Nancy Crowe - All Creatures

Here’s a new study on what horses value.

In a new study, researchers sought to investigate whether domestic horses prioritise the emotional quality of interaction with humans over the immediate benefit of obtaining a larger amount of food.

Drawing on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and more recent ethological and affective neuroscience perspectives, the authors asked whether, in real decision making, horses might sometimes treat social bonding with humans as at least as important as, or even more important than, maximising food intake.

This question is relevant because horses are highly social animals and their welfare is strongly influenced by both social environment and relationships.

To address this, the study tested 15 domestic horses that had already passed a screening phase demonstrating a reliable ability to discriminate and consistently choose the larger of two food quantities.

In the main experiment, each horse repeatedly chose between two unfamiliar human demonstrators: a “friendly” person who showed positive engagement, maintained eye contact and displayed an inviting attitude while offering a smaller food reward, and an “unfriendly” person who avoided eye contact, appeared bored and emotionally detached, but offered twice as much food.

The procedure was carefully controlled in a familiar paddock, with standardised distances, timing and repeated trials to ensure that choices reflected stable preferences rather than random variation or learning during the test.

The researchers also examined motor and sensory lateralisation as potential indicators of emotional processing, recording which forelimb the horses used to initiate movement towards a plate and which eye they used more often to look at each demonstrator.

While no strong population-level motor bias emerged, horses spent more time looking at the unfriendly demonstrator with the left eye and at the friendly demonstrator with the right eye, suggesting differential hemispheric involvement when processing negative versus socially rewarding cues.

Across test trials, horses chose the friendly human significantly more often than chance, and this preference remained stable, indicating that many horses were willing to “sacrifice” the larger food amount in favour of a more positive social interaction.

Taken together, these findings suggest that, for domestic horses, socially rewarding contact with humans can outweigh a seemingly optimal feeding choice, at least under moderate motivation and controlled conditions.

This has important implications for how human–horse relationships are understood and managed, emphasising that the emotional style and engagement of handlers may be as crucial for equine welfare as the quantity of material rewards provided.

Turco, R., Malavasi, R., & Miletto Petrazzini, M. E. (2026). Challenging horses’ hierarchy of needs: Less food from a friendly human is preferred. Animal Behaviour.

Today I got acquainted with Noel, a quarter horse-fox trotter cross. We shared a chat and a Let Animals Lead® meditation. She is up for new challenges.