Understanding How Horses Express Themselves

It’s common practice to assign humanlike expressions of feeling to animals. However, personifying animals in this way can often be misleading, because most animals don’t use their body language the way we do. This is the case with horses. 

It’s easy to look at a horse and assume that it’s expressing itself the way we would - this is, in fact, a tactic frequently used by our community’s detractors in their false claims of abuse. We see a horse with its head down and assume it must be sad or upset. We see a horse with a blank face and assume it must be nervous or anxious. We see a horse resting on one leg and assume it must be in pain. In all of these instances, those assumptions would be wrong. 

When we see a horse with its head down - that horse is relaxed and resting. Horses often sleep standing up, so when a horse hangs its head and rests its weight on one leg, it’s akin to a human resting their head against the back of the couch and closing their eyes for a brief rest. Horses won’t relax like that in a situation in which they feel uncomfortable or scared, so when you see a horse with its head down, that’s typically a sign that it’s comfortable in its environment! 

This horse’s head is down but its eyes, ears, and tail all indicate that it is relaxed and resting.

For the second scenario - horses don’t express their emotions through their face the way humans do. For the most part, a horse’s face will look the same regardless of how it feels. To figure out what a horse is feeling, you should look at their eyes and their ears. A calm, neutral horse’s ears will usually be facing forward. If they’re listening for a command, their ears might be upright but angled towards the driver or rider. A calm horse will not have any white showing in their eyes.

We’ll use this picture of a horse as an example: 

Notice the horse’s body language - his ears are up and none of the white is showing in his eyes. 

Let’s look at another example of a carriage horse while it’s working:

Again, you can see that his ears are up. His stance is relaxed and no whites are visible in his eyes.

When a horse IS feeling scared or upset, its ears usually go back to lay almost flat against its head and it will begin to show the whites of its eyes. Additionally, they may tuck their tail down or swish it from side to side. A scared or upset horse may also stamp its hooves and clench the muscles in its buttocks. 

We’ll use this clip as a great example of a horse exhibiting behaviors that show it’s scared or upset. The first thing you notice is that the whites of this horse’s eyes are fully showing. When its ears are visible in the frame, we see that they are angling backward.

While we can’t see the horse’s tail in this video, we can see its nostrils flaring while its lips remain closed, which is often a sign of fear.

Horses have very different ways of expressing themselves than humans do, which is why it’s important to understand the way horses communicate and what their behaviors mean. The next time you see someone post a picture of a horse and claim it’s anxious or stressed, do a quick check of the horse’s ears, eyes, and tail - while it’s not a perfect system, it’s typically a good indicator of what the horse is feeling.