Mr. Ed is Back!

My friend took me to her sister's barn where she trains horses and gives lessons. I've taken some riding lessons so I'm pretty sure I know how to stay on the horse. Of course all these horses were trained and follow human instructions pretty well. Horses are the most familiar equines to humans and the more we know about them the more we get to know about other equines like zebras and donkeys. Seeing as to how most people have domesticated horses and feel comfortable around them, researchers have started to show interest in their vocalization patterns.

Horse talk , in particular their whining, would be a way to figure out the stress level of the horse. This database known as the Equine Vocalization Project would correlate "horse noises" with behavior which would lead to categorizing stress levels. This would help improve their living situations and make the communication between man and horse more accurate when training them.

High stress can occur when horses fight and when the horse feels it's in danger. The horse feels calm and makes only calm whines when it's vision is restricted like in the old days when horsemen used to cover their horses eyes...not just to keep dust out but to calm them down.

Horses show much more complex vocalization then other animals who have monotonal vocalizations. They have a wider bandwidth and a broader frequency which changes in their different whines. This new area of acoustics would help to get a sense of the horse's physical condition.

According to present research, two elements have been noticed when the horse whines. There seems to be "a constant tone with varied harmonics that increase as the animal becomes more agitated, and a variation in frequency that may be associated with communication or expression."

This research also leads to questions about their visual memory with people and other animals. Researchers want to know if the whines also correlate when they recognize people they like. Decoding the horses vocalization patterns would help with the handling of horses and also help understand the social organization of equines.

Posted by AAH (12)