Horses feel emotions when they watch positive and negative horse-human interactions in a video and transpose what they saw to real life.
Abstract: Animals can indirectly gather meaningful information about other individuals by eavesdropping on their third-party interactions. In particular, eavesdropping can be used to indirectly attribute a negative or positive valence to an individual and to adjust one's future behavior towards that individual. Few studies have focused on this ability in nonhuman animals, especially in nonprimate species. Here, we investigated this ability for the first time in domestic horses (Equus caballus) by projecting videos of positive and negative interactions between an unknown human experimenter (a "positive" experimenter or a "negative" experimenter) and an actor horse. The horses reacted emotionally while watching the videos, expressing behavioral (facial expressions and contact-seeking behavior) and physiological (heart rate) cues of positive emotions while watching the positive video and of negative emotions while watching the negative video. This result shows that the horses perceived the content of the videos and suggests an emotional contagion between the actor horse and the subjects. After the videos were projected, the horses took a choice test, facing the positive and negative experimenters in real life. The horses successfully used the interactions seen in the videos to discriminate between the experimenters. They touched the negative experimenter significantly more, which seems counterintuitive but can be interpreted as an appeasement attempt, based on the existing literature. This result suggests that horses can indirectly attribute a valence to a human experimenter by eavesdropping on a previous third-party interaction with a conspecific.
Publication Date: 2020-03-11 PubMed ID: 32162112DOI: 10.1007/s10071-020-01369-0Google Scholar: Lookup
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- Journal Article
Summary
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Objective Overview
This research explores the capability of horses to perceive and react to emotions based on positive or negative horse-human interactions they observed in videos. Following this, they showed different behavior towards the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ human when encountering them in real life.
Detailed Explanation
Eavesdropping Mechanism
- The research focuses on the mechanism of eavesdropping present in nonhuman animals, a less studied area, especially in nonprimate species.
- Eavesdropping refers to an animal’s ability to derive meaningful insights about other individuals by observing their interactions with others.
- This observational capacity can be used to infer whether an individual is likely to be harmful (negative) or benign (positive), and adjust personal behavior accordingly.
Study Design
- The study was conducted on domestic horses (Equus caballus).
- Videos involving ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ interactions between an unknown human experimenter and an actor horse were shown to the subjects.
Observations from Video Projections
- The horses showed emotional responses while watching these clips.
- They displayed behavioral signs (facial expressions and contact-seeking behavior) and physiological signals (increased heart rate) indicating positive emotions when observing the positive interaction, and negative emotions for the negative interaction.
- This demonstrates that the horses were understanding and emotionally reacting to the content in the videos.
- The researchers suggest this points towards a possibility of emotional contagion, meaning the horses were empathizing with the emotional state of the actor horse in the video.
Real Life Interaction
- Post viewing the videos, a choice test was set up, where the horses were presented with the positive and negative experimenters from the video, in person.
- The horses were able to differentiate between the positive and negative experimenters based on their observed interactions in the videos.
- Surprisingly, the horses touched the negative experimenter more; though contrary to initial expectations, this behavior might be an appeasement attempt as per prior animal behavior literature.
- This result posits that horses are capable of attributing either positive or negative valence to humans by observing their previous interactions with other horses, even when those interactions were depicted indirectly via video.
Cite This Article
APA
Trösch M, Pellon S, Cuzol F, Parias C, Nowak R, Calandreau L, Lansade L.
(2020).
Horses feel emotions when they watch positive and negative horse-human interactions in a video and transpose what they saw to real life.
Anim Cogn, 23(4), 643-653.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01369-0 Publication
Researcher Affiliations
- INRAE, PRC, CNRS, IFCE, Université de Tours, 37380, Nouzilly, France. milena.trosch@gmail.com.
- INRAE, PRC, CNRS, IFCE, Université de Tours, 37380, Nouzilly, France.
- INRAE, PRC, CNRS, IFCE, Université de Tours, 37380, Nouzilly, France.
- INRAE, PRC, CNRS, IFCE, Université de Tours, 37380, Nouzilly, France.
- INRAE, PRC, CNRS, IFCE, Université de Tours, 37380, Nouzilly, France.
- INRAE, PRC, CNRS, IFCE, Université de Tours, 37380, Nouzilly, France.
- INRAE, PRC, CNRS, IFCE, Université de Tours, 37380, Nouzilly, France.
MeSH Terms
- Animals
- Cues
- Emotions
- Facial Expression
- Horses
- Humans
Grant Funding
- Cognition-Equitation / IFCE
Citations
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