Most everyone has had a fantasy about becoming an animal whisperer and being able to bond with with our fuzzy, scaly, fascinating co-inhabitants on earth. Whether you wanted to become Aquaman or Catwoman and lead an army of creatures into battle, or care for tender, gentle creatures like Dr. Dolittle or Snow White, the experience is fairly universal. But the first step to becoming besties with every animal has to start somewhere, and that hypothetical first step should be to get the animal to approach you. But, assuming you can’t shout out a “Hey, I come in peace!”, how can you communicate to an animal that you don’t mean any harm, and that you’d like to have a nice chat with them over some nice dry grass or a succulent prey corpse? Lucky for you, animal behavior researchers are starting to figure out how.
Researchers Amy Victoria Smith, Clara Wilson, Karen McComb, and LeAnne Proops decided in 2017 to investigate how likely domestic horses were to approach people displaying two very different body postures- dominance and submission. They studied thirty domesticated horses from three different equestrian centers in the UK. They then had two demonstrators, both dressed in the same clothes, roughly the same height, and wearing scarves and hoods to prevent the influence of facial expressions, stand in a neutral position for a warm-up trial to get the horses used to the idea of approaching these strangers. Each horse was tested individually.
The two demonstrators stood facing each other, with heads bowed, holding a tasty carrot together to encourage the horse to approach. Once the horses got the idea, they were removed from the arena and the demonstrators went to their test positions, with one “standing tall, feet hip-width apart, squared shoulders, chest puffed out, hands to the side, an ‘open’ body posture” and the other “slouching, feet together, hunched shoulders, relaxed knees, hands to the front, a ‘closed’ body posture” to represent dominance and submission, respectively (Smith, Wilson, McComb, & Proops, 2018). Figure 1 shows the positions of the demonstrators in both the warm-up and the trial runs.
The horses were released from five meters away, and the researchers measured which demonstrator the horse approached, as well as how long it took the horse to approach them (latency to approach). The results showed that horses approached the submissive demonstrator 77% of the time, and that it took 90% of the horses less than 10 seconds to approach whichever demonstrator they chose (Smith, Wilson, McComb, & Proops, 2018).
All of this means that domesticated horses are much more likely to approach a submissive-looking person than a dominant-looking one, even though both people are strangers and are giving them no facial cues. This suggests that not only are horses deciding to approach the person who is less likely to harm them, it also means that they understand at least some human displays of dominance and submission. This makes sense, considering humans have been domesticating horses for centuries. However, some of the dominant and submissive body language we use is universal to all animals (including ourselves!).
Therefore, next time you’re trying to channel your inner Snow White and get cute forest creatures to approach you, or even when you’re hanging out with your domesticated pet and you want them to come to you, make yourself look as submissive as possible, and you’ll have a new animal best friend. However, we don’t suggest you really use this technique on wild animals, but it’s a nice sentiment nonetheless.
Source:
Smith, A. V., Wilson, C., McComb, K., & Proops, L. (2018). Domestic horses (Equus caballus) prefer to approach humans displaying a submissive body posture rather than a dominant body posture. Animal Cognition, 21(2), 307-312. dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-017-1140-4
