What about geldings vs. stallions? "Certainly, when we geld a horse or spay a mare, we reduce some of their expressiveness in terms of sexual behavior," notes McCall. "But other than that, I would guess that gender and age, once sexually mature, has little influence on communication."
To learn more about this fascinating subject, Heleski encourages her students to watch horses as much as they can. "As they develop an intuitive sense of equine body language with horses reacting with one another, students become noticeably better at interpreting body language that will ultimately affect their personal safety around horses," she notes.
"There is still a great deal about [equine] body language that we have not researched," she adds. "There are probably all sorts of subtle muscle movements in the face, eyes, nostrils, etc., that influence how many of us 'read' horses ... yet trying to put words to what we've seen for the novice horse person can be difficult. Certainly ear position only tells a small portion of the story.
"Very often, measures of body language are looked at in various research contexts, but it is still difficult to say with absolute certainty what the horse is feeling," she concludes.
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