Skip to content
Surprising Science

Horses: Man’s Second Best Friend

After dogs, horses may be man’s best friend, new research suggests. Based on their ability to understand subtle eye and body movements, horses can grasp human dispositions relatively well.
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

After dogs, horses may be man’s best friend, new research suggests. Based on their ability to understand subtle eye and body movements, horses can grasp human dispositions relatively well. “Depending on how horses are domesticated and trained in future, they may have the potential to catch up with dogs as being man’s best understanding friend,” says Discover Magazine. “A recent study conducted by Carol Sankey of the University of Rennes, for example, determined that horses recall positive interactions with individuals, even when the horse and human are separated for months at a time.”

Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Related
The standard line against painter John Singer Sargent goes like this: a very good painter of incredible technique, but little substance who flattered the rich and famous with decadently beautiful portraiture — a Victorian Andrea del Sarto of sorts whose reach rarely exceeded his considerable artistic grasp. A new exhibition of Sargent’s work and the accompanying catalogues argue that he was much more than a painter of pretty faces. Instead, the exhibition Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends and catalogues challenge us to see Sargent’s omnivorous mind, which swallowed up nascent modernist movements not just in painting, but also in literature, music, and theater. Sargent the omnivore’s dilemma thus lies in being too many things at once and tasking us to multitask with him.

Up Next