New evidence that horses reliably produce more snorts in favorable situations could improve animal welfare practices, according to a study published July 11 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mathilde Stomp of the Université de Rennes, France, and colleagues.

Assessing positive emotions is important for improving animal welfare, but it has been challenging to identify reliable indicators. Physiological markers often give contradictory results, and many behavioural signals are ambiguous. In particular, few studies have examined acoustic indicators of positive emotions.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-snorts-positive-emotions-horses.html#jCp