The most adorable photo I have ever taken
Not everyone thinks about horses this way, but, as equestrians, we know that our horses are extraordinarily fine tuned to our body language, even though there is a significant language barrier between the two of us. We also know from experience that the more a certain horse is around a certain human, the more they will learn about how that specific human interacts with the world.
Our other steadfast companion, the dog, seems to differ from the horse in this one way: As puppies, they understand innately how to interpret human body language, whereas young horses must develop this ability over time. Horses still have an underlying predisposition to learn the body language of their human partners, but it does take practice and time for the skill to bloom.
In a new study conducted by Dr. Leanne Proops of the Mammal Vocal Communication and Cognition Research group at the University of Sussex in England, 35 horses were tested on their relative abilities to understand subtle human body language. All of the horses were 3 or younger and basically had to tell the difference between several distinct body positions, as well as pick up on more subtle cues indicating which bucket has food and which bucket is empty.
Most young horses caught on to the human pointing to the bucket pretty quickly, but they were unable to see the subtle cues such as body orientation or eye gaze. Adult horses, however, have generally been shown to understand this experiment to a superior degree.
“What this shows is that, alongside the need to slowly build on the training cues and commands we use with young horses, their understanding of our body language and communicative cues will also require time to develop fully,” said Proops. “I’m sure, however, that young horses—without any explicit training from us—are learning about our body language and how to interpret our behavior just by being around people and having contact and exposure to us as we work with them.”
The fact that horses can learn to read human body language over time — despite not being born with the ability — still shows that they have an innate sensitivity to it, Proops added. And this could be key to their status as human companions over the past several centuries.
“Very few species have been domesticated,” she said. “The horse’s ability to be able to understand human communicative cues, given appropriate exposure and training, may well be one of the reasons why horses have had such a close and enduring relationship with people across the ages.”
For me, all of this is a very roundabout yet scientific way of saying that ground work with horses is incredibly important. If you expect to have an attentive and cooperative partner under tack, you had better start early by training them to be attuned to your body language as a human. While they do not have innate understanding, they are incredibly apt at figuring it out and, as we all know, very eager students. As I’ve said before, the benefits of “piddling around” are great and, especially in young horses, it can only serve as a boost for their career of choice later in life.
