Not straight from the horse’s mouth - only its eyes and ears
Scientists have discovered the secrets of equine communication
Horses have more sense than many people realise, according to
scientists who have shown they are able to communicate with one another
by moving their eyes as well as their ears.
A study has found that domestic horses are aware of the direction in
which other horses are concentrating by looking at the gaze of their
eyes and the position in which their mobile ears are pointing.
Other animals, such as monkeys and apes with forward-pointing eyes,
are also known to follow the gaze of other individuals but this is the
first time that researchers have shown that the ability is shared by a
“prey” species with eyes on the sides of its head, the scientists said.
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Horses are believed to use their eyes and ears to direct
others
to sources of food |
It is also the first time that researchers have shown that animals
with wiggly ears are able to use these movements to see what it is
another individual is concentrating on, said Jennifer Wathan of the
University of Sussex.
“Our study is the first to examine a potential cue to attention that
humans do not have - the ears. Previous work investigating communication
of attention in animals has focused on cues that human use [such as]
head orientation and eye gaze,” Wathan said.
“However, we found that in horses their ear position was also a
crucial visual signal that other horses respond to. In fact, horses need
to see the detailed facial features of both eyes and ears before they
use another horse’s head direction to guide them,” she said.
The study used full-size photographs of horses’ heads to see if
equine facial features can influence the attention of another horse. The
photographs were of a model horse with and without a facial mask that
covered either their eyes or their ears.
“Our results provide the first evidence from an animal with laterally
placed eyes that cues from this area convey important information,” the
scientists say in their scientific paper published in the journal
Current Biology.
“Most significantly, our results demonstrate that animals with large,
mobile ears can use these as visual cue to attention.
The potential role of the ears in signalling has been overlooked in
previous experiments,” they say.
The researchers presented a horse with a choice of two buckets
containing the same type of tasty food, but deliberately placed a
head-shot of another horse so that it looked as if it was concentrating
on only one of the two buckets.
- The Independent
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