You’re trail riding your horse through the forest, and a tree falls. Knowing your horse, will he react differently if the tree falls behind you, in front of you, or to your left or right? Does the fallen tree’s distance away from your horse matter?

Belgian scientists recently looked into the effects of direction and distance on horses’ fear reactions, and they’ve determined that, overall, it doesn’t really matter where the fright comes from or how far away it is. Essentially, if it’s going to scare the horse, it’s going to scare the horse, said Marc Pierard, PhD candidate, researcher at KU Leuven University, in Belgium. Pierard presented the results of his team’s study at the 2014 International Society for Equitation Science conference, held in Bredsten, Denmark.

“This could mean that direction and distance of a startling event are not crucial to the reaction of a trained horse,” Pierard said.

In their study, Pierard and his supervisor Rony Geers, PhD, also of KU Leuven, investigated the behavioral fear reactions of 43 Warmblood horses used by the Belgian mounted police. Carrying out their initial study on fear reactions in police horses provides a standard reference for the test and allows the researchers to validate their tests’ accuracy, Pierard said