We don’t know if you’ve ever gone horseback riding, but if you have, you’ll know that one of the first pieces of advice given to newbies is to remain calm: “Horses smell fear”they say, a bit like dogs do.
And if it is true that anecdotal evidence confirms this adage, until now there was no scientific basis to support its validity. So far, in fact: a study published in PLOS One it demonstrates that the basis of the relationship between humans and horses is smell, and that equines can smell our moods, and react accordingly.
The importance of the nose in horses. It’s not one of their most famous characteristics, but horses have a superb sense of smell, much better than ours (but that applies to many animals). So smells are fundamental for horses, who have learned, for example, to choose food based on smell, opting not only for the tastiest one but also and above all for the one with the right nutrients.
And what about our smell? Here too there are plenty of studies that demonstrate that human emotions are directly linked to our physiology: when we are afraid, for example, we release hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, and the chemical composition of our sweat (and therefore our smell) changes. In short, there is a direct link between how we feel and how we smell, and horses know it.
Emotional contagion. To find out how sensitive horses are to our smell, the team that conducted the study had them smell a series of different sweats, each produced by a human who was experiencing a very strong emotion. Faced with the smell of fear, the horses changed their attitude, becoming more attentive to the surrounding environment, more reactive and less inclined to approach humans; all this is combined with an increase in heart rate, a classic indicator of stress.
In short: not only do horses understand our emotions by smelling us, but they are directly influenced by them, in what is called “emotional contagion”. Obviously this doesn’t mean that if we are afraid of something the horses will be afraid too. Only they understand when something is wrong, and they are influenced by it.
