Equestrian Emo Support
And the Horse You Rode in
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Next time you watch a horror film, please steer clear of the horse barn.
This is one obvious conclusion (probably) from a new study involving horses and how they respond to human flop sweat. In sum: the merest whiff makes them nervous.
Researchers began by affixing cotton pads to human volunteers who were then shown either a horror film or a comedy. The sweat from the pads was wafted at horses, who were then tested to see how they would react to different stimuli: a human stranger or an umbrella opening up suddenly nearby. Horses primed with the whiff of human fear were more hesitant to approach a strange human, and more likely to be startled at the umbrella.
From the report:
The protocol was carefully controlled. The experimenter who conducted the tests didn’t know which group each horse belonged to, and an assistant recorded behaviors from outside the test box. Before each session, fresh cotton pads were thawed and stapled into a disposable lycra muzzle that fit over the horse’s muzzle, positioning the pads directly in front of the nostrils. The horses could breathe normally. They just couldn’t escape the scent.
The results were striking. During the free human approach test, horses exposed to fear odors touched the experimenter 40 percent less than those smelling joy odors. In the suddenness test—where an umbrella opened abruptly while the horse ate from a bucket—fear-scented horses startled more intensely, and their heart rates spiked higher than both control and joy groups. When presented with an unfamiliar object (a colourful assemblage of linoleum and plastic pieces), they gazed at it more frequently, a recognized indicator of anxiety in horses.
The rest is here.
Joking aside, I appreciate the study for its design and what it claims to have found: that chemical pheromones communicating fear can operate across species. Now if it can be replicated.
Meantime, try not to spook the horses.
Fascinating.
It could be an independent feature of horses: that the scent of fear in humans is similar enough to the scent of fear in horses that it produces the same response. This is reasonable, given that most mammals' endocrine systems are pretty similar. (Australian and Madagascar mammals are outliers.)
Or it could be a co-evolution thing, such that horses' thousands of years of association with humans make them uniquely sensitive to fear in humans.
One of the teaser headlines from the FP this morning....
"Being Human Is Cool Again"
We're back on track humans!