New research shows that domestic horses have the ability to read the expression on a person’s face. This capacity has only ever previously been demonstrated in dogs.
Source: The Atlantic, February 29, 2017.
A University of Sussex research team, led by Amy Smith alongside the veteran animal-behavior scientist Karen McComb, showed a group of 28 horses large photographs of a man’s facing making either a positive (smiling) or negative (angry, brows furrowed) emotional expression. The results showed that horses we able to automatically distinguish between the two expressions, and what they meant.