Picture this. A human goes on a trek somewhere in a forested area and suddenly comes face to face with a bear. In nine out of 10 cases, the human being will freeze or flee.
As animal behaviour experts repeatedly caution, there are two things one must never do in front of animals. One should not in any way make them feel threatened, and one must not show fear. Because, in either case, the animal may react in unexpected ways. This is as true of a Himalayan black bear or a Royal Bengal tigress as it is of your neighbour’s pet Pomeranian or your building’s resident pussycat.
That brings up the question: can animals smell fear? Research has been going on to answer this question, and what has come to light is interesting.
The research has focused on how animals react to the odours emitted by humans when they watch happy videos or horror scenes. In 2022, researchers from a university in France made people watch funny videos one day and horror movie clips the next. Each time sweat samples were collected from the viewers’ armpits using cotton pads. The two swab samples from the same human were presented to a horse. The idea was to notice any indication that the animal gave during the time humans got scared, while taking the human being and her expressions and body language, which domesticated animals such as dogs and horses are adept at reading, out of the equation. The report was published in the journal Nature last year.
“At first we weren’t sure if the horses could differentiate between the odours,” lead study author Plotine Jardat told the online magazine Live Science.
But the researchers eventually discovered that the horses reacted differently depending on which cotton pad they sniffed. “When the horses smelled the joy samples, they used only their left nostrils,” said Plotine. “That indicates which part of the brain they are using to analyze the odour. In all mammals, the two brain hemispheres have different functions, and in an emotional context, it seems like the odour from the joy samples was perceived as positive by the horses.”
She continued, “When the horses were given the samples swiped during the horror film, the animals reacted differently and not only sniffed the sample longer but also used both nostrils to catch a whiff.”
She concluded, “It’s not like when the horses smell another animal that they have the word ‘fear’ cross their minds. But now we do know that horses can differentiate odours from different emotional states in humans.”
The study will be extended in coming years to assess if smelling fear could make the horses frightened and how they would feel at an emotional level.
One comment
Bittu
March 19, 2024 at 1:13 am
Interesting. Have often seen dogs target people who are afraid of them. I used to think it was because they found the behaviour of such people suspicious. Maybe that is another aspect that needs research.