10/04/2026
A recent experiment examined whether the way people interact with horses and donkeys matters for both the animals’ behaviour and the person’s emotional experience.
The study brought together 61 adolescents for a three-minute encounter with miniature horses and donkeys at an animal sanctuary in California.
Before going in, all participants were taught to recognise two clear equine behaviours: “lip wiggling”, which is seen as a friendly, positive sign, and “walking away”, which signals that the animal is choosing to disengage.
They were then split into two groups. One group was told to pet the equine’s back, while the other was told to scratch the neck with small, repetitive movements that mimic how horses and donkeys groom each other.
Emotional state was measured just before and just after the interaction, and participants later reported what they had seen the animals do.
The first clear finding was that even a very short interaction with these miniature equines was linked to better emotional state across the board.
After only three minutes, adolescents reported feeling less nervous and anxious, less sad, and less lonely. They also felt less “amped up” (lower excitement) and more calm.
These changes happened in both the petting and scratching groups, suggesting that brief, structured contact with equines can give a quick emotional lift to young people, including some who were neurodivergent.
The second key finding was that the way participants touched the animals changed how the animals behaved.
Those who used the neck-scratching technique, designed to mimic natural allogrooming, saw much less disengagement from the equines.
In the petting group, 88.9% of participants reported that an equine walked away at some point, compared with only 41.7% in the scratching group.
They also reported more lip wiggling, a friendly affiliative behaviour, with rates rising from 48.1% in the petting condition to 75.0% in the scratching condition.
This shows that a small change in how humans touch equines, from gentle stroking on the back to firmer scratching on the neck, can make the animals more likely to stay engaged and show positive cues.
The third important result was that these differences in animal behaviour were linked to differences in how the participants felt afterwards.
Adolescents who observed lip wiggling reported a larger drop in loneliness than those who did not. Therefore showing when the equine seemed affiliative and engaged, the young person tended to feel a greater reduction in loneliness.
More surprisingly, participants who saw an equine walk away from them reported a larger reduction in sadness than those who did not.
The authors suggest that this may have been caused by the participant perceiving the animal’s choice and autonomy, or by the brief interruption in contact, which could have made the interaction feel more authentic and less pressured.
Full study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-65168-2
