“Well, he did it, so it can’t be that bad,” said the Icelandic waiting his turn to cross a plastic tarp for the first time.

Okay, so maybe he didn’t say that exactly. But new study results from Danish researchers suggest that horses watching another horse perform a scary task end up being less spooked about that task when it’s their turn to do it. And that, they said, can be a great improvement for equine welfare as well as horse and human safety.

“Using experienced or older horses when training a younger or naive horse is a technique that’s been used for several years, but there’s never been evidence that it actually works in frightening situations, until now,” said Maria Vilain Rørvang, a PhD fellow in the Aarhus University Department of Animal Science, in Tjele.

What “works,” however, is not actual learning, Rørvang said. Her research indicates that horses learn to cross a plastic tarp just as fast whether they’ve observed a demonstrator do it first or not