Young horses performed similarly to adult horses in that they were able to detect more obvious human body cues like finger pointing. | Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt/The Horse

“In dogs, even young puppies are extremely good at reading human body language, but what we found in horses was that young individuals were not particularly skilled at reading human body language and that this ability developed over time,” said Leanne Proops, PhD, of the Mammal Vocal Communication and Cognition Research group at the University of Sussex, in the United Kingdom.

“This is not to say, however, that horses do not still have some underlying predisposition to learn and attend to the body language of their human social partners,” Proops added. “It just means that it takes time and practice for this skill to develop fully.”

In her study, Proops and her colleagues tested 35 horses younger than three years old using the same series of tests as in her 2009 study of adult horses. Essentially, the animals had to distinguish between a person standing facing the horse or with his or her back to the horse; between two people standing facing the horse but one with the head turned to the side and the other with the head facing forward; and between two people facing the horse with their full bodies and heads but one with the eyes closed and one with the eyes open. In a fourth, “mixed cue” test, one person stood sideways with his head turned toward the horse, whereas the other stood with her body forward and her face turned to the side