Transcript:

[0:04]

[Music] In a recent podcast, I was talking about studying the behavior of the Somali wild ass. There's a second part to that story that was looking at a totally different project. As an equine reproductive physiologist — and stick with me, this isn't going to get too sciency — I was looking at ways of how to propagate more Somali wild ass. They were critically endangered, there were only so many left on the planet, handfuls, and I was working with the Conservation Center on strategies to increase their population.

[0:43]

It took me down a deep rabbit hole that went in a direction I never expected, and that was in the realm of chemical communication. This is an important aspect of how horses communicate to us, but it also got me thinking about how we communicate with each other. We're a very vocal species, but we do communicate in other ways that we don't even know our biology is telling us — and yet we don't even think about it, it doesn't cross our consciousness — and that is when it comes to smells.

[1:20]

Going down this rabbit hole of how to propagate more Somali wild ass got me into this set of genes called the MHC genes. These genes are critical in maternal recognition of pregnancy. It's the reason we're here: during gestation, the mother does not attack the fetus, its immune system does not respond, and the MHC genes play a key role in that. But it got me reading these papers about chemical communication and how we go down into this realm called mate choice.

[2:00]

Studies in humans and horses have shown that smells play a key role in who we decide are going to be our mates. Have you ever noticed when somebody doesn't smell good to you — their natural body odor is repugnant — and then you have other people that you spend time with and their body odor is really pleasant? That is your biology, that is your body telling you the person that smells really well has immune system genes that are completely different from yours. So if you have offspring with them, they're going to have a robust immune system to withstand and fight off all these germs and pathogens we find in this hostile world we live in. Our immune system plays such a key role in protecting us.

[2:51]

In horses, we have done studies in mares that prefer stallions — through scent — whose immune genes are totally different from theirs. So when we think about communication, it's not just vocalizations; there's a lot more going on than we can ever understand.

[3:19]

Secretariat being led — he is numbered — the horse, and horses are the best thing in the world, isn't it? I've always loved them, right, ever since I was a little girl. Everybody's in line and they're off. Secretariat away very well, has good position. The love — I never thought owning a horse could mean so much to me. Secretariat now taking the lead. The madness — what kind of a horse is that? I've never seen a horse like that before. Lightning now — he is moving like a tremendous machine. The story — Mustangs were more involved in the early development of this breed than I thought they were, but they were. Secretariat has opened the 22-length lead. He is going to be the Triple Crown winner.

[4:11]

[Music] Horses — I'm Dr. Chris Mortensen. I've been an equine educator and researcher for over 20 years, and in this episode of "Mad About Horses" we're going to talk about how horses communicate. We open up with chemical communication because that's one we don't even think about, really. We look at other aspects, but do horses communicate through chemicals? Yes, absolutely — and we'll include that in today's podcast.

[4:43]

For any equine enthusiast, any horse owner, this episode's critical. It's more than just, say, reading their ears — there is so much going on in how horses communicate to us that really it takes a really well-trained eye to be able to recognize some of these things. It goes back into veterinary medicine: one of the aspects of veterinary medicine that I really admire in my colleagues is how they can go and look at a horse and get a good idea of what's going on physically and health-wise. The horse can't turn around and say, "Hey Doc, my hoof hurts," or "Hey Doc, my suspensory ligament is really aching today." The veterinarian, through hours of training, years of training, a lifetime of learning, can go and say, "Oh yeah, you've got an injury here," or "Oh yeah, I've seen this before," or "Oh yeah, this is something new, but I know where to go and get the information."

[5:48]

So in today's podcast, in general, we're going to talk about how horses communicate to us and what the research says. What studies are out there to talk about how horses are trying to tell us what is going on in their minds? Equine behavior — this is just the first step in a long series of episodes that we'll probably have on behavior — is the foundation of any relationship we have with our horses.

[6:14]

If you go back to the "How Horses See the World" podcast and understand it from their hooves, from their eyes, from their ears and nose — then how do they communicate to us? They are communicating constantly: with their herd mates, with us, with other animals around them that they form bonds with. They maintain social bonds — it is so important to them, and it's so important to us to understand that.

[6:44]

For us as humans, we communicate through vocalization — we talk a lot to colleagues, friends, family — or we have written communication. We have language that we use to communicate, where horses, not so much. They do have vocalizations, but body language is a big one — facial expressions, what their noses are doing, and their eyes. Then we go into actual vocalizations, and then we'll talk about chemicals and how we communicate. I talked about MHCs — it's such a fascinating topic, and at the end of this podcast I'll jump into that study a little bit that they did in horses.

[7:28]

It really got me thinking, like, wow, okay, yeah — my siblings don't smell good to me because we have very similar immune genes. And it makes me laugh, you know, and I tease them. When I was going into this research, they didn't laugh with me, but I was being like, "Oh my goodness, you smell so bad because our immune genes are so close to us," where my partner's immune genes are much different, and they smell really pleasant. It's just fascinating — all this biology of it all, right — when we break it down.

[8:05]

When we think about our relationship with horses, understanding how they're communicating to us is important — but also, let's reverse that: how we communicate. I have a couple interesting studies in there, and we're going to do some follow-up podcasts on that, but how we vocalize to the horse, our body language — they're very perceptive — so how we communicate to them is going to have an impact on how they respond to that. And that's — there's a million podcast episodes on training and disciplines, and everybody has different ideas on how to train a horse. I'm breaking it down to just basic communication: when you approach a horse, your body language, your vocal tone is going to have an impact. This isn't really getting into the training of it, it's more just general day-to-day care of the horse.

[9:03]

So, we're going to jump into body language, then we'll talk about vocalization, then touch, and then we'll end up with chemical communication. Now, to start all this off, one of the books I really enjoyed — and I read through it again before doing this podcast — was A Practical Field Guide to Horse Behavior: The Equid Ethogram by Dr. Sue McDonnell. I've had the pleasure of meeting her a couple of times at conferences. She's an amazing equid behaviorist — top in the field — she's at the University of Pennsylvania and she works in the School of Veterinary Medicine, and she's a certified applied animal behaviorist with the Animal Behavior Society.

[9:52]

This is an incredible book on just basic equid behavior and, like I said, day-to-day, how they interact with each other. If you're really interested in that, I'd suggest maybe going onto Amazon and finding that book — it's great to add to your library. I've had it for 20 years, since I got into academia. Just to quote her — and this is on page 90 — she does a really good brief synopsis on general equine communication. She says, quote: "Horses are known for their multi-sensory alertness, vigilance, and instantaneous reactivity to threat. Postures and expressions in various combinations appear to be important visual elements of communication within and between bands of horses. Very subtle changes in ears or tail position appear to convey information. Horses emit a variety of vocalizations as well as other sounds that are likely to serve as communication within the herd."

[10:51]

She talks about specifics — vocalizations — but then she also says chemical cues also likely play a large part in communication within and between groups of horses, as well as in perception of threatening predators. So that's just a brief synopsis, and it's a beautiful book, wonderful book. We're going to talk a little bit about what she says in there and then go look in some of the studies — what are the research studies showing in horse communication and how horses communicate with us and others.

[11:21]

Understanding Horse Body Language

Any trainer, anybody working around horses — this is one of the first things you learn about, you get experience in, because this, to me, is probably one of the most critically important aspects of horse care or working with horses. And that is because you have to be able to read that horse for your safety and their safety. But whenever I was training, riding, or teaching students, I always talked about the horse — always talked about looking at them, understanding their behavior.

[12:05]

I remember as a young student, somebody who made such a major impact in my life — Mr. Gene Armstrong — he was one of my professors at Cal Poly. He was a farrier, a horseman, a cowboy — taught me a lot early on in my career, and I could just listen to him all day talk about horse behavior. Through his learned career teaching students, working around horses, I remember his biggest impact, and I can still remember sitting there in the arena as he talked about a horse. It just captured me right then and there, and horse behavior was something I just wanted to learn more about.

[12:44]

He was talking a lot about understanding the horse's body language — what they're telling you, not just for their health, but for your safety, especially when you're going to train others on how to ride horses. Because the basics of a horse assessing a situation — and we do this, that's the thing — we do this day in, day out, and we don't even realize it. You go into a store, walk down a street — whenever you're outside your home, the safety of your home — you are constantly evaluating your environment. You don't even realize you're doing it, but you're looking for threats.

[13:24]

If somebody's coming down the street and they're angry, upset, your heart's going to race, your eyes are going to widen, you're going to get in this fight-or-flight response. You may turn around, you may duck into a store, you may cross the street. We're constantly doing this, and you're not thinking of it. Well, horses are — they're doing the same thing all day long. This is an animal that evolved to survive and evade predators. So this fight-or-flight response that we talk about has taken millions of years to evolve to get to where they're very hyper-perceptive.

[14:03]

With horses, let's just use it in the horse sense: fight or flight. They're either going to fight to survive, but most of the time they're going to flee. When they have an awareness — you know, a horse is grazing, it's just an automatic behavior, they're eating all day, we know that's what they like to do, or standing — something changes in their environment, so they're alert, and then they're suspicious, and they get curious: "Is that a threat?" They're assessing it in their brain very quickly. This isn't like some 10-minute philosophical discussion in their head; this is almost instantaneous.

[14:35]

Then, if there's any concern — "Oh, that's a big brown bear coming towards me" — or, "Oh, that's Chris, he's bringing me feed," right? — then it's either going to relax and do other affiliative behaviors, hopefully positive behaviors, or, if there's a predator around, they get hyper-alert: "That's a threat, we're going to escape." They'll have panic — fight or flight. Most of the time, horses are going to turn and flee. If, say, it's another horse, and they're going to fight, or the predator surprises them — you see this all the time in wildlife videos in Africa of zebras — a lion pops out of the bush and goes after the zebra, zebra is going to fight. They're going to try to flee, but they're going to start kicking. I've seen zebras biting Nile crocodiles to get away that were trying to get them. That's the fight in them — they'll bite, they'll kick, anything to survive as they try to get away and flee.

[15:44]

So, it's being able to recognize that body language. General body language — when looking at horses from a distance — if you own your horses, you should get eyes on them once a day at least. I always tell people: morning and evenings, get an eye on your animal, observe them, make sure they're okay. Most of the time they should be grazing, moving around, or standing, looking relaxed. But do they look depressed? Lethargic? They're not eating? They're laying? Horses do lay down — not often, but they do — but are they not getting up? Is there some abnormality to their behavior?

[16:20]

The most extreme for me is when I went to go get a mare down in Texas for one of our research projects, and I walk out into the field — the pasture grasses had grown kind of high — and I looked and there was literally a crop circle. It was a big crop circle that she had created because she was colicking, in abdominal pain, and because she was pawing all around for the hours in the night. This was early morning when I went to get her — she was in massive stress. Immediately, this was abnormal. Long story short, with that mare we were able to treat her colic and she was fine. But that was an extreme situation where the horse was not well, and it was clear as day that she was not well.

[17:05]

But you want to do that, you want to go and observe. Now, body postures for horses — this alert stance — anytime you approach, they're going to get alert because, again, remember they have that 350-degree view of the world. Their binocular vision — not the greatest — but they have very good monocular vision, so it's very hard to sneak up on a horse. Again, just real quick safety: you never want to approach towards the tail from behind where they can't see you, or, if you are approaching and their back's turned to you, make noise, make sure they know you're there. They will usually turn their head right or left to look at you with their monocular vision.

[17:51]

When they see you approaching, generally that head's going to come up, ears pricked forward, and they are alert — they're evaluating. Again, they're evaluating the situation, their nostrils are going to get a little bit bigger — elevated — because they're in chemical communication, trying to smell, but also, in that fight-or-flight stage, they need to oxygenate their lungs and their body to get away safely. So their body's getting ready: "Okay, am I going to flee?" Then they're going to turn their bodies and explode away to get away.

[18:22]

If they're going to fight — and you see this with, say, stallions — not so much in modern-day horse breeding where stallions are kept separately, but out in the wild, if we went and watched some feral horses or Przewalski's horses, we'd see stallions sparring. Even young stallions in bachelor groups will spar in a friendly match, but when there's a threat and they're going to fight, they're going to tightly tuck in that neck, their muzzle's drawn forward, they're head-thrusting — you see that with stallions quite a bit — they'll thrust their head forward as a threat, their ears are pinned back. We're going to talk about ears here more in a second in the fight phase, and then they're either going to kick — so turn around and kick — or they'll rear up and strike or bite. In that fight — and that's generally something you don't want to see your horses doing.

[19:20]

When a horse is relaxed — and this is ideally what we want to see — there's no tension in their body, so their posture's relaxed, their head's relaxed, so it's not in that alert or alarm. They're down grazing, or they're dozing, or they're just standing and resting, and their eyes are soft. You may ask, "What does that mean?" Well, when the eyes are soft, that generally means their eyelids are relaxed, so there's no tension in the eye muscles — it's just a sense of calm. The eyes are round, they're not squinting, and you can't see the sclera or the whites of the eyes. Generally, the expression's friendly, serene, and they're blinking slowly and deliberately.

[20:12]

So if you were again in the horse's position, think about it — think about how we react, okay? When we're just sitting there relaxed, our eyes are in their normal position — maybe a little droopy, soft, relaxed eyes. What happens when you're alert? Whoa — your head pops up, right? You're looking around, your eyes widen, your eyelids get bigger. And then if you're really scared — you see it in movies — that scared eye, super wide, right? So you can get a great view — wide-eyed, "Whoa, here we go." It's the same thing with your horses. That's when you can think about it with your own general behavior — they're similar. They're mammals.

[20:55]

Some other things — their muscles are relaxed, there's no tension, the tail's hanging loosely. I mean, occasionally they'll switch for flies, but it's not going back and forth or elevated. Their breathing is normal, calm, and regular. They just look peaceful. They could be laying down — sometimes horses do, especially young horses — but most horses can be standing there and their stay apparatus is locked in, and they're just resting.

[21:24]

Facial Expressions in Horses

We talked about the eye — let's talk about facial expressions. Do horses make facial expressions? Yes, they do. One of the things we always talk about is ears. Ears are the barometer of the horse's mood. I heard that my entire life. You can usually tell what a horse is thinking by watching their ears. It's one of the first things we teach students — or if you're teaching riding or you learned being around horses — generally you want to see their ears relaxed, meaning one's forward, one's back, or they're to the sides. Their lips are droopy, they look content.

[22:12]

When they're alert — head elevated, nostrils flared, eyes a little bit wider — those ears will generally be pricked forward. Remember, these are larger ears; they're catching those sound waves, and their brain is going, "Is this going to hurt me or not?" or "Is this something I want to partake in or not?" Sometimes those ears will flick back real quick if they hear something behind them, and then flick forward again. But generally, those ears — remember they have like 21 muscles that control them — have great control. They can position the ears to hear. That’s alert, and you see it all the time in horses. Alert is part of the repertoire of normal behaviors — they're constantly evaluating their environment, and you see that quite a bit.

[23:00]

Really, what is important to watch is looking for those ears being pinned flat against the head. That is a sign of "I'm irritated, I'm not happy," or "I'm in pain," or "I'm about to get in the big brawl." I am not a happy horse. Those pinned ears are telling either other horses or even you, as a warning sign: "That doesn't make me happy. I'm not happy."

[23:30]

Now, in riding or working with a lot of horses, when they're in herd situations, you see it quite a bit. It could be very quick — those ears are pinned, and they're giving a warning to another horse: "Stay away." Especially with mares and foals — "This is my baby, leave him alone." Or in situations where there's a big horse fly that's buzzing them and they're upset — they'll pin those ears and try to bite it. You've seen it in all sorts of different situations. But as an owner or as somebody working with horses, anytime you see those ears pinned back, try to see what is causing that horse discomfort. Or be careful — be very careful — that you don't get bit, you don't get hit with the hoof, either the front hooves in a strike or being kicked. Always be careful and understand — the horse is communicating to you with those ears. They're saying, "This is good," or "This is not good."

[24:28]

What we always like to see, especially when riding, is those ears kind of back when you're communicating to the horse. They're going to constantly move those ears forward and back, evaluating their environment, but you want them to be in contact with you and your voice — they're listening to you. Those ears should often, when you communicate to them, be tuned in to you so that they'll be pointed back — but not pinned. Pinned is completely different — that's where they're flat against the back of the head, past the poll, along the neck, however their head is oriented. But those ears — they're down.

[25:06]

Just to throw some science in here — there was a really interesting paper, in Nature Scientific Reports. Again, Nature is one of the top scientific journals in the world, and I love when I see horse papers in there. This was just published a few years ago, and it was on facial expression and oxytocin as possible markers of positive emotion in horses.

[25:26]

There's been, in the last 10, maybe 20 years, better understanding of horse behavior — and not just horses, but animal behavior. It's been a huge field; it captures all of our imaginations, and we're understanding animal behavior more than ever. So, facial expressions — do these animals make facial expressions that indicate what they're thinking? This was a study looking at this.

[25:58]

What they did, which was interesting, was they did standard grooming with horses, and then gentle grooming. Not to get into too much of grooming a horse, but anybody that's groomed a horse — you know you have some of those harder bristle brushes, you have the softer ones, you have your currycombs. A lot of times, we will groom before we go out for a ride and get all the dirt and grime off. Sometimes, in standard grooming, you might not be so gentle and soft. Remember, the horse's skin is very sensitive, especially over bony areas.

[26:32]

So, they wanted to see — okay, standard normal grooming, how most people do it, versus gentle grooming, where they watched the horse's behavior and if there was any sort of negative or avoidance behavior, they stopped doing that. They would go and do softer brushes or use the currycomb in a different manner. They called it gentle grooming.

[26:58]

They were looking at facial expressions — looking at the height of the neck, the opening of the eye, lip tension — whether the lips were straight, meaning no tension, aligned together; contracted lips, where the lips go back and raise jerkily; the lips extended forward; or twitching, where they either moved laterally or vertically; or the upper lips extended, which might have been a little more aggressive. They also looked at the position of the ears, which we just explained.

[27:34]

They looked at the frequency of these behaviors as they groomed them. They also looked at oxytocin and cortisol hormone levels. Cortisol is released in a stress response. Oxytocin, they think, has some anti-stress effect — so if you're stressed, you might release a little bit more oxytocin. Then they also looked at heart rates over the course of the study — 11 sessions of grooming.

[27:59]

Overall — just to get to the gist of it — horses that went through standard grooming tended to have a higher neck, wider eyes, and their lips were more contracted most of the time. There was no difference in their ears. They also found that the oxytocin levels were lower in gentle grooming horses.

[28:20]

So, in essence, what they're saying is, in a stress situation — or not super stressful, but just in a situation where the horse seems a little bit irritated — you start to see some changes in facial expression where they're not quite happy, but they're just putting up with it because it's part of their daily routine. Or they know, "Okay, here we go, I always do this before we get the saddle on, before we go here." They learn to become habituated to it, but it still shows that they're not quite happy. Where, in gentle grooming, they were fine — they were like, "Oh, this is great."

[28:59]

Overall, looking at body language, facial expressions, eyes, ears — all are indicators of the horse trying to communicate with you. The other way horses communicate — they do vocalize.

[29:13]

Vocalizations in Horses

Horses do have their own catalog of vocalizations. In general, if you work around horses, you learn to recognize these, and you learn to recognize which ones are good and which ones are maybe not so good. There’s been a great paper in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior published about 10 years ago — Dr. Yan out of Korea, “Acoustic Communication in the Domestic Horse,” kind of breaks down some of this, and Dr. McDonnell’s book also breaks this down quite a bit. Just summarizing the two — how horses vocalize — I think the one everybody globally would recognize is a whinny or a neigh.

[29:50]

It’s a loud, prolonged call. It can last up to three seconds, it starts high-pitched and ends low-pitched. It can be positive, it can be negative. There’s a study here I’m going to introduce in a second — it could be a greeting call between two horses, or they’re trying to regain contact with a conspecific or another horse. Separation — when you separate two horses that are close friends — you’ll hear them neigh or whinny to each other. So it can be positive or negative.

[30:37]

I’m going to play two whinnies — one could be considered calm, less stressed, and then one is like a stressful situation — considered a stressful whinny. Hopefully these aren’t too jarring, and I’m going to play them back-to-back. I’ll play it twice for each one.

[31:10]

Hopefully you could hear the differences in the two. In every horse breed, the size of the horse, the whinny is going to change. All of us — our voices sound different, and you’re going to find that in horses too. Another interesting study in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, published a little over 10 years ago out of the University of Connecticut — Rebecca Pond and others — was “Characterization of Equine Vocalization.” They were looking at the bioacoustics of horse whinnies and different types of vocalization.

[31:40]

The aspect of sound that we probably don’t think about is the pitch and length and duration — so really slow or really high-pitched. We recognize it — these are things we don’t even think about. We naturally learn, from the second we’re born, in our cultures and societies — wherever you are in the world — that the pitch or the way things are said to us actually impacts how we feel about that. It also indicates what the person speaking is thinking or physically going through. If I talk really slow, you’re like, “Whoa, okay, he’s really relaxed, he’s calm.” But if I talk really fast — “Oh my goodness!” — you can tell the frequency and pitch really change. Well, can we tell that in the whinny of a horse?

[32:47]

Just to get to the end of the study — yes, you actually can. They put these horses through two different types of situations: they called it eustress and distress. Eustress — positive — was feeding time at the barn, and they recorded over 233 whinnies in that situation. Then they had mares and foals in separation — and that’s pretty extreme. Anybody that’s weaned horses — that’s a pretty tough time on the farm. Mares are upset, foals are upset. I’ve even seen a mare that accidentally left a foal in a pasture when we were bringing her up to check her — oh my goodness, she was going nuts, and the foal was going nuts until we could reunite them. That is a stressful situation. So those were the two extremes — “Oh, we’re getting fed, that’s exciting, good time” — and then the distressful separations. They had 199 vocalizations of those recorded, and sure enough — yes — the horses definitely emit different spectral vocalizations in their whinnies during distress and eustress.

[34:00]

The next one that we all love to hear — I love — is the nicker. Low-pitched, guttural, pulsated vocalization. You hear this all the time — feeding time, not only when you enter the barn or you’re outside the pasture or paddock — feeding time, horses are neighing or whinnying, and then they’ll nicker. That low, guttural nicker just melts your heart. Generally, you’ll see this also mare-to-foal — a lot of nickering after a mare gives birth. I’ve seen over 100 mares give birth over the years — it’s just an amazing time to watch that interaction, the communication between the mare and the foal immediately after birth — those nickers as they start to form those tight social bonds. Even in breeding — stallion to mare — they’ll nicker to each other. It’s a greeting — “Here I am.”

[35:00]

Here, I’m going to play a nicker for you — that low, guttural pitch. Just a sound that melts your heart.

[35:16]

Now, let’s go to the less pleasant — the squeal. High-pitched, can vary in loudness, and it’s usually pretty quick — like a second. Usually, it’s aggressive interactions, but it could also be some affiliative behavior. I’ve seen it between mares and stallions anytime you’re teasing a stallion to a mare, or it’s breeding season and mares and stallions are around each other — you’ll hear that squeal. But usually, it’s fighting or two horses are going at each other, upset at each other, posturing, biting. You could hear a squeal after giving something painful — like a treatment, a shot. It’s not the most pleasant sound — I’m going to play it, but just so you can hear it.

[36:12]

Heard that a million times in the breeding shed — you hear that squeal quite often with mares and stallions. The other one that dials this up a little bit is the scream. It’s a bit longer than the squeal, at the high pitch, but this is not a happy horse. Generally, it’s either aggression — two horses fighting or really upset at each other — or the horse is just not happy. A squeal could be good or bad; a scream — generally not good, usually bad. I’m going to play a sound for you — it’s a bit loud, so just be aware.

[37:03]

Taking it down a little bit — let’s go to some lower-pitched. There’s the snort — quick, forceful exhalation of air. This is going to differ a little from the blow, which I’ll play next. Snorting — olfactory investigation — but they can snort when they’re posturing, not happy, fighting, but also play fighting. It could be bad, could be good — something you’ll hear sometimes around them.

[37:33]

And then we go to the blow — you hear this throughout the barn, just around horses enough. It’s a short, forceful, strong exhalation of air through the nose. It can be exploratory — investigating smells — but can also be used to alert herd mates. They observe this in wild horses or feral horses. If you’re around horses enough, you’ll hear it. Not necessarily bad — just a common noise they make when investigating certain things.

[38:23]

And then the groan — we all groan. Could be good, could be bad. Long day at work — “Oh…” — getting in a hot tub, lying down in bed — “Oh…” — we groan. Horses groan too — could be during rolling, when they’re relaxed, but also sometimes in pain. When mares are giving birth — I’ve heard that nicker a lot while she’s laboring — the one thing that blew me away, especially the first time I ever saw a horse giving birth, was how quiet they are. This is an animal that evolved in a hostile environment where things are trying to eat you — and that mare is phenomenal. She’s laying down and she will groan — not loud, just groan during parturition. It’s an amazing time — it gives you a deep appreciation for these animals.

[39:42]

Other vocalizations — horses snore during sleep, yes. Sigh — “Ahh” — relaxed, like that groan. They can sigh. A roar — stallions can roar, again, in play fighting or fighting. It’s louder than a scream.

[40:03]

So, there are other vocalizations out there, but from the whinny on down to the groan — those are the general ones you'll hear most of the day, day in and day out, around a horse farm. Now, as I said in the very beginning, let's flip that. How about how we talk to them? Does that influence how they feel? Does that make them relaxed, or upset, or uptight, or angry? And yeah — studies actually show that horses can detect anger or joy in our voices. They are definitely, as the scientists say, capable of interspecific, multimodal recognition of human emotions.

[40:43]

Dogs do it, right? "Oh, you're a bad puppy" — they know, "Oh, what’d I do?" Even though they don't know our words per se, they do learn words eventually, but the tone and inflection of our voice impacts our canids — our dogs — and it also affects our equids. This study, published in Animals, looked at anger vocalizations and joy vocalizations and how the horses responded to them. When they were played anger vocalizations, they had a more vigilant posture, whereas with joy vocalizations they were more calm or relaxed. Also, when they looked at heart rates of horses — when they had a human anger vocalization, their heart rates went up; when it was joy, their heart rates were normal or steady. What that’s showing is how we vocalize with them does have an impact on how they react.

[41:47]

Understanding Aggressive and Affiliative Touch in Horses

Changing to touch — and this one is so important in training. I’m sure there are a million other podcasts out there with trainers talking about touch and communication, so it is a very important aspect of horse training. But this is talking about how, in general, horses touch with each other and then us in different ways — not so much a training thing, but again, touch is critical in training and riding, so just be aware of that.

[42:24]

If they’re in a situation — let’s say danger — again, this is why reading body language, different vocalizations, facial expressions, can all indicate how that horse may touch you in not a good way. When we’re talking about that — like with each other or any sort of threat — horses are going to pin those ears, they can rear up and strike with their hooves, or they’re going to turn their bodies to kick. They do bite — horses do bite in anger and agitation — but that is one way they communicate in touch in not such a great way.

[43:10]

But what about the affiliative? Touch is so important to them — friendly, peaceful acts exchanged among individuals. Horses nuzzle — they will nuzzle each other. Foal and mare will nuzzle, but two conspecifics — two best buddies, my besties out in the pasture — they will nuzzle each other, and they will nuzzle you. They recognize you as a companion, and there’s nothing greater than when a horse nuzzles you — or you nuzzle into their neck — it’s just… oh, that’s another reason why I care so much about these animals.

[43:43]

Other things they do with touch — allogrooming, or mutual grooming. You see that with them oriented towards each other’s tails, and their heads at the other’s tail, grooming each other’s croups, or they’ll groom each other’s necks. That is reinforcing important social bonds. They will also lean and rest on each other — lying down or standing right next to each other, leaning into each other out in a pasture. And then also mating rituals — with stallions and mares, there’ll be a little nipping, maybe a little bit of courtship, but also nuzzling — they’ll nuzzle each other, and then, okay, yeah, we’re ready for that.

[44:27]

When I go back to how we touch them — so, we talked about vocalizations, but also how we touch them — remember that facial expression study in Nature — the gentle grooming versus standard grooming? How we touch them is going to impact our relationship with them. It got me thinking — when you think about touch outside of a training or riding narrative — could horses touch to communicate wants and needs to us? Could they say, "I want that treat"?

[45:06]

My dogs do it all the time — “I want that sausage,” or “I want that steak you’re throwing on the barbecue,” or “I want those treats in the drawer” — and they’ll point and indicate. But yeah — let me tell you this study in Applied Animal Behaviour Science published less than seven years ago, out of Norway. This was such a fascinating study. Horses can learn to use symbols to communicate their preferences. The goal of the study was to see if horses could be taught to touch visual symbols on a display board to communicate their preferences to humans.

[45:40]

What they were doing was seeing if the horse wanted their blanket on, didn’t want a blanket on, or wanted the blanket taken off. They went through a very long, exhaustive process of teaching the horses: if the horse touched a large, horizontal black rectangle on the left, that meant "Put the blanket on." In the middle, there was a blank — meaning “I don’t want any change — blanket stays on if it’s on, don’t put it on if it’s not on.” On the right, there was a vertical black rectangle — that meant “Take the blanket off.”

[46:33]

It was a fascinating study. Then they would go out and test in different weather conditions — days that were like 75°F (23°C), and days where it was 43°F (6°C) — cold, rainy, snowy. They would go and ask the horse: "What’s your preference? Do you want the blanket on or off?" If they had it on, or no change, they could indicate that. What they found was astounding — yes, the horses could learn if they wanted the blankets on or off.

[47:14]

Just to summarize the findings: they stated that 22 of 22 horses signaled that they preferred to be without a blanket on summer days without rain, and that 20 of the same 22 horses signaled that they wanted the blanket on when it was continuous rain, windy, and chilly. This strongly supports the prediction that if horses understood the symbols, their choices would vary with the weather. Basically, the horses had learned to communicate their preferences using symbols — and we’ve done this in other species. These horses are brilliant — they can touch symbols to indicate what they want.

[48:03]

Tying all of this to communication — I think in the next hundred years we’re going to see major advances in how we communicate with our animals. Going back to that chemical communication — that is an aspect we don’t really think of, but it is so important to them. Just to remind you — we have 5–6 million olfactory receptors, and yet we can still detect someone that smells to us — even after, I’m not even saying personal grooming, like after a shower — their natural body odor might be repugnant versus very pleasant smelling. That’s your brain telling you: stay away from somebody that doesn’t smell good, because if you produced offspring, they would not have good immune genetics.

[48:56]

We’ve found that in horses too. But horses have up to 300 million olfactory receptors, so they smell much better than we do. They do the flehmen response — that’s because they have that specialized vomeronasal organ. They roll that upper lip back to smell and detect pheromones and other things. It’s also called the Jacobson’s organ.

[49:23]

A recent paper, “The Underexplored Role of Chemical Communication in the Domestic Horse,” talked all about this — about how horses and their chemical communication isn’t that well understood yet, and that more research needs to be done. I absolutely agree. What we do know of chemical communication — it is very important in reproduction. So again, that flehmen response that stallions do when they’re around mares — they’re smelling the mare’s urine, they may smell their feces if they had access to it, because there’s more estrogen in the urine of a mare in her cycle when she’s ready to ovulate.

[50:05]

Also, fecal marking is big in horses. Stallions do this — they will do stallion piles, and it’s kind of like male dogs that have to go pee on everything. Horses do this too — they will make fecal piles, leave their scent on it, and in groups of stallions, they’ll all come and mark over each other. It’s like a marking ritual. They also do a lot of smelling when horses greet each other. It’s one of those things we do when we introduce new tack or a blanket or some of those things to them — we let the horses smell it so they kind of know it’s not something that’s going to harm them.

[50:48]

Then we go to mares and foals — hugely important in chemical communication in those first few hours. I talked about the nickering and the groaning — how resilient these mares are. One of the first things the mares do is start to groom the foal, and she’s licking the foal and the fetal membranes to get the smell of the foal, but also her saliva is putting her scent on the foal so she can recognize it. It is one of the most incredible things. Within four hours, generally those foals are ready to run with the herd, and mom has to be able to recognize which baby is hers.

[51:28]

I started off talking about Somali wild ass — I remember when they did have some foals out, and one of them was an amazing moment because I caught it on camera. Three of the cutest little baby Somali wild ass went up to this one jenny — female Somali wild ass — and tried to nurse on her, and she was just getting irritated, ears pinned, her tail going back and forth. She warned off the other two foals and walked away until her foal followed her, and then she smelled him and let him nurse. That chemical communication — because they all three pretty much looked the same. In horses, we know we have different coat colors, different coat patterns; in the Somali wild ass, they all look carbon copies of each other, so chemical communication is so important.

[52:25]

What’s also interesting is the foals can know which mom is theirs. The mammary gland of the dam will indicate to the foal where — because remember, binocular vision is not great in horses — but they use their nose to nuzzle, smell, “Oh, there’s the mammary gland,” in the rear end of the horse, and the foal will nurse. So the mammary gland releases odorants that they’ll recognize.

[52:53]

Brought it all back to mate choice — MHC-correlated preferences in diestrous female horses. This was the study I read years ago — it was published in 2017 — just an area of research that was fascinating. Mares did prefer stallions who had different MHC genes from them. So that was chemical communication — mares would go and be like, “Yep, that’s the stallion I want to be with.”

[53:25]

If you think about it, evolutionary speaking, it makes sense. Whenever you get into immunology, it’s always an arms race with the pathogens that we’re always fighting — our bodies are always fighting — and it just came into mate choice. There’s going to be a lot more fascinating research, I’m sure, done in this area where chemical communication teaches us things that we just would have never known before.

[53:59]

The Future of Understanding Horse Communication

Science is so fun and so incredible, and learning about horses — how they communicate — I’m so excited to see what we’re going to learn in the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

[54:21]

Final Thoughts

That’s always a fun topic — how horses communicate, how they communicate to us, how we communicate to them. I’m going to find more of those studies, and when we talk about behavior, plug that in, because I’ve always felt most horses I approach are generally relaxed. I’ve met a few that didn’t want anything to do with me, but most horses I felt like — when I approach them relaxed, calm voice, happy — they always knew that, and I just was never a threat to them.

[54:55]

On hindsight, I had to recognize if that horse didn’t want anything to do with me — not to push it. I don’t want to get hurt, and I don’t want the horse to get hurt. If they fled and got injured — my goodness, don’t ever want to do that.

[55:15]

So — fun episode. Just some housekeeping: if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast, please do on whatever app you’re following — Spotify, iTunes. If you haven’t given a five-star ranking, I’m just asking — if you want to give a little bit back to me and the podcast, that means the world to me. Again, helping spread this information. And that leads into — if you could share this with your friends on social media, the only way this podcast is going to grow is through your help, and it just means the world to me — again, spreading the information and getting the message out on the horses, and then what the research is saying — what we are learning about them — it’s really helping us tell this story.

[56:00]

Also, don’t forget you can go to madbarn.com — under the Learn tab, all of that information — not just the podcast, but articles on behavior, stereotypies, breeding guides — you name it, there should be an article on that. Again, tons every week — we’re pushing out articles left, right, and center. So check that out. Check us out on social media — TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. And if you have any questions or concerns, or you have any topics you’re interested in learning more about, you can always email me — podcast@madbarn.com.

[56:47]

[Music]

Stay tuned.