ArticleFrontiers in zoology2017
Perception of emotional valence in horse whinnies.
Article in Frontiers in zoology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Horse Olfactory Exploration of Various Plants with Regard to Smell and Taste Familiarity.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Leveraging artificial intelligence in bioacoustics for animal health monitoring and early diagnosis in veterinary medicine.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Review
- Emotional contagion in human-horse interactions: A pilot study investigating the role of stress and body language in emotional transfer.Open veterinary journal · 2025Article
- Exploring the induction and measurement of positive affective state in equines through a personality-centred lens.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Nonlinear phenomena in marmot alarm calls: a mechanism encoding fear?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- The power of sound: unravelling how acoustic communication shapes group dynamics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Living the good life? A systematic review of behavioural signs of affective state in the domestic horse (Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2024Article
- Utilizing vocalizations to gain insight into the affective states of non-human mammals.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2024Review
- BovineTalk: machine learning for vocalization analysis of dairy cattle under the negative affective state of isolation.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2024Article
- Potential Mechanisms of Action and Outcomes of Equine-Assisted Services for Veterans with a History of Trauma: A Narrative Review of the Literature.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Review
- Seabird's cry: repertoire and vocal expression of contextual valence in the little auk (Alle alle).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Equine Social Behaviour: Love, War and Tolerance.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- From Soundwave to Soundscape: A Guide to Acoustic Research in Captive Animal Environments.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Review
- Emotional contagion in nonhuman animals: A review.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · 2022Review
- Discrimination of natural acoustic variation in vocal signals.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Indicators of Horse Welfare: State-of-the-Art.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Review
- Emotional Transfer in Human-Horse Interaction: New Perspectives on Equine Assisted Interventions.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Review
- Horses Categorize Human Emotions Cross-Modally Based on Facial Expression and Non-Verbal Vocalizations.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNon-human animals often produce different types of vocalisations in negative and positive contexts (i.e. different valence), similar to humans, in which crying is associated with negative emotions and laughter is associated with positive ones. However, some types of vocalisations (e.g. contact calls, human speech) can be produced in both negative and positive contexts, and changes in valence are only accompanied by slight structural differences. Although such acoustically graded signals associated with opposite valence have been highlighted in some species, it is not known if conspecifics discriminate them, and if contagion of emotional valence occurs as a result. We tested whether domestic horses perceive, and are affected by, the emotional valence of whinnies produced by both familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics. We measured physiological and behavioural reactions to whinnies recorded during emotionally negative (social separation) and positive (social reunion) situations.
resultsWe show that horses perceive acoustic cues to both valence and familiarity present in whinnies. They reacted differently (respiration rate, head movements, height of the head and latency to respond) to separation and reunion whinnies when produced by familiar, but not unfamiliar individuals. They were also more emotionally aroused (shorter inter-pulse intervals and higher locomotion) when hearing unfamiliar compared to familiar whinnies. In addition, the acoustic parameters of separation and reunion whinnies affected the physiology and behaviour of conspecifics in a continuous way. However, we did not find clear evidence for contagion of emotional valence.
conclusionsHorses are thus able to perceive changes linked to emotional valence within a given vocalisation type, similar to perception of affective prosody in humans. Whinnies produced in either separation or reunion situations seem to constitute acoustically graded variants with distinct functions, enabling horses to increase their apparent vocal repertoire size.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.