How is this horse feeling? New mobile brain wave reader could tell
Mar. 9, 2021 , 5:15 PM
The famed stallion Black Beauty felt joy, excitement, and even heartbreak or so he tells us in the 1877 novel that bears his name. Now, scientists say they’ve been able to detect feelings in living animals by getting them straight from the horse’s mouth or in this case, its head. Researchers have devised a new, mobile headband that detects brain waves in horses, which could eventually be used with other species.
“This is a real breakthrough,” says Katherine Houpt, a veterinary behaviorist at Cornell University who was not involved with the work. The device, she says, “gets into the animals’ minds” with objectivity and less guesswork.