Highly social: perception of emotional valence in horse whinnies

BMC Podcast

In this podcast, Dr. Elodie Briefer and her team at ETH, Zürich have been looking at emotional contagion in horses. In their study, they've shown that horses can perceive acoustic cues and distinguish sounds between familiar and unfamiliar horses. Elodie suggests that horses should not be isolated and that group housing allows them express their social behaviours. Read the research here: https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12983-017-0193-1