“Beasts of science” is like a collection of stories. Beautiful stories that tell the living in all its freshness. But also in all its complexity. A parenthesis to marvel at the treasures of the world. For this new episode, let’s get into the saddle to meet an animal that has shared human life for a long time: the horse.
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A whisperer. You know what it is ? A whisperer is not a scientist. For him, no protocol precisely established experimental, no rigorous study. Only personal observations. His practice of the animal and its nature. The animal? The horse, in fact. Because yes, that’s right, a whisperer is a man who whispers to thehorses ear. Like in the Robert Redford movie.
And not only in the movie, but also in real life, a whisperer usually works with injured horses – during a accident or through abuse. His goal: to re-educate his horses on a large scale. reinforcement of sweetness!
However, it is not because the whisperer is not a scientist that he does not rely on the results produced by ethologists, those researchers who study animal behavior. And for example, on work focusing on the perception that horses have of the sounds they receive. Because it would seem that horses, whether domestic or wild – like Przewalski’s horses -, are able to tell the difference between positively charged sounds and negatively charged sounds. When other horses come to them, close or not, or even humans – including unknown humans.
How it is possible ? There is surely a part due to domestication. Because prolonged and close contact with humans may have helped horses successfully interpret their emotions. And because it is perhaps the most receptive horses, precisely, which have been selected over the centuries. But what allows horses to understand each other is much more likely a question of evolution and common biology.
How we talk to animals matters
So, as whisperers have long assumed, researchers have shown that horses are sensitive to the emotions we charge our voice. When we talk to them. But also when we just talk near them. And it is the sounds that matter. Absolutely not the meaning that we humans associate with them. To make sure, the ethologists worked on a kind of gibberish without any significant value.
Sometimes horses even seem to be victims of a certain emotional contagion. They adopt the attitudes that correspond to theemotion expressed by human. From there to say that the horses experienceempathy, there is only one step – which the researchers still do not want to take yet. Further work will need to be done to confirm this. And perhaps discover that horses have a rich emotional life and a level of consciousness that we did not suspect of them.
In any case, this confirms, through scientific experiments, an empirical knowledge transmitted for centuries from whisperer to whisperer. Addressing horses in a calm and peaceful manner contributes to their everyday well-being. And this confirms once again also that the horse is not so stupid. That he enjoys at least a good dose ofintelligence emotional!
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