Study Finds Horses Detect Human Fear From Sweat and Change Behavior
The study shows horses startled more and avoided unfamiliar objects when exposed to human fear odor, revealing chemical communication between species, researchers said.
- On Wednesday, the PLOS One paper found horses detect human fear from odor alone, and exposure to fearful sweat changed horses' behavior during tests.
- Human study participants wore cotton pads in armpits while watching joyful clips and then 20 minutes of Sinister to produce fear sweat for the study by France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment.
- Horses that smelled fear sweat startled more easily, hesitated to approach the experimenter, touched less, and showed higher heart rate and saliva cortisol measures while avoiding novel objects.
- For riders and handlers, the study suggests acknowledging emotional states transmit via chemosignals, while researchers plan future studies on human sensitivity to horse odors and other emotions.
- Using a novel muzzle-and-pad setup, the researchers used cotton pads, frozen to avoid contamination, stapled into custom muzzles and audience horses to show smell is another multisensory input horses use.
12 Articles
12 Articles
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A new study found that horses can detect fear in humans by the wolf, becoming more prone to fear and more cautious with frightened people. Researchers collected samples of odorifer compositions of human participants' wings in a study and then observed the behaviour of horses when exposed to different donors during standardized tests, according to a study published in this quarter (14) in the PLOS One newspaper.
A French study concludes that animals increase their heart rate and react worse to some stimuli when they smell the sweat of people who have seen scary images.
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