Your Horse is Smarter Than You Think

New Research Reveals Hidden Cognitive Abilities

Every horse owner has experienced that moment of doubt, watching their horse stare intently at an empty paddock where a companion stood just moments before, or seeming to "sulk" after a training session that didn't go quite right. Are they truly thinking about what they can't see, or processing emotions in ways we don't fully understand? Groundbreaking research from 2024 and 2025 suggests the answer is yes, and the implications for how we care for and communicate with our horses are profound.

Photo by Silje Midtgård on Unsplash

The Research: What Did the Study Find?

Horses possess object permanence, a sophisticated cognitive ability previously underestimated. Dr Lesimple and colleagues at the University of Rennes in France tested 63 horses in controlled trials, finding that horses successfully located treats hidden from view¹. This demonstrates that horses can mentally track displaced objects - understanding that something continues to exist even when they can't see it.

Supporting this discovery, Dr Tomberg's team at the Université Catholique de Louvain found that horses' spontaneous eye blink rates change based on their attention levels, with blink inhibition proportional to their degree of attentional focus. In their 2024 study published in Scientific Reports, when horses concentrated on tasks involving hidden objects, their blinking patterns revealed active cognitive processing rather than simple visual tracking².

Meanwhile, revolutionary educational research proves we can dramatically improve our ability to read horse emotions. Dr Wells and colleagues at multiple institutions evaluated an online course called RAiSE (Recognising Affective States in Equine), designed to help owners better interpret their horses' emotional states. In their 2025 study published in Translational Animal Science, researchers found through in-depth interviews with participants that the RAiSE course successfully initiated participants' intent to change their behaviour towards their horses³.

The results were interesting: horse owners felt significantly more confident assessing equine emotions after completing the course, reporting increased awareness of body language, pain indicators, and how human behaviour influences horses. Dr Bell and colleagues previously found in their 2019 research that horse owners often fail to recognise signs of stress and discomfort in their horses⁴, but this new research shows that targeted education can bridge this critical gap.

Additional research reveals the depth of equine-human communication challenges. Dr Merkies and Trudel at the University of Guelph found in their 2024 study that when 534 horse owners watched videos of horse-human interactions, they correctly identified the horse's emotional state only 52.5% of the time - barely better than chance⁵. This reinforces how much room exists for improvement in reading our horses' signals.

The Translation - What Does This Mean for Horse Care?

These findings fundamentally challenge the traditional view of horses as reactive, instinct-driven animals. Object permanence research reveals horses as thinking, problem-solving individuals who form expectations about their world. When your horse seems anxious after a companion leaves the field, they may genuinely be wondering where their friend has gone and when they'll return.

This cognitive sophistication means horses are constantly processing and evaluating their environment in ways we're only beginning to understand. They're not just responding to immediate stimuli. Horses are thinking ahead, remembering past experiences, and forming mental maps of their world.

The communication gap between horses and humans is real, but it's entirely fixable. The fact that owners struggle to accurately read horse emotions isn't a personal failing, it's a knowledge gap that targeted education can address. When we improve our ability to recognise stress, contentment, curiosity, or discomfort in our horses, we can respond more appropriately to their needs.

This matters because misreading horse emotions has real welfare consequences. As Dr Fureix and colleagues demonstrated in their foundational research, misinterpretation of affective states can result in inadequate responses to stress, anxiety, or pain, which ultimately can negatively impact the horse's quality of life and jeopardise its welfare⁶. Every time we mistake anxiety for excitement or miss early signs of discomfort, we're missing opportunities to improve our horse's well-being.

Bottom Line: Your horse is thinking more complexly than you might realise, and your ability to understand their emotional communication directly impacts their welfare. The good news? Both can be improved with the right approach.

The Practice - How Do You Implement This?