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According to the latest study, horses are able to read face expressions of a human, especially when they display signs of anger. Researchers at the university of Sussex studied the reactions of 28 horses when they were showed photos of various people displaying negative and positive expressions. The study published in Biology Letters says that they spent longer time focusing on pictures that showed anger and focused more with their left eyes. As per previous studies, this behavior is associated with identifying negative stimuli. This is because the left eye processes the threat centers of the brain located in its right hemisphere. The study also shows that angry response made the horse display signs of stress as well as increase in its heart rate. "The reaction to the angry facial expressions was particularly clear," Amy Smith, a doctoral student in the Mammal Vocal Communication and Cognition Research Group at Sussex who co-led the research, said in a press release.

The researchers also pointed out that the animals did not display any strong reactions to happy faces. This shows how their facial recognition ability may be their natural defense mechanism. "This may be because it is particularly important for animals to recognize threats in their environment," Smith said. "In this context, recognizing angry faces may act as a warning system, allowing horses to anticipate negative human behaviour such as rough handling," as reported by CBC News

Karen McComb, professor of animal behavior and co-author also from the University of Sussex, had some of her own theories to explain how the horses are able to read human emotions. "Horses may have adapted an ancestral ability for reading emotional cues in other horses to respond appropriately to human facial expressions during their co-evolution," she said.

"Emotional awareness is likely to be very important in highly social species like horses -- and ongoing research in our lab is examining the relationship between a range of emotional skills and social behavior," Smith told Huffington Post.