Learning About Horses -

👂Hearing👂

When thinking about training and working with Lilly - hearing is another consideration.

Horse Listen GIF by Nature on PBS - Find & Share on GIPHY

What do horse's hear? How much better is a horse's hearing compared to a humans. These are the questions I wanted answers to.

Knowing how a horse hears can help you understand the horse's behavior and help you anticipate and avoid dangerous spooks or reduce his anxiety in noisy environments.

A horse's hearing is much better than ours. They use their hearing for 3 purposes.

Detect Sounds

Determine location of sounds

Provide sensory information to identify sounds

Horse hearing is similar to that of humans.

Shape of the ears

Horses external ears are called pinnae. The pinnae act like satellite dishes to capture sound waves and funnel them to his inner ear. The horse's large dish like ears capture noises that you might miss with your small flat ears.

Horses can move their ears 180° using 10 different muscles (humans only have 3 muscles) to single out a specific area to listen to. This allows a horse to orient itself toward the sounds to be able to determine what is making the noise. The ears can also rotate independently. The ears are shaped to locate, funnel, and amplify sounds.

Type of hearing

Horses have binaural hearing (like all animals) meaning his ears hear sound concurrently.

Range of Frequencies

A horse can hear low to very high frequency sound 14 Hertz to 25,000 Hertz (55-35,500 Hertz) (humans can only hear 20 Hertz to 20,000 Hertz). Horses hear the best in the 1,000-16,000 Hertz The decibel levels are about the same between humans and horses.

This means that horses can hear things that we do not hear. In contrast to dogs - dogs can hear even higher sounds as high as 45,000 Hertz.

This means that horses respond to training commands that are very low in volume. Horses are also sensitive to tone of voice. We need to have a confident tone. Avoid overly emotional tones such as shrill, high pitches.

Horse needs to hear predators

Horses are hard-wired to listen for the sounds of stealth-the snap, crackle, pop of grass and twigs under a predator's paws. These telltale rustling contain high-frequency sounds, which your horse uses to locate the direction from which they came. They do not need to hone in on a precise location only an approximate indication of where the sound erupted so he can run in the opposite direction.

Steps in the hearing/fleeing process for horses

hear a sound
eye movement
raise and turn head
freeze his body so as not to give away his position (quit chewing)
perceives danger
spook & run

Emotional Hearing

Horses have very strong emotional (fear) response to whatever sensory input they might receive. Fear triggers your horse's flight mechanism. This hair-trigger response is an important thing to have. A brave horse is a dead. His best shot for survival is to run first and think later.

Watchdog of the Herd

Some horses react more strongly to sound because they are the watchdogs of the herd. They have to be more alert to warn the whole herd of danger. To help reduce the "watchdog's" reactivity you can block out a majority of noise with earplugs. Most importantly watch your horse's ears. They tell you where his attention is. If you see a piece of plastic blowing to the left - look at his left ear if the open part of the ear swivels toward the bag (Pyer Reflex) he's tuning into it.

They use their great sense of hearing to pick up on changes in their environment.

Horse's Use Body Language

Horse use body language as a key component of their communication. Since horses are herd animals they communicate via body language rather than vocalisation and sound. Subtle body and head cues, twitch of an ear, widening of an eye to communicate.

They use their ears to communicate what they are thinking and feeling. A horse that puts its ears back means that they are angry, threatening, or warning. Ears forward means the horse is attentive and listening. If the ears are tipped forward, stiff and nostrils are flared the horse is scared or really interested in something.

Hearing issues can affect their behavior.

Check a horse's ears every day to make sure it does not have insect infestation or infection. (redness, scratching, hair loss (could indicate rubbing)).