What did we do?

We created a set of fake horse ears with two positions: ears forward (signaling friendliness) and pinned backward (signaling aggression or domination). We put each style on Ting's head, and Mallory brought in a horse. We worked with twelve horses, including males and females of different ages. We did three rounds of tests: once with ears forward, once with ears backward, and once with no ears at all. We wrote down the kinds of reactions the horses had to Ting, including negative responses (grunting, pulling away, acting aggressively), and positive reactions (nuzzling, friendly whinnying). more...