Horse owners and riders often wonder how horses respond to eye contact with the person who comes out into the pasture to catch them. Now a study at the New Bolton Center, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine may help set their minds at ease.
Horse catching challenges
Horse owners and riders often wonder how horses respond to eye contact with the person who comes out into the pasture to catch them. Now a study at the New Bolton Center, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine may help set their minds at ease.
Sarah Verrill and Sue McDonnell were the researchers doing the study which involved 104 horses and ponies that were approached for catching in a pasture by the same human handler in a standard manner, either maintaining human-to-horse eye contact or avoiding eye contact.
Three weeks later, 74 of the horse subjects were reevaluated under the same circumstances, except those that had first been evaluated with direct eye contact, now received no eye contact and vice versa for the other set of horses.
The researchers determined that catching outcomes were similar with both the direct eye contact condition and the avoidance of eye contact condition.
Although this study represents a single handler at one study site, results suggest that human-to-horse eye contact may not be an important influence on catching pastured horses. Certainly, further work is needed to better understand the role of eye contact in horse handling.