical implications. Objective: To investigate whether the presence of a calm companion horse influences fear reactions in naive subject horses. Objective: The presence of a habituated (calm) companion horse in a fear-eliciting situation can reduce fear reactions in naive subject horses, compared to subject horses with a nonhabituated companion (control). Methods: Minimally handled (n = 36), 2-year-old s...
Forkman B, Boissy A, Meunier-Salaün MC, Canali E, Jones RB.Fear is arguably the most commonly investigated emotion in domestic animals. In the current review we attempt to establish the level of repeatability and validity found for fear tests used on cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, poultry and horses. We focus the review on the three most common types of fear tests: the arena test (open field), the novel object test, and the restraint test. For some tests, e.g. tonic immobility in poultry, there is a good and broad literature on factors that affect the outcome of the test, the validity of the test and its age dependency. However, there are comparativel...
Momozawa Y, Terada M, Sato F, Kikusui T, Takeuchi Y, Kusunose R, Mori Y.The aim of the study was to determine parameters reflecting equine anxiety trait by comparing results obtained in a behavior test and an anxiety score assessed by familiar caretakers in response to a questionnaire. In the behavior test, horses were individually led into a novel room by their caretakers and loosely tethered to decrease excessive movement using the common cross-tying technique with two leads and breakable plastic cords. The horses initially remained with their caretaker for 2 min; the caretaker then left and the subject animal was left alone for 2 min. The latency to break the p...
Explore (New York, N.Y.)June 20, 2006
Volume 2, Issue 3 264-268 doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2006.03.013
Haylock PJ, Cantril CA.Nearly 10 years ago, I looked at a poster exhibit for a nonprofit organization's camping experience for cancer survivors. One of the images in particular remains with me to this day. It was of an elderly man wearing a cowboy hat and the great grin on his wrinkled face as he stood next to a beautiful sorrel horse. The woman at the poster told me the story behind the picture: The man had advanced cancer and had already entered a hospice program, even though he was still physically active. He'd told many people that his biggest regret in life was that he'd never gotten to ride a horse. The photog...
Larose C, Richard-Yris MA, Hausberger M, Rogers LJ.We have established that lateral biases are characteristic of visual behaviour in 65 horses. Two breeds, Trotters and French Saddlebreds aged 2 to 3, were tested on a novel object test. The main finding was a significant correlation between emotionality index and the eye preferred to view the novel stimulus: the higher the emotionality, the more likely that the horse looked with its left eye. The less emotive French Saddlebreds, however, tended to glance at the object using the right eye, a tendency that was not found in the Trotters, although the emotive index was the same for both breeds. Th...
Kaiser L, Smith KA, Heleski CR, Spence LJ.To determine the effects of a therapeutic riding program on psychosocial measurements among children considered at risk for poor performance or failure in school or life and among children in special education programs. Methods: Observational study. Methods: 17 at-risk children (6 boys and 11 girls) and 14 special education children (7 boys and 7 girls). Methods: For the at-risk children, anger, anxiety, perceived self-competence, and physical coordination were assessed. For the special education children, anger and cheerfulness were measured, and the children's and their mothers' perceptions ...
Hedberg Y, Dalin AM, Ohagen P, Holm KR, Kindahl H.In various species, sex, hormonal treatments and oestrous-cycle stage have been shown to affect the animal's response in behavioural tests. Few such studies have been performed in the horse. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether oestrous-cycle stage affects mares' response to a novel object test and isolation test and, in part, to study whether mares, assumed to suffer from oestrous-related behavioural problems, respond differently in these tests when compared with controls. Twelve mares were tested twice, in oestrus and dioestrus, in a crossover design. Seven behavioura...
Tenenbaum G, Lloyd M, Pretty G, Hanin YL.A study was carried out to examine the ability of equestrians to accurately report precompetition emotions and thoughts across varying time delays (3,7, and 14 days) after competition. Forty male and female dressage riders were randomly divided into two equal groups: participants who watched their videotaped precompetition routine before responding to the items, and participants who visualized the precompetition routine without any external aid. Each rider completed several questionnaires which measured emotions, items related to horses, and an open-ended question on thoughts and emotions at t...
Visser EK, van Reenen CG, van der Werf JT, Schilder MB, Knaap JH, Barneveld A, Blokhuis HJ.Forty-one Dutch Warmblood immature horses were used in a study to quantify temperamental traits on the basis of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) measures. Half of the horses received additional training from the age of 5 months onwards; the other half did not. Horses were tested at 9, 10, 21 and 22 months of age in a novel object and a handling test. During the tests, mean HR and two heart variability indices, e.g. standard deviation of beat-to-beat intervals (SDRR) and root mean square of successive beat-to-beat differences (rMSSD), were calculated and expressed as response va...
Bates A.1. Horses, just by their large, gentle presence, put people therapeutically in touch with the vitality of being alive. 2. People who ordinarily shun physical and emotional closeness often can accept closeness from a horse and through therapy can transfer these skills to their daily lives. 3. The behavior of a sensitive horse display the rider's emotions to the therapist and provides a vehicle the therapist can use to teach the patient coping skills. 4. Therapists with an interest in horses can learn more about how to become involved in an equine-facilitated psychotherapy practice through the N...
Morton DB.Animals with relatively highly developed brains are likely to experience some degree of self-awareness and the ability to think. As well as being interesting in its own right, self-consciousness matters from an ethical point of view, since it can give rise to forms of suffering above and beyond the immediate physical sensations of pain or distress. This article surveys the evidence for animal self-consciousness and its implications for animal welfare.
Mills DS.The biological diversity of a species gives rise to individual differences in behavioural tendency. Traditionally, this variation has been considered to be of little scientific importance or value, but the description and quantification of the fundamental basis of this variability is relevant to many aspects of equine science. The reliable identification of these features may allow the development of more accurate diagnostic and prognostic indicators for a range of clinical diseases. Biologically based traits also provide a more rational basis for selective management and breeding programmes i...
Wolff A, Hausberger M, Le Scolan N.Different tests were used to assess different aspects of the emotionality of 1-3 year-old horses: arena test; a `novel object' test; and a handling test. In reaction to the test situations no important differences were observed according to age or sex in the behaviour patterns, but clear individual differences were observed within these classes. The arena test seemed to reveal the degree of gregariousness of the animals whereas the results in the two other tests were correlated and seemed to reflect an inherent degree of fearfulness in the horse. Indices were developed that enabled to rank the...
Clément F, Barrey E.The heart rate fluctuations at rest were studied in order to explore the emotionality of the horses by isolating the influence of the autonomic control. This paper presents a method of spectral analysis which was used to analyse the heart rate variability in the frequency domain. The heartbeat intervals were recorded during 1 h and a series of 1,024 heartbeats was extracted to compute a power spectrum of density. This was obtained by calculating the Fourier transform of the autocorrelation function of the series. This spectral analysis was applied to heart rate recordings in order to illustrat...
Barolin GS, Samborski R.Physiotherapy on the back of the moved horse has two important dimensions: 1) The somatotropic effect regards mainly spasticity, ataxia, the vertebral column, the basis of the pelvis and the skin. 2) A general psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic effect is created by joy, change and new impetus in rehabilitation and by the emotional contact with the "comrade animal". Or unit was the first to introduce hippotherapy with adults in Austria. There is specially good experience with the spastic atactic component in multiple sclerosis. However other diagnosis as well showed good profit, such as strok...
Alexander SL, Irvine CH, Livesey JH, Donald RA.A non-surgical, non-stressful technique was used for collection of pituitary venous blood from five conscious horses every minute for two 10-min periods before and during isolation from the herd, which caused a predictable, yet humane and physiological, emotional stress. Pituitary blood was also sampled every 5 min for two approximately 90-min periods before and after isolation, while jugular blood was sampled every 15 min throughout the experiment. During isolation, all horses became agitated, hyperventilating and sweating. Packed red cell volume increased, as did pituitary venous concentrati...
Heird JC, Lennon AM, Bell RW.Twenty-four yearling Quarter Horse fillies were divided into three groups (I) very limited handling, (II) intermediate handling and (III) extensive handling. At about 14 months of age, each horse was preconditioned for 2 weeks and then run in a simple place-learning T-maze test in which it had to locate its feed. Thirty trials were run daily for 20 days, with the location of the feed changed each day. To retire from the maze, a horse had to meet the criterion: 11 correct responses in 12 tries, with the last eight being consecutive. Horses in Group II required the fewest trials to reach criteri...
Matlina ESh, Bobylev IF, Skorupski K, Pukhova GS.The content of adrenaline, noradrenaline, ACTH, cortisol and insulin in the blood and excretion of catecholamines with urine were studied in horses after physical and emotional exposures. The highest degree of the sympathoadrenal system (SAS) and hypophysioadrenal system (HAS) activation followed by the insulin content decrease was observed after training. The known emotional exposure (the noise of hyppodrome) astivated both parts of SAS and HAS. The unknown emotional experience (electronic music) produced a strong adrenal medullar reaction. Analysis of the correlations showed that the initial...
Voith VL.Desensitization (gradually exposing an animal to a fear-inducing stimulus without evoking the fear response) and counter-conditioning (rewarding the animal for behavior incompatible with the fear response) are highly successful ways of eliminating or reducing fear responses and corresponding aggression.
Orsini JA, Wrigley J, Riley P.Home care for horses with chronic laminitis has been discussed rarely in the veterinary literature even though, at any given time, most of us have at least 1 chronic laminitis case in our care that is being managed at home by the owner. Almost all of our knowledge on this aspect of laminitis treatment has been gleaned through experience, by individually working through the medical, ethical, financial, and emotional challenges these cases can present. Much has already been presented on the medical management of the laminitic horse and on strategies for trimming and shoeing the laminitic foot. T...
Hameury L, Delavous P, Leroy C.Hippotherapy uses relationships with horses as a mediation method. The care treatment aims to act on the psychological functioning of children affected by relational disorders, especially in order to help the development of communication and emotions. A partnership has been established between the paedopsychiatric university centre at the CHRU in Tours (37) and a horse-riding centre.
Pearson G.This year BVA Live will, for the first time, feature farm animal and equine CPD. Among the varied topics on offer, Gemma Pearson will be presenting an introduction to equine behavioural medicine, examining the link between emotional and physical health in horses.
Gehlen H, Loschelder J, Walther M.Euthanasia represents a procedure with high responsibility for veterinarians in equine practice. The procedure should avoid pain and suffering for the horse and be carried out with the least possible stress for the patient and its owner. The presented study investigated the emotional impact of a horse's euthanasia procedure on the owner in order to enable development of future recommendations in improving the management of this procedure in horses. Methods: Questionnaires concerning euthanasia of a horse for horse owners and veterinarians, respectively were developed and sent by mail or publis...
Luksaite J, Zokaityte E, Starkute V, Sidlauskiene S, Zokaityte G, Bartkiene E.The aim of this study was to apply the FaceReader technique to select the animal species and breed for a personalized AAT based on the emotions ('neutral', 'happy', 'sad', 'angry', 'surprised', 'scared', 'disgusted', and 'contempt') induced in the persons (18-64 years old) by the images of different animal species and breeds. To implement the aim, the images of different animal species (, , , , and ) and their breeds (dogs: Australian shepherd, pug, Labrador retriever, Doberman, miniature schnauzer, beagle, three mixed-breed types, Yorkshire terrier, Cane Corso, Samoyed, and Chihuahua; cats: B...
Mattila M, Honkanen S, Sjögren T, Piirainen A, Aartolahti E.Interaction has a multidimensional role in equine-facilitated rehabilitation. Unassigned: The aim of this study was to understand rehabilitees' experiences of interaction during equine-facilitated rehabilitation. Unassigned: Six children and four adults with individual diagnoses or reasons to participate in equine-facilitated rehabilitation were included in this qualitative study. Data were collected by interviewing individually the rehabilitees. A phenomenological Spiegelberg's seven-phase meaning analysis was performed to reveal the meanings. Unassigned: Seven meanings were identified: 1) Tr...
Asselin G, Penning JH, Ramanujam S, Neri R, Ward C.To determine an incomplete spinal cord injured veteran's experience following participation in a therapeutic horseback riding program. Methods: Following the establishment of a nationwide therapeutic riding program for America's wounded service veterans in 2007, a Certified Rehabilitation Registered Nurse from the Michael E. DeBakey Veteran Affairs Medical Center worked with an incomplete spinal cord injured veteran who participated in the Horses for Heroes program. Results: This program resulted in many benefits for the veteran, including an increase in balance, muscle strength, and self-este...
Wolff A, Hausberger M, Le Scolan N.Different tests were used to assess different aspects of the emotionality of 1-3 year-old horses: arena test; a `novel object' test; and a handling test. In reaction to the test situations no important differences were observed according to age or sex in the behaviour patterns, but clear individual differences were observed within these classes. The arena test seemed to reveal the degree of gregariousness of the animals whereas the results in the two other tests were correlated and seemed to reflect an inherent degree of fearfulness in the horse. Indices were developed that enabled to rank the...
Jardat P, Lansade L.In the past 20 years, research focusing on interspecific sociocognitive abilities of animals toward humans has been growing, allowing a better understanding of the interactions between humans and animals. This review focuses on five sociocognitive abilities of domestic mammals in relation to humans as follows: discriminating and recognizing individual humans; perceiving human emotions; interpreting our attentional states and goals; using referential communication (perceiving human signals or sending signals to humans); and engaging in social learning with humans (e.g., local enhancement, demo...
Rowland M, Hudson N, Connor M, Dwyer C, Coombs T.Travellers and Gypsies are recognised ethnic groups in the UK and Ireland. Horse ownership is an important cultural tradition, however, practices associated with poor welfare are often perceived to be linked to these horse owning communities. Despite this, empirical studies on the welfare status of Traveller and Gypsy owned horses are lacking. To determine the welfare status of Traveller and Gypsy owned horses, 104 horses were assessed using a bespoke horse welfare protocol. This protocol assessed animal, resource and management-based measures. In addition, Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QB...
Scholler D, Zablotski Y, May A.Stress has a significant impact on equine welfare. There are some studies on the stress response in horses ridden with tight nosebands, but little is known about other stress parameters than cortisol, which potentially could address an emotional component. In this study, blood samples of a total of 74 warmblood horses were used to establish reference values for plasma substance P (SP) concentrations. Moreover, 16 of these warmblood horses were included in a stress model. Four different stress levels (level 1: horses ridden with loose noseband, level 2: tight noseband, level 3: loose noseband a...
Kitaura T, Sato F, Hada T, Ishimaru M, Kodama R, Nambo Y, Watanabe G, Taya K.The secretion of prolactin and growth hormone in response to exercise and emotional stresses was investigated in Thoroughbreds. Two experiments were performed: one with loading of only exercise stress and one with simultaneous loading of exercise and emotional stresses. Exercise stress was loaded in 4 steps using a treadmill for horses: pre-exercise period (5 min), walking period (6.5 min), galloping period (3 min), and cooling down period (10 min). Emotional stress was loaded by showing a loud video of an audience at a racetrack during the walking period. The results clearly demonstrated that...
Cerebral lateralisation is the tendency for an individual to preferentially use one side of their brain and is apparent in the biased use of paired sensory organs. Horses vary in eye use when viewing a novel stimulus which may be due to different physiological reactions. To understand the interplay between physiology and lateralisation, we presented a novel object (an inflated balloon) to 20 horses while electrocardiogram traces were collected. We measured the amount of time each horse looked at the balloon with each eye. We calculated 'sample entropy' as a measure of non-linear heart rate var...
Merkies K, Sudarenko Y, Hodder AJ.Communication within a species is essential for access to resources, alerting to dangers, group facilitation and social bonding; human facial expressions are considered to be an important factor in one’s ability to communicate with others. Evidence has shown that dogs and horses are able to distinguish positive and negative facial expressions by observing photographs of humans, however there is currently no research on how facial expressions from a live human are perceived by horses. This study investigated how ponies distinguish facial expressions presented by live actors. Trained actors (n...
Kovács G, van Dijke A, Leontjevas R, Enders-Slegers MJ.Attachment characteristics play a key role in mental health and in understanding mental disorders. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the role the attachment characteristics can play in treatment effects in adult patients with intrapsychic and interpersonal problems who underwent Equine-assisted Short-term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (ESTPP). In the first part of the study, we compared the effects of ESTPP to treatment-as-usual from a previous dataset regarding psychological dysfunction. For this, an explorative experimental non-randomized pre-treatment and 1-year post-treatment de...
Coffin J.Background: Recent statistics have painted a grim picture for Australia's Aboriginal youth, with reports of higher levels of almost every health indicator, including depression, sexual and emotional abuse, unemployment, and incarceration. Traditional western based therapies have proven to have limited effectiveness in engaging this group as they can often be culturally inappropriate. International studies have provided promising results using equine assisted learning, with a sound methodological basis underpinned by Indigenous ways of being and doing. In Australia Aboriginal people have strong...
Trösch M, Cuzol F, Parias C, Calandreau L, Nowak R, Lansade L.Over the last few years, an increasing number of studies have aimed to gain more insight into the field of animal emotions. In particular, it is of interest to determine whether animals can cross-modally categorize the emotions of others. For domestic animals that share a close relationship with humans, we might wonder whether this cross-modal recognition of emotions extends to humans, as well. In this study, we tested whether horses could recognize human emotions and attribute the emotional valence of visual (facial expression) and vocal (non-verbal vocalization) stimuli to the same perceptua...
Bradshaw-Wiley E, Randle H.Increasing interest in equine welfare has emphasised the need for objective and reliable behavioural indicators of horses' affective state. However, research has yielded mixed results regarding behaviours suited for industry use largely because they are subject to anthropomorphic interpretation. Stabling is commonly used to manage domesticated horses despite research indicating that it can negatively impact horse welfare, but its effect on their affective state is yet to be quantified. Ten adult horses (11.8 ± 4.4 years) were observed either on a day- (DS) or night-stabling (NS) schedule over...
Wiśniewska A, Janczarek I, Tkaczyk E, Wilk I, Janicka W, Próchniak T, Kaczmarek B, Pokora E, Łuszczyński J.This study aimed to perform a comparative analysis of the horses' heart rate parameters and locomotor activity in a herd or isolation, with or without the company of goats. Twenty horses were tested in a paddock, accompanied (or not) by three goats. The experiment comprised four tests (a control test of a herd of horses without goats, a horse isolation test without goats, a test of a herd of horses with goats and a test of an isolated horse with goats). The horse's locomotor behavior, and the HR, RR, rMSSD, LF, HF, and LF/HF were recorded. The data analysis included a 15-min rest, procedural a...
Schmidt J, Wartenberg-Demand A, Forstmeier S.Equine-assisted therapy is more often practiced with children and adolescents than with the elderly, although individuals in the second half of life could also profit from it. This group, from the age of 50, is characterised by increasing emotional, social, health-related and cognitive changes; a critical life event, such as a neurological illness or loss of a family member, can increase the likelihood of subclinical depression. Individuals who exhibit depressive symptoms not necessarily diagnosed with a major depression may suffer from relevant losses of quality of life (e.g. sleep disorders,...
Nawroth C, Langbein J, Coulon M, Gabor V, Oesterwind S, Benz-Schwarzburg J, von Borell E.Farm animal welfare is a major concern for society and food production. To more accurately evaluate animal farming in general and to avoid exposing farm animals to poor welfare situations, it is necessary to understand not only their behavioral but also their cognitive needs and capacities. Thus, general knowledge of how farm animals perceive and interact with their environment is of major importance for a range of stakeholders, from citizens to politicians to cognitive ethologists to philosophers. This review aims to outline the current state of farm animal cognition research and focuses on u...
Jaramillo FM, Oliveira TM, Silva PEA, Trindade PHE, Baccarin RYA.Horse racing is a major sport practiced worldwide. The environment to which horses are exposed during race meetings can influence their behavior. However, to the best of our knowledge, a method for assessing a horse's response to its surroundings during the pre- and post-race periods has not yet been reported. This study aimed to create a standard list of descriptors for use in a qualitative behavioral assessment (QBA) focused on assessing the emotional expressivity of horses before and after racing events. Unassigned: Seventy pre- or post-race 30-second videos of horses were randomly selected...
Bell C, Rogers S, Taylor J, Busby D.A key welfare problem for horses is that people commonly fail to recognise, and consequently neglect to resolve, equine behavioural signs of distress, worsening the welfare of the horse and potentially putting the safety of the handler at risk as a result. Members of equestrian Facebook groups were asked to view six videos and assess the horse's behaviour in each; the authors selected the videos and considered each video to demonstrate behaviour associated with negative affective states. An additional six equine behaviourists also completed the survey as an "expert comparison group" from whom ...
Vincent A, Morrissey M, Acri M, Guo F, Hoagwood K.This study examines the effect of volunteering within a Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International (PATH Intl) premiere accredited center by exploring the experiences of volunteers leading horses in adaptive riding lessons. Adaptive Riding lessons are horseback riding lessons for individuals ages four through the lifespan, with special needs, varying from cognitive, physical, social-emotional, or other challenges. Volunteers directly impact the rider-horse bond by increasing accessibility to horseback riding for individuals with disabilities, fostering a meaningful bond...
Moscovice LR, Sobczak B, Niittynen T, Koski SE, Gimsa U.Although best known for its established role in mediating parturition and lactation, the highly-conserved neuropeptide hormone oxytocin also mediates a range of social and stress-buffering processes across mammalian species. Measurements of peripheral oxytocin in plasma have long been considered the gold standard, but there is increasing interest in developing methods to detect oxytocin non-invasively in saliva. Here we present an analytical and biological validation of a novel method to measure salivary oxytocin (sOXT) in an under-studied research group: farm animals. Given their similarities...
Nieforth LO, Kaufman S.Given the nature of horse-human interactions in equine-assisted services (EAS), death of a horse may have significant impacts. In this study, an online survey was distributed to EAS practitioners. The goal of the study was to explore the experiences of practitioners and identify the socioemotional processes that occur upon the death of an equine within an EAS program. Open-ended responses ( = 84) were analyzed qualitatively using a grounded theory and constant-comparative approach. Responses are situated into two themes (1) Processing the death of an equine and (2) Practical implications. Expe...
