SCIENCE LEADS THE WAY IN TEACHING HOW TO BETTER ASSESS OUR HORSE’S EMOTIONS

It is one of the most unsettling findings to emerge from equine welfare science in recent years: most people, including experienced equestrians, are significantly worse at recognising pain in horses than they are at spotting discomfort in other humans, and in an animal whose evolutionary survival has depended on concealing vulnerability, that gap has serious consequences.

A study published in 2025 in the journal Anthrozoös, led by researchers from Anglia Ruskin University’s Writtle Campus, Bournemouth University, and São Paulo University, is the first to scientifically investigate how well people can detect pain in horses, and the results should prompt every one of us (whether a horse owner, trainer, or competitor) to examine our own observational skills.

What the research found

The team asked 100 participants to assess 30 photographs of human faces and 30 photographs of horse faces, judging whether each showed signs of pain. The participants ranged from people with no horse experience at all to seasoned equestrians. Their responses were then compared against the ratings of ten equine behaviour experts, who served as the accuracy baseline.

The findings were stark. Participants were significantly more accurate at identifying pain in human faces than in horse faces. Most people, regardless of their equestrian background, struggled to identify equine discomfort with consistency.

There was, however, one meaningful exception. Participants with more years of horse-care experience were notably better at detecting subtle pain cues in horses, including changes in ear position, eye angulation, and muscle tension around the muzzle and brow. The relationship was linear: the more time spent with horses, the more accurate the detection. This suggests that experience does build genuine perceptual skill, but that simply being around horses is not enough unless you are actively attuned to what you are looking at.

Why horses hide pain so well

The key to understanding this finding lies in equine evolutionary biology. Horses are prey animals. In the wild, an animal that visibly signals weakness, through altered movement, changed facial expression, or reduced alertness, becomes a target. Natural selection has therefore strongly favoured the concealment of pain and vulnerability. Horses are, by design, stoic.

This stoicism has served them well on the steppe. In the domestic context, it creates a profound welfare challenge. As Rosa Verwijs, Senior Lecturer in Equine Behaviour and Nutrition at ARU Writtle and one of the study’s researchers, noted: “Horses are very good at hiding their pain, which is an evolutionary trait to disguise their vulnerability and avoid predators, but this makes it harder for us to spot discomfort. Many people might not realise a horse is in pain until the animal’s behaviour escalates to potentially dangerous levels.”

That escalation matters. A horse whose low-level pain signals are missed does not simply tolerate the discomfort indefinitely. Over time, unrecognised chronic pain is one of the leading causes of so-called problem behaviour in horses – spooking, bucking, resistance, aggression, and reluctance to work. When behaviour deteriorates, and pain has not been identified as the root cause, the consequences for both horse and rider can be serious.

The psychology twist

The study also investigated whether owners’ psychological traits influence pain recognition accuracy. One finding stood out. Participants with higher levels of social anxiety showed superior ability to identify pain in human faces, but this did not extend to horse faces. In fact, highly socially anxious individuals often overattributed pain to horses, rating neutral or mildly expressive horse faces as showing more pain than experts judged them to be displaying.

This suggests that our human psychological tendencies, including the social anxiety that makes us hypervigilant to distress in other people, do not map reliably onto our ability to read animal emotional states. We cannot simply extend our human empathic instincts to horses and expect accurate results.

What we can do

The good news embedded in this research is that pain recognition skill is learnable. Experience matters, and targeted education can accelerate the process. Owners and riders would benefit from familiarising themselves with validated equine pain assessment tools, including the Horse Grimace Scale and the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram, both of which provide systematic, behaviour-based indicators of discomfort.

Knowing the specific facial and postural cues to look for, a stiffening of the muscles above the eye, a change in ear carriage, tension around the nostrils, an altered eye shape, makes accurate pain detection far more achievable than relying on a general sense that something seems ‘off.’

The researchers concluded that training programmes aimed at improving equine pain recognition would benefit anyone who works with horses, not just professionals, but every owner and rider who shares their life with these animals.

Hopefully, this research alerts us to the need for these training programmes, and encourages more of us to attend them.

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Source: “Reading Pain in Horse and Human Faces: The Influence of Horse Experience, Social Anxiety, and Empathy,” Anthrozoös, 2025. Researchers from ARU Writtle, Bournemouth University, and São Paulo University.