Mobile ears help animals direct their attention to possible predators. A new study suggests that horses also pay close attention to the direction other horse's ears are pointing to figure out what they're thinking.
University of Sussex researchers believe their ears have become a useful communication tool.
The team of researchers studied animal behavior to figure out how communication and social skills have evolved.
"We're interested in how (they) communicate," said lead researcher Jennifer Wathan, according to BBC News. "And being sensitive to what another individual is thinking is a fundamental skill from which other (more complex) skills develop."
Findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
Wathan and her colleague Professor Karen McComb created a behavioral experiment where 72 horses had to use visual cues from another horse in order to choose where to eat, according to
They led each horse to a point where it had to choose one of two buckets. On a wall behind the decision-making location was a life-size photograph of a horse's head facing either right or left.
The horse's ears or eyes were covered in some of the trials. When ears and eyes were covered, the horse being tested would just choose a bucket a random to eat from, according to the study.
When ears and eyes were visible, the horses being tested would choose the bucket towards where its gaze, and its ears, were directed.
Horses can rotate their ears through almost 180 degrees, like many mammals that are hunted by predators.
"It seems there's something in the visual cues, from both the eyes and the ears, that are really important," said Wathan.
Wathan pointed out that in our "human-centric" view of the world, we didn't consider the importance the ears have when it comes to animal communication.
"Horses have quite rich social lives and relationships with other horses, so they're a good species to look at this in," said Wathan. "And the more we look at communication across different species, the more we can consider what might have promoted the evolution of sophisticated communication and social skills."
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