Study shows horses and pigs recognize human emotions

Biologists studied four species of animals: domestic and Przewalski's horses, domestic pigs and wild

A series of sounds were produced to all the animals, some of which belonged to their own species, others to closely related species, and still others to humans.The authors found that all horses and domestic pigs responded more strongly to sounds containing a negative emotion, regardless of whether they weretype of voice.

Researchers played recordings of soundsanimal and human voices from hidden speakers. To prevent the animals from reacting to certain words, positive and negative human speech was performed by a professional voice actor as a random set of sounds without any meaningful phrases. Each sound recording lasted several seconds and expressed some kind of emotional signal, positive or negative.

Scientists recorded the behavior of animals withusing a number of categories that have shown themselves effectively in previous works. For example, it was a change in the position of the ear, movement or lack thereof. The results showed that how we speak matters to animals.

The researchers say the findingsmay demonstrate the presence in pets of an equivalent of emotional contagion—a primitive form of empathy that allows humans and animals to sense the emotions of others and possibly reflect them.

Our results show that these animalsaffect the emotions with which we charge our voice when we speak with them or are near them. They react more strongly—usually faster—when they are greeted with a negatively charged voice, compared to when they are first played a positively charged voice. In some situations, they even seem to reflect the emotions they are exposed to.

Elodie Brifer, a behavioral biologist at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of the study.

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