Horse is friend for life: Recognizes emotions and facial expressions like us
Mumbai, April 30: We have seen many times either in movies or in reality that people talk with their pet horses. It is not much possible in urban areas but in rural areas where still horses are been nursed and kept as their pets. And also the horses do respond well to their masters. Now one of the studies has said that horses can read and remember emotional expressions of humans.
A study conducted by UK’s Researchers at the University of Sussex says that domestic horses were shown a photograph of an angry or happy human face and several hours later saw the actual person who had exhibited the expression, now in an emotionally neutral state. This short-term exposure to the photograph of a person's facial expression was enough to generate clear differences in subsequent responses upon meeting that individual in the flesh later the same day.
The report published in Current Biology concludes:
Responses differ if horses have seen an angry versus happy photo of the person
This lasting memory for emotion is specific to the person whose face they saw
Non-human animals monitor human emotions and adjust subsequent behavior accordingly
Humans and horses have a different relationship with each other as since many centuries horses are playing the role of a best friend of humans. Even our history has written pages on human-horse relations like Maharana Pratap and his loyal Horse Chetak, Shivaji and his mare named Krishna. Interesting story of Chetak was that Chetak, although wounded, carried Pratap safely away from the battle of Haldighati, but then died of his wounds. Shivaji Maharaj whenever made a visit Horse field, he used to say following Shloka every time: यस्याश्वास्तस्य राज्यं । यस्याश्वास्तस्य मेदिनी || यस्याश्वास्तस्य सौख्यं | यस्याश्वास्तस्य साम्राज्यं || Meaning - I have this Kingdom - Happiness & everything just because of I have these horses with me.
Importantly, in the current experiment, the humans did not know which photographs the horses had previously seen, to avoid any risk of behaving differently themselves. Also, the differences in reaction only applied to the person the horses had actually seen in the photograph and were not given to a different person.
