Equine Senses

Horses have finely tuned senses but equine senses are different to our own. This article will discuss horse sight and hearing senses among others and give you some information on how your horse sees and experiences the world.

Sight Sense

A horse is at its most vulnerable when its head is down because of where its eyes are positioned. Horses can see nearly all the way around them and if they move their heads they have a full circle of vision.

A horse’s sight sense is different to ours because they have both monocular and binocular vision. This means that equine vision allows them to focus on things with both eyes at the same time or see different things through each eye. Horses are not colour blind despite popular belief they just differentiate colour differently to us.

Equine Hearing Senses

Horse’s hearing senses are much better than ours. Horses can pick up sounds from further away and higher and lower frequencies than we can. Horse’s can also differentiate between similar sounds.

Equine Smell

Horses have an excellent sense of smell, they have a sac at the top of their nasal passages called the vomeronasal or Jacobson’s organ. This organ is used to investigate particularly interesting scents by demonstrating the Flehmen response. You will recognise this as the horse raises his nose and curls his top lip.

Equine Taste

Horses are fussy and will not eat anything that doesn’t taste ‘right’. You can disguise some tastes with soaked sugar beet.