Listen Up...

From Jim: Horses' ears are very expressive. They often tell us how the animal is feeling or what they're about at the moment. This aspect of their behavior will be for a later time. This essay is addresses their sense of hearing. As prey animals, equines need to have a great sense of hearing and they do. Their external ear can sweep through 180 degrees of movement. We're lucky if we can wiggle ours. The cup shaped pinnae (external ears) funnel sound to their timpanic membrane efficiently and give them more range in detecting sounds. They can quickly, almost instantaneously determine the direction a sound comes from, useful when you're on the menu. They have 10 muscles, compared to our 3, to move their ears about. They can and do use their ears together and independently. Think of their ears as an early threat warning system, hard wired to be very sensitive to the signature noises of a predator in the stalking mode. Broken twigs, crushed dried grasses, grating stones and gravel stand out like the guitar rift in a pop instrumental. They direct both ears to the sound, freeze, may lift and turn their head, bring vision into play, winnow the air for scents, brace, prepare to spin and bolt. Their response to sounds is emotional and the emotion is FEAR. The frequency range for equine hearing is much broader than ours, around 55 to 32,500 Hz for equines, 64 to 23,000 for us. They can hear things we can't. They can hear bats' echo location and the thuds of approaching herds that are not part of our reality. Their auditory acuity, like ours, declines with age. By 4 or 5, this decline begins slowly, and by 15, their high frequency hearing loss is significant. Loud noises can and do affect the rate of loss. If you ever observed a more anxious mood in your horse during windy days, it's because the sounds of the wind interfer with their ability to hear and they don't like it. Being deliberate and non-stealthy in your actions when you're around equines is good. Sneaking up on them is ill advised. Even though you'll probably fail in your efforts, it doesn't exactly make for a good experience. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of the sense of hearing for equines. It exceeds vision by magnitudes of difference. Our constant vocalizations are most likely ignored by equines. It's probably correct to say they don't listen to us-at least not our incessant chatter. Better to offer up a moving solo, than fade into just another voice in the chorus.
Their hearing is not there for our languaging. They will accommodate us because they want to please, but it's not their nature to be verbal.