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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Humans and dogs developed a special bond that goes back thousands of years [psychologytoday.com]. A critical part of this relationship is the high degree of shared inter-species communication. Dogs are one of the only known species who actively seek out eye contact with humans, and dogs are very good at interpreting emotion from visual cues [plos.org]. In a recent paper [royalsocietypublishing.org] published in Biology Papers [royalsocietypublishing.org], Smith et al., demonstrate that horses can also interpret human facial expressions [iflscience.com]. Their paper shows horses react differently to different facial expressions, and they also share the trait with humans and dogs of exhibiting left gaze bias, which is thought to be indicative of interpreting emotional state [telegraph.co.uk].

Paper abstract:

Whether non-human animals can recognize human signals, including emotions, has both scientific and applied importance, and is particularly relevant for domesticated species. This study presents the first evidence of horses' abilities to spontaneously discriminate between positive (happy) and negative (angry) human facial expressions in photographs. Our results showed that the angry faces induced responses indicative of a functional understanding of the stimuli: horses displayed a left-gaze bias (a lateralization generally associated with stimuli perceived as negative) and a quicker increase in heart rate (HR) towards these photographs. Such lateralized responses towards human emotion have previously only been documented in dogs, and effects of facial expressions on HR have not been shown in any heterospecific studies. Alongside the insights that these findings provide into interspecific communication, they raise interesting questions about the generality and adaptiveness of emotional expression and perception across species.

Original Submission