Traditionally, there has been an assumption that horses, unlike dogs, aren't great with verbal/spoken language. They don't have a brain wired to understand it and are relatively non-vocal themselves.
A new study is making me question that. They studied what we call "baby talk" which is officially "Pet Directed Speech" and discover that it catches and holds the attention of horses as well as it does primates and dogs.
When you use PDS on your horse they actually hear you. When you don't? They ignore you. One test they used was having the experimenter point at some carrots. When they used PDS the horse was more likely to go get the carrots.
My theory is that we use this around horses regularly and they actually realize we are talking to them. When we use a normal tone of voice, they recognize that as "oh, the humans are waffling on again."
These studies help us communicate and work better with our horses, so they really do matter.
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