Dear BERGers,

This is just a reminder that today our own Shelley Culpepper is giving a seminar about her PhD study entitled "Interspecific Olfactory Perception of Human Emotions: From the Horses Perspective". Please see the abstract, and the link to the meeting, below.

Abstract: Species are equipped with odour receptors adapted to perceive olfactory signals, helping them assess and adapt to corresponding ecological challenges, e.g. food acquisition, predator avoidance and mate selection (Niimura & Nei, 2006). Olfactory perception is crucial to the survival of prey species such as the horse (Equus caballus). Interestingly, although horses have been domesticated by humans for thousands of years, little research has been conducted on horse olfactory perception. Even less is known about the extent to which emotion-driven differences in odours emitted by humans may be perceived by and thus potentially affecting horses. Currently, only two studies have explored the horse’s olfactory perception of human emotions, and both only on two main emotions – each focusing on the horse’s response to human body odours emitted during the humans’ emotional experience of ‘fear’ and ‘happy’ (Lanata et al., 2018; Sabiniewicz et al., 2020).

The current study will be a conceptual replication of Sabiniewicz et al (2020). Five men and five women Psychology students from University of Northampton will wear odour-collection pads while viewing short video clips associated with fear, happiness, and sadness. Fourteen Thoroughbred racehorses in the UK will then be individually exposed to each individual odour and behaviourally compared against Sabiniewicz and colleagues’ ethogram to assess the extent to which their behaviour varies in response to the emotion-driven differences in human body odour. These findings will provide further context to the two main current studies, contribute to scientific progress and integrity via a replication, and include an important additional methodological consideration via exploration of a third human emotion – sadness, which may also have practical implications. Enhancing our understanding of olfactory human-horse interactions could provide new ways to optimize their health and welfare (Merkies & Franzin, 2021).

Link to the meeting:

https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%3A9823d93069124396a7a40d99c8272bea%40thread.tacv2%2F1632727356535%3Fcontext%3D%257b%2522Tid%2522%253a%25224e8d09f7-cc79-4ccb-9149-a4238dd17422%2522%252c%2522Oid%2522%253a%25221a69c354-6581-4fd4-8530-c53f9ead0876%2522%257d%26anon%3Dtrue&type=meetup-join&deeplinkId=2c2c7134-d960-4963-8397-8f77c1847189&directDl=true&msLaunch=true&enableMobilePage=true&suppressPrompt=true

Gema