Human-animal interaction with regards to horses encompasses the various ways in which humans and horses engage and communicate with each other. This field of study examines the behavioral, psychological, and physiological responses that occur during these interactions. Researchers investigate aspects such as the impact of human presence on horse behavior, the effects of different training methods, and the mutual benefits of human-horse relationships. Studies often focus on how these interactions influence equine welfare, training outcomes, and human psychological well-being. This page compiles peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that explore the dynamics, outcomes, and implications of human-animal interactions involving horses.
Mouren MC, Ohayon M, Tatossian A.Animals have always occupied a privileged place beside man and with him form a couple, a duality. In the first part the authors study the psychology of the adopted animal. Then they look at greater length into the personality of his owner, with particular insistence on the reasons for acquiring it, on the choice of animal (dog, cat, horses), on the part it plays in the life of its master, and on the latter's reaction at his companion's death. They also tackle the problem of man's abnormal behaviour in relation to animals, especially bestiality.
Rieger C.The article surveys some of the scientific fundamentals of hippo- and riding therapy, and its methods using the characteristic horseback three dimensional rhythmic movement impulses for its therapeutic values, particularly in cerebral palsy. The influence of riding on posture and balance reactions, position of the pelvic, postures of head and trunk as well as rotatory movements was demonstrated in film studies using the cerebral palsied with different syndromes as an example. Electromyographic examinations of antagonistic muscle groups, kinesiologic analyses with the help of a video-recorder, ...
Tauffkirchen E.Neurodevelopmental treatment according to Dr. K. and B. Bobath can be supplemented by hippotherapy. At proper control and guidance, an improvement in posture tone, inhibition of pathological movement patterns, facilitation of normal automatical reactions and the promotion of sensorimotor perceptions is achieved. By adjustment to the swaying movements of the horse, the child feels how to retain straightening alignment, symmetry and balance. By pleasure in this therapy, the child can be motivated to satisfactory cooperation and accepts the therapy horse as its friend. The results of hippotherapy...
Simić V, Ilić A.The caecum in man as a part of the large colon (intestinum crassum) differs morphologically and topographically from the caecum of domestic mammals. The caecum in domestic mammals differs not only from the human caecum but also comparatively morphologically and topographically among the domestic mammals. The appendix vermiformis does not exist in domestic mammals, which represents the main difference between the human caecum and that of domestic mammals. There are certainly some differences in the physiological function of the caecum in man and the caecum in domestic mammals, which are carnivo...
O'Neill HJ, Gershbein LL.The lipids of human and equine smegma pools were saponified and the total fatty acids submitted to temperature programmed gas chromatography (GC) analysis. In contrast to the human products, the horse smegma fatty acids contained very low odd saturated as well as olefinic branched chain acid contents. The cyclopropane fatty acid, 9,10-methyleneoctadecanoic acid, occurred in smegma sampled from men over 35 years of age but could not be detected in the pool from persons of 17-20 years of age nor in any of the equine mixtures. The alcoholic fraction from horse smegma contained about 85% sterol, t...
Baillet H, Leroy D, Vérin E, Delpouve C, Boulanger J, Benguigui N, Komar J, Thouvarecq R.The present research aims at quantifying the impact of practicing a new coordination pattern with an online visual feedback on the postural coordination performed on a mechanical horse. Forty-four voluntary participants were recruited in this study. They were randomly assigned to four practice groups based on i) with or without feedback (i.e., group 1, control, did not receive the feedback; group 2, 3 and 4 received an online feedback during practice) and ii) the specific trunk/horse coordination to target during practice (group 1, target coordination = 180° (without feedback); group 2, targe...
Artz NL, Robbins J, Millman ST.Objectives of this study were to evaluate an equine assisted learning (EAL) curriculum designed for medical students and resident physicians, and to determine impacts of the curriculum on participant perceptions of burnout and well-being. The EAL curriculum incorporated evidence-based skills and concepts to increase happiness and/or resilience. A pre/post intervention design was used, with 18 EAL participants receiving the curriculum within their month-long community based primary care clerkship elective, and 10 control (CTL) participants who did not receive the curriculum within their clerksh...
Sokolov PL, Dremova GV, Samsonova SV.Influence and therapeutic efficacy of horseback riding (hippotherapy) as a method for complex rehabilitation of patients with late residual stage of infantile cerebral palsy were studied. Significant increase of a range of active and passive mosements in large joints of lower extremities, higher, indices of hand dynamometry on the left, of vital lung capacity as well as a relief of relief of reactive and personality anxiety and depression, higher motivation for rehabilitation treatment, etc., were registered. Neurophysiological study revealed significant changes of afferentation at stem and th...
Strashko EY, Kapustianska АA, Bobyreva LE.Matters of physical and medical rehabilitation of children with organic lesions of the nervous system, in particular, with cerebral palsy, are actual in countries around the world. Hippotherapy is neurophysiologically oriented therapy using horses. Determine whether a combination of hippotherapy as a method of rehabilitation in the aftermath of outpatient comprehensive impact on MS on a stationary phase; Study of the effect of hippotherapy as securing and preparation method for learning new postures and movements in children with spastic cerebral palsy forms; The study of the possible optimiza...
Tauffkirchen E.Neurodevelopmental treatment according to Dr. K. and B. Bobath can be supplemented by hippotherapy. At proper control and guidance, an improvement in posture tone, inhibition of pathological movement patterns, facilitation of normal automatical reactions and the promotion of sensorimotor perceptions is achieved. By adjustment to the swaying movements of the horse, the child feels how to retain straightening alignment, symmetry and balance. By pleasure in this therapy, the child can be motivated to satisfactory cooperation and accepts the therapy horse as its friend. The results of hippotherapy...
Traversa D, Milillo P, Maggi R, Simonato G, Di Cesare A, Pezzuto C, Grillini M, Morelli S, Colombo M, Passarelli A, Grassano A, Serio P, Losurdo M....Equine and canine anaplasmosis and borreliosis are major tick-borne zoonotic diseases caused by and various species of (the most important being s.l.), respectively. This study evaluated the seroexposure to and in dogs and horses used in Animal-Assisted Interventions or living in contact with children, elderly people or immunocompromised persons. A total of 150 horses and 150 dogs living in Italy were equally divided into clinically healthy animals and animals with at least one clinical sign compatible with borreliosis and/or anaplasmosis (present at clinical examination or reported in th...
Flores FM, Dagnese F, Mota CB, Copetti F.Hippotherapy uses horseback riding movements for therapeutic purposes. In addition to the horse's movement, the choice of equipment and types of floor are also useful in the intervention. The quantification of dynamic parameters that define the interaction of the surface of contact between horse and rider provides insight into how the type of floor surface variations act upon the subject's postural control. Objective: To test whether different types of surfaces promote changes in the amplitude (ACOP) and velocity (VCOP) of the center of pressure (COP) displacement during the rider's contact wi...
Rørvang MV, Nielsen TB, Christensen JW.Animals can acquire new behavior through both individual and social learning. Several studies have investigated horses' ability to utilize inter-species (human demonstrator) social learning with conflicting results. In this study, we repeat a previous study, which found that horses had the ability to learn from observing humans performing an instrumental task, but we include a control for stimulus enhancement. One human demonstrator and thirty horses were included, and the horses were randomly assigned to one of three treatments: (A) full human demonstration, (B) partial human demonstration, a...
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...
Riley CB, Padalino B, Rogers CW, Thompson KR.There is an increased understanding of shared human-animal risk in terms of "one welfare", whereby when animals are at risk, so are people, so preventing injury to one species may also prevent injury to the other. Because transport-related injuries to horses are common, the authors considered this paradigm to study road equine transport-related injuries to humans in New Zealand. The aim was to determine their frequency and associated factors by distributing a survey to horse industry participants through industry organisations asking about their horse activities, road transport experiences, an...
Bernauer K, Kollross H, Schuetz A, Farmer K, Krueger K.A previous study demonstrated that horses can learn socially from observing humans, but could not draw any conclusions about the social learning mechanisms. Here we develop this by showing horses four different human action sequences as demonstrations of how to press a button to open a feed box. We tested 68 horses aged between 3 and 12 years. 63 horses passed the habituation phase and were assigned either to the group Hand Demo (N = 13) for which a kneeling person used a hand to press the button, Head Demo (N = 13) for which a kneeling person used the head, Mixed Demo (N = 12) fo...
Van den Eede A, Martens A, Floré K, Denis O, Gasthuys F, Haesebrouck F, Van den Abeele A, Hermans K.Equine methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) carriage entails a risk of both equine and zoonotic transmission and infection. In Europe, CC398, the livestock-associated (LA-)MRSA is highly prevalent in horses and veterinary personnel at equine clinics. The extent of the MRSA reservoir created by healthy horses from the general population and associated health hazard for their daily caretakers is, however, unknown. This study aimed at screening healthy horse-caretaker couples from a broad range of home farms. At five equine gatherings, 166 couples were selected for MRSA screening in...
Nishimuta M, Rosales-Ruiz J, Will SM, Hunter M.Functional analysis data and previous studies on animal training have demonstrated that social interaction with humans can serve as a reinforcer for animals. Yet, some studies have demonstrated that tactile interaction (e.g., patting, petting, or scratching) is less effective or ineffective when compared to food. However, the reinforcement procedures used may account for these discrepancies. The current study investigated whether tactile interaction, in the form of petting and scratching, could be used as a reinforcer to train behaviors to two horses and a mule. First, each equine learned when...
Madigand J, Rio M, Vandevelde A.Many studies focus on the impact of equine assisted services (EAS) on social skills in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but existing data are not consensual and the only available meta-analysis included only three studies and did not consider the social responsiveness scale (SRS). This meta-analysis aims to measure the impact of EAS on social skills in ASD. Using Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library, the means and standard deviations of every available SRS post-intervention scores in each participant group were collected from the five selected randomised controlled trials with...
Hemingway A, Sullivan K.This paper is presenting results from an observational study which has measured the impact of an equine-assisted education (EAE) intervention on the future occurrence of domestic violence within the family over 1 year following completion of the intervention as part of the troubled families program. The data analyzed were collected by the local authority troubled family's team from the different agencies involved including crime, health, and social care data. The data were analyzed and compared across four groups, those families on the troubled families program who had a key worker with a mem...
Anzulewicz A, Fenner K, Hyde M, Heald S, Burattini B, Romness N, McKenzie J, Wilson B, McGreevy P.Current evidence of how human sex-related differences in riders and handlers may influence horse behaviour is limited. The Equine Behaviour Assessment and Research Questionnaire (E-BARQ) was used to collect demographic data on riders and handlers ( = 1420) and behavioural data on their horses. It includes demographic items about the sex of the respondent and how frequently the horse has been ridden or handled by male and female humans. The questionnaire then gathers observations on the horse's behaviour on the ground and under saddle or when driven Using E-BARQ's battery of 97 questions, the c...
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...
Henriksson J, Sauveroche M, Roth LSV.Due to our long history of living in close association with horses, these animals are suggested to have enhanced skills in understanding and communicating with humans. Today, horses have become important to humans for sport and leisure and their understanding of human behaviour and their human-directed behaviour are therefore of great importance. In this study, we investigated 22 horses in a human contact-seeking experiment where they were presented with an unsolvable problem and a detour experiment with a human demonstrator. The unsolvable problem consisted of pieces of carrot in a closed buc...
Starling M, McLean A, McGreevy P.Equitation science is an evidence-based approach to horse training and riding that focuses on a thorough understanding of both equine ethology and learning theory. This combination leads to more effective horse training, but also plays a role in keeping horse riders and trainers safe around horses. Equitation science underpins ethical equitation, and recognises the limits of the horse's cognitive and physical abilities. Equitation is an ancient practice that has benefited from a rich tradition that sees it flourishing in contemporary sporting pursuits. Despite its history, horse-riding is an a...
Peters BC, Fields BE, Erdman EA.Objective: The use of equine movement as a therapy tool in a plan of care, or hippotherapy, has grown considerably over the past three decades. However, there is little evidence of safety rates and related practice patterns to guide key stakeholders such as clients, therapists, the health care team, and third-party payers. The purpose of this article is to describe the safety and practice patterns of contemporary use of hippotherapy. Design: A survey was distributed to occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), and speech-language pathology clinicians who incorporate hippotherapy into t...
Fletcher JE, Tripolitis L, Beech J.The modulation of Ca2+ release by synthetic bee venom melittin was examined in equine and human terminal cisternae-containing fractions. Melittin (0.1 microM) decreased the threshold of Ca(2+)-induced Ca2+ release by 20% in equine muscle and by 36% in human muscle. If terminal cisternae fractions were first preloaded with Ca2+ to greater than about 75% of the threshold of Ca(2+)-induced Ca2+ release and then melittin added, an immediate and sustained release of Ca2+ occurred in preparations from both species. Addition of melittin after a Ca2+ preload of < 50% of the threshold of Ca(2+)-induced...
Ionatamishvili NI, Tsverava DM, Loriia MSh, Avaliani LA.One hundred children with cerebral palsy, aged 3-14 years, were divided into two equal groups, the first one including 50 children assigned to ride therapy and the second one--to Bobath therapeutic gymnastics. All the patients underwent a functional examination, which was rated using score system worked out by the authors, thus enabling a quantitative evaluation of treatment efficacy. In all the cases, physical rehabilitation resulted in a positive but not the same effect, with ride therapy being significantly (p < 0.001) more beneficial treatment compared to therapeutic gymnastics. Ride thera...
Brady HA, James CR, Dendy DW, Irwin TA, Thompson LD, Camp TM.This study examined the effects of 15 sessions of hippotherapy (HPOT) on gross motor skills in children (aged 2-3 years) with gross motor developmental delay (DD) (n = 11) in comparison with age-based controls without DD (n = 6). Gross motor skills in both groups were assessed with the Battelle Developmental Inventory 2nd Edition, and gait parameters were measured using a computerized gait analysis system prestudy and poststudy. The DD group took part in 15 sessions of HPOT, and the control (CON) group did not participate in any equine activities. The statistical analysis examined preinterv...
Williams JM, Randle H, Marlin D.COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020; the United Kingdom (UK) implemented quarantine measures shortly afterward, resulting in rapid changes in how owners managed and interacted with their horses. This study provides a rapid analysis of the initial impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the management of UK leisure and competition horses. A 17 question online survey was distributed via equestrian social media sites to ascertain the impact of COVID-19 on horse and yard management and on human-horse interactions. Frequency analysis combined with Chi-squared and thematic analyses i...
Tabsuri T, Thawinchai N, Peansukmanee S, Lugade V.Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have poor postural control. Horseback riding (HR) is an alternative treatment shown to improve postural control among children with CP. However, there is a paucity of research investigating the underlying mechanisms responsible for improving postural control during HR. What are the three-dimensional biomechanical responses of the trunk and pelvis during HR among children with CP and with typical development (TD)? The participants, aged 4-12 years old, were inexperienced horseback riders, consisting of 10 children with TD and 10 children with spastic diplegia C...
White J, Sims R.This paper explores the potential for interventions to develop pro-animal welfare habitual behaviours (PAWHBs) in people to improve the lives of animals. Human behavioural research indicates that opportunities exist to deliver lasting change through developing positive habitual behaviours. The routine nature of many equine care and management practices lends itself to habit formation and maintenance. This proof-of-concept paper aims to evaluate a theory-based intervention of developing and maintaining a PAWHB in people caring for equines. Qualitative research methods were used. A 30 day PAWHB ...
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...
O'Neill HJ, Gershbein LL.The lipids of human and equine smegma pools were saponified and the total fatty acids submitted to temperature programmed gas chromatography (GC) analysis. In contrast to the human products, the horse smegma fatty acids contained very low odd saturated as well as olefinic branched chain acid contents. The cyclopropane fatty acid, 9,10-methyleneoctadecanoic acid, occurred in smegma sampled from men over 35 years of age but could not be detected in the pool from persons of 17-20 years of age nor in any of the equine mixtures. The alcoholic fraction from horse smegma contained about 85% sterol, t...
To determine the causes of horse-related injuries in a rural western community. Methods: Prospective identification of persons with horse-related injuries and retrospective interviews with patients or witnesses to determine causes. Methods: A small rural community in Alberta where the western style of riding predominates. Methods: All patients presenting to two family medicine clinics or to the Sundre General Hospital emergency department. Methods: Factors contributing to the injury as recalled by patients or witnesses, and characteristics of the persons, horses, and injuries. Results: Two thi...
