London - You might assume horses do most of their “talking” with a neigh or a whinny.
But according to scientists, the animals are also able to communicate with their ears.
When a horse is looking at something, it pricks up its ears and swivels them towards whatever has caught its attention.
Researchers from the University of Sussex found the animals can pick up information about what other horses are interested in when they see where their ears are directed.
The scientists took a series of photos of horses looking either left or right at a bucket of food.
They then printed out the photographs and pinned them between two identical buckets.
The researchers found that when a horse was led in to look at the photo, he tended to take his cue from the horse in the picture – and head straight to whichever bucket they were gazing towards.
However when the ears of the horse in the photo were covered up, the animal in the experiment found it more difficult to tell what bucket they should head towards first – revealing the crucial role the ears play when horses have to understand each other’s body language.
Researcher Jennifer Wathan, a PhD student, said: “Our study is the first to examine a potential cue to attention that humans do not have, the ears. Previous work involving communication of attention in animals has focused on cues that humans use – body orientation, head orientation and eye gaze.
“No one has gone beyond that. However we found that in horses their ear position was also a crucial visual signal that other horses respond to.”
Miss Wathan added: “Although horses have mobile ears, they are only able to swivel them round, point them forward, pull them up or flatten them back. Cats and dogs have more movements.”
And she revealed that humans can also pick up on a horse’s mood by looking at their ears – a relaxed horse flops down its ears, while an angry animal tends to pin them back. - Daily Mail