Horses are great at reading body language, even that of the humans around them – in fact a horse known as ‘Clever Hans’ was able to answer mathematical questions by tapping his hoof, based on the very subtle signals given out by the person asking the question! Even though they didn’t mean to give any secret messages to the horse, he could read small changes in facial expression or intakes of breath – and then work out what the right answer was!
Clever Hans
At the time, people thought he was working out the maths himself, and were disappointed to learn that he was reading their body language instead. But the fact that Hans could answer the questions by this method is in itself amazing. He was seeing small changes in the behaviour of his questioners which people did not see – and it took an extensive experiment for us to find out what Hans knew all along.
Other animals are also more tuned in to us than we might expect. In a previous post about Sociable sheep we found out that sheep preferred the faces of smiling people rather than stressed or angry people.
This leads us to consider, how much do animals really know about what we’re thinking?
Sources:
Clever Hans (BBC website)
McGreevy (2004) Equine Behaviour: A Guide for Veterinarians and Equine Scientists.
Tags: Communicating, Horse, Intelligence, Memory, numeracy, sentience, understanding