Horse owners' personality and attachment style shape how they interact with and care for their horses

University of Turku

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

A new study shows that horse owners' psychological characteristics, including their attachment styles and personality traits, are systematically linked to how frequently they ride, train, and spend quality time with their horses, as well as the equipment they choose to use. The findings offer new insights into how human psychology shapes horse welfare and management.

Attachment theory, originally developed to describe emotional bonds between humans, has increasingly been applied to human–animal relationships. Attachment style describes how individuals relate to others emotionally: those with high avoidant attachment tend to distance themselves emotionally and rely less on others, while those with high anxious attachment tend to seek closeness and fear rejection or abandonment.

"We were interested in whether these psychological tendencies, which are well-studied in human relationships, would also manifest in how people interact with their horses — and indeed they do," says lead author of the study, Postdoctoral Researcher Océane Liehrmann from the Department of Biology at the University of Turku, Finland, and the Department of Biosystem and Technology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden.

The international research group conducted an online survey, gathering responses from 2,239 horse owners worldwide. The survey assessed their attachment styles using the Horse Attachment Questionnaire (HAQ) validated by the research group, and their personality traits using the Short Five Questionnaire.

Owners reported how often they rode, did groundwork training, and spent quality time with their horses, as well as what type of headgear — bit, bitless, or both — they used.

More emotionally distant owners interact less with their horses

The results showed a clear pattern: owners who spent more time with their horses, whether riding, training, or simply being with them, tended to be more emotionally connected to their horses. In contrast, owners who kept more emotional distance to their horse also tended to interact with them less frequently, spending less time riding and engaging in hands-on activities.

"This mirrors what has been found in companion animal research, where people with higher avoidant attachment tend to be less attentive and less engaged in caring for their pets. Our findings suggest the same dynamic extends to horse ownership," notes Liehrmann.

Interestingly, the type of interaction and relationship length also mattered. Owners who regularly spent informal, unstructured quality time with their horse, simply being present with them without a specific training goal, tended to show stronger emotional bonds. Owners with longer relationships with their horse showed progressively lower avoidant attachment, with those knowing their horse for over 10 years being about 15 percent less avoidant than those in relationships of under one year.

Owners’ personality also played a role in how they engaged with their horses, though differences between groups were subtle. Those who rode more frequently tended to be slightly more organised, outgoing, and emotionally stable. In contrast, owners who practised groundwork more often tended to score higher in openness to new experiences, which may reflect a greater curiosity and willingness to explore non-traditional, horse-centred training methods.

"These are not dramatic differences, but they are consistent and meaningful. Personality shapes the way people approach activities across many domains of life, and equestrian practice appears to be no exception," Liehrmann explains.

Equipment choice linked to emotional distancing

The study also found subtle links between headgear choice and owner psychology. Owners who used bitless equipment or alternated between bit and bitless tended to score slightly lower in emotional distancing than those who rode exclusively with a bit. Owners open to using both types of headgear also tended to score higher in openness to new experiences, suggesting a greater willingness to explore different approaches to riding.

The researchers note that these are modest tendencies observed across a large group of owners, and that equipment choice is shaped by many factors, including riding discipline, training background, and the individual horse's needs.

Rather than pointing fingers at any particular practice, the findings suggest that reflecting on our own psychological tendencies could be a valuable step toward more conscious, horse-centred decision-making.

Implications for horse welfare and training

The researchers emphasise that even modest psychological differences may carry practical importance when they consistently influence how horses are managed and cared for over time.

"Understanding the psychological characteristics of horse owners could help tailor training programmes, improve human-horse communication, and ultimately support better horse welfare. Designing tools that give equestrians greater awareness of their own psychological tendencies could be a meaningful step in that direction," concludes Liehrmann.
 

---

Journal

Anthrozoös

DOI

10.1080/08927936.2026.2676402 

Article Title

Exploring Equestrian Psychology: How Owner Attachment Style and Personality Traits Relate to Training Choices and Relationship Parameters.

 

The universal tempo of animal communication

A team from UNIGE, NCCR Evolving Language, reconnect and the Institut Pasteur shows that the vast majority of animal species have been vocalising at a shared rhythm for hundreds of millions of years.

Institut Pasteur

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChat
WhatsAppEmail

From insects to great apes, by way of birds and fish, animals communicate through an extraordinary variety of sounds. Whilst the pitch or timbre of their vocalisations matters, rhythm may play a more fundamental role. Scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the NCCR Evolving Language, the reConnect Institute and the Institut Pasteur analysed more than 2,000 sound recordings produced by 98 animal species. All of them vocalise at a strikingly similar rate — roughly two to three acoustic events per second — regardless of their size, habitat, species or social complexity. This constraint is likely linked to the brain’s capacity to process auditory stimuli, and human language is no exception. The findings are published in PLOS Biology.

Many animal species communicate using acoustic signals — calls, songs or vocalisations — that vary in frequency and tone. “But what about rhythm? Is there a common tempo, or does it adapt to the characteristics of each species? This temporal dimension is what we wanted to examine,” says Anne-Lise Giraud, director of the reConnect Institute, researcher at the Pasteur Institute and adjunct professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and Director of the reConnect Institute at the Institut Pasteur, who led the research.

The scientists analysed sounds produced by 98 species — mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, reptiles and fish — by developing a method to calculate vocalisation rate in a uniform way and assess which parameters might influence it. “We found that 95% of species fall between 0.45 and 4.99 vocalisations per second, with a marked concentration around 2.8 Hz — a striking degree of homogeneity for animals that are otherwise so different,” says Théophane Piette, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and first author of the study. “Neither body weight, lung capacity, social complexity nor habitat proved to be determining factors. This suggests that this rhythm is shaped by a shared, ancient constraint common across species, rather than by recent adaptations.”

A neural explanation

To analyse a sound, the brain must simultaneously integrate its overall structure and its fine details. The researchers therefore propose that auditory systems evolved around two complementary timescales. Slow oscillations, particularly in the delta band (1–4 Hz), would provide a long integration window for tracking acoustic sequences and identifying the general structure of sounds — a rate that also corresponds to that observed across many animal vocalisations. Conversely, faster processes, likely in the low gamma bands, would enable fine-grained temporal discrimination and the analysis of detailed acoustic structure. These faster mechanisms would contribute in particular to the identification of individual speakers or sound sources.

Towards cross-species communication?

Humans are no exception to this universal pattern in the animal kingdom. Although our speech rate is slightly above the animal average — partly owing to the structuring of language into syllables, words and sentences — we spontaneously slow down in challenging communication situations: background noise, an elderly interlocutor, or a young child.

This shared rhythm may have another consequence: facilitating communication between species. If most animals transmit and receive at the same basic rate, they may be able to decode signals produced by other species. That's exactly what dogs do with their owners: they process human speech at this same slow rhythm, and humans in turn tend to slow their speech when addressing them. “This common tempo may not merely reflect how brains process sound; it could also constitute a kind of universal synchronisation that facilitates communication across species,” concludes Théophane Piette.

This study is part of the work of the NCCR Evolving Language, co-directed by the universities of Geneva, Zurich and Neuchâtel, which aims to understand the biological foundations of language, its evolutionary origins and the challenges posed by new technologies.

 

Source

Animal acoustic communication has a conserved optimal rhythm within the neural delta range, PLOS Biology, 9th June 2026

Theophane Piette 1*, Chundra Cathcart2*, Chiaria Barbieri2,3,4, Keesha Martin Ming3,Didier Grandjean5, Balthasar Bickel2, Eloïse Déaux1*, Anne-Lise Giraud1,6*

1 Department of Basic Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland,
2 Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich,Switzerland,
3 Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich,Zurich, Switzerland,
4 Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Cagliari, Cagliari,Italy,
5 Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland,
6 UniversitéParis Cité, Institut Pasteur, AP-HP, Inserm, Fondation Pour l’Audition, Institut de l’Audition, IHU reConnect,Paris, France
* These authors contributed equally to this work.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003798

---

Journal

PLOS Biology

DOI

10.1371/journal.pbio.3003798 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Animal acoustic communication has a conserved optimal rhythm within the neural delta range

Article Publication Date

9-Jun-2026

 

Swapping steak for salmon could boost health and reduce emissions

University of Bristol

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBluesky

Swapping a beef steak for salmon once a week could save the amount of carbon needed to fly from London Heathrow to Morocco, according to new research by the universities of Bristol and Southampton.   

The study, published in Environmental Research: Food Systems, found the UK’s current level of meat consumption is 2 to 3 times higher than recommended guidelines.  The researchers wanted to explore the climate impact of 5 different options:  

• Business as Usual (BAU) – continuing our current diet trends 

• REDUCE - reducing the amount of protein eaten through lowering meat and dairy products consumed  

• SWAP - replacing beef with salmon once a week 

• NHS Eatwell – following the NHS dietary guidance 

• Planetary – the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet 

Using data from 4,000 UK households in the Family Food Dataset, the team modelled outcomes from 2021 to 2050 and estimated the corresponding carbon emissions savings. 

They found that should trends continue at the same rate as they did between 2001 and 2021, the BAU diet would see a reduction in food-related carbon emissions of 15% from 2021 to 2050 – the equivalent of a return flight from London Heathrow to Madrid, Spain (2,486 km). 

But by swapping one portion of beef steak for UK-sourced salmon, the effect was nearly doubled, seeing carbon emissions reduced by 28% long-term - the equivalent of a return flight to London Heathrow to Marrakech, Morocco (4,583 km). 

The REDUCE option had a reduction of 39% emissions, which equates to a return flight to Cyprus (6,565 km), the NHS Eatwell diet reduced emissions by 42% - enough to fly to Tel-Aviv, Israel and back (7,186km), and the Planetary diet would reduce emissions by 49%, which compares to a return flight to Baku, Azerbaijan from Heathrow (8,024km). 

The researchers suggest implementing diet changes such as these would be highly advantageous in contributing to national targets of reduced carbon emissions.  

Lead author Dr Jenny Baverstock, Honorary Research Fellow in Bristol's School of Biological Sciences and previously Principal Enterprise Fellow at the University of Southampton said: “Taking forward simple changes in our diets and also following existing recommendations from the NHS Eatwell guide could see important reductions in carbon emissions that are necessary for environmental sustainability. Our simple swap offers a nutritional/health advantage as well as an environmental one which is ideal as these two need to go hand in hand and not be traded off against each other”. 

Globally, the food and agricultural industry accounts for 26% of human-caused emissions, in the UK the figure is 20%. Emissions have been falling and could fall further with dietary changes, potentially playing a significant role in achieving the UK Government’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050. 

Animal agriculture is responsible for 82.5% of global food industry emissions. High environmental impact proteins of red meat, like beef, lamb, and pork, contribute significantly to these emissions. Protein sources such as fish, chicken, and legumes, also known as the pea or bean family, provide alternative protein sources with a lower environmental impact.  

Beef and salmon steaks were chosen as a more practical dietary change that could realistically be adopted by the UK public, using familiar foods that are mainly produced within the UK. 

Modelled to 2050, this single substitution switch had a reduction in carbon emissions of 7.30 kg CO2 emissions/person/week, a significant reduction in emissions just from a small dietary change. 

The researchers recognise that changing population-wide dietary habits is challenging and involves trade-offs, requiring measures to mitigate impacts on traditional livestock farmers and sustainable production in the fishing industry. 

However, the UK currently eats 31% less seafood than is recommended by government guidelines, and there is strong evidence that the consumption of meat, particularly processed meat and unprocessed red meat, is a risk factor in developing type 2 diabetes. 

Professor Guy Poppy, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Bristol and co-author on the research paper, said: “Given the public concern about planetary health this substitution of salmon for beef may gain traction with the public if, as well as promoting individual health there is more awareness around eating more sustainably. This offers an easy choice for people whom want to reduce their environmental footprint. 

“In 2026, we face unprecedented trade challenges with the turbulence of the trade tariffs levied by the US and counter responses globally which raise questions around national food security and the role of a global food system. This might create additional opportunities for the UK to examine the domestic supply of fish for future stability, in particular, protein security.” 

Paper:

‘Adapting the source of protein in diets to reduce carbon emissions: a UK case study exploring aquaculture’ by Jenny Baverstock, Daniel Romero-Saavedra and Guy Matthew Poppy in Environmental Research: Food Systems [open access]

ENDS

---

Journal

Environmental Research Food Systems

DOI

10.1088/2976-601X/ae6709 

Article Title

Adapting the source of protein in diets to reduce carbon emissions: a UK case study exploring aquaculture

 

Going up against the heat: Vertical greenery keeps cities cool

South-facing green walls help lower temperatures in indoor and outdoor environments

Osaka Metropolitan University

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Green wall installation can provide cooling effects for both indoor and outdoor environments.

view more 

Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University

Ever stood in the middle of a city and just felt the heat radiating off its surfaces? Or entered a closed room and wondered how it could feel hotter than outside?

Climate change and urbanization have intensified the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, where urban areas are significantly warmer than rural areas. This has in turn increased the frequency of extreme heat events, such as heatwaves, and deteriorated both outdoor environments and indoor thermal conditions in buildings, leading to higher cooling energy demands, greater strain on power grids, and the elevated risk of power outages. Previous studies on UHI mitigation have primarily focused on improving outdoor environments, but indoor and outdoor thermal conditions interact dynamically through building envelopes, the material separating the interior and exterior. So, it is essential to evaluate them in an integrated manner. Furthermore, building resilience under compounded extreme conditions, such as heatwaves coinciding with power outages, has not been sufficiently investigated.

To address this, an international research team led by Associate Professor Jihui Yuan from Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Human Life and Ecology evaluated the impacts of UHI mitigation strategies (UHIMS), such as green roofs, vertical greenery, and envelope materials, on both indoor and outdoor thermal environments. The study focused on an educational facility in Shahrud, Iran, a city characterized by extremely hot summers. In the analysis, the researchers used an integrated simulation approach that combines a Building Energy Model (BEM), which reproduces indoor thermal conditions, with an Urban Microclimate Model (UMM), which captures outdoor microclimate dynamics. Based on weather data records, the simulations considered future climate scenarios as well as extreme conditions, including summer heatwaves and power outages, to evaluate building performance under realistic and severe conditions. Thermal comfort was assessed using the Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET), enabling consistent evaluation of both indoor and outdoor environments.

The results revealed that a green wall installed on the south-facing facade improved indoor thermal conditions by up to 1.7°C. In addition, albedo, the amount of light reflected by a surface, showed significant effects on thermal comfort. Low albedo exterior surfaces improved outdoor thermal comfort by approximately 1.5°C, while high albedo exterior surfaces were found to be particularly effective in reducing indoor temperatures. Additionally, it was found that the radiative properties of exterior materials have a stronger influence on thermal environments than their heat capacity.

“This study could function as an initial guide for resilient buildings that can maintain acceptable thermal conditions even under extreme conditions,” said Yuan. “It could also contribute to the advancement of urban heat island mitigation strategies that integrate both urban- and building-scale approaches, while helping to achieve both reduced energy consumption and improved thermal comfort.”

The findings were published in Energy and Buildings.

###

About OMU

Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through the “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Instagram, LinkedIn.

---

Journal

Energy and Buildings

DOI

10.1016/j.enbuild.2026.117411 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Assessment of UHI Mitigation Strategies on Indoor and Outdoor Thermal Comfort under Future Extreme Heat and Power Outage Conditions: Case Study of an Educational Building in Shahrood, Iran

 

Could a controversial cooling strategy save our fisheries and coral reefs from marine heat waves?

Maybe. But the benefits wouldn’t be felt everywhere, researchers find.

Michigan State University

Facebook

WeChat
WhatsAppEmail

Most people have experienced a heat wave on land. But heat waves can strike in the ocean too. And as the planet continues to warm, marine heat waves are growing longer and deadlier, hurting the seafood supply that billions of people worldwide rely on for their food and livelihoods.

Researchers at Michigan State University say a controversial strategy to shield Earth from some of the sun’s rays would offer unequal protection for the oceans and communities that depend on them, leaving 25% to 75% of the world’s seas still at risk from overheating, models suggest.

The findings appear in the journal Environmental Research: Climate.

First author Lala Kounta started studying marine heat waves in 2020, when unusually warm waters off the coast of Senegal where she grew up triggered a toxic algal bloom that made hundreds of fishermen sick.

Senegal is far from alone. Worldwide, heat waves in the planet’s oceans have gotten longer and more frequent than they were a century ago, previous research shows.

“The consequences are already visible,” said Kounta, a physical oceanographer and postdoctoral scholar working with professor Phoebe Zarnetske in MSU’s Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program.

Scientists say a series of marine heat waves is partly to blame for the die-off, in the last 30 years, of more than half the living coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Sea lions and seabirds starved as their food species shifted to cooler waters during a massive marine heat wave that took hold off the West Coast of the United States from 2014 to 2016.

High ocean temperatures off the coast of southern Chile in 2016 fueled a toxic algal bloom that wiped out 100,000 tons of salmon and trout, making it the largest fish farm mortality ever recorded.

One study of 34 marine heat waves worldwide found that the economic toll from a single event can run into the billions of dollars.

In the search for solutions, slow progress on cutting emissions has prompted some to ask: can we engineer our way out of the climate crisis?

One strategy that’s been proposed is to artificially cool the planet by deliberately dimming the light from the sun.

The idea, a form of climate intervention called stratospheric aerosol injection, would involve using planes to release small particles or gases such as sulfur dioxide high above Earth into the stratosphere, where they could deflect some of the sun’s rays — like drawing a thin gauzy curtain over the face of the Earth.

Shooting sun-blocking particles into the stratosphere may sound fantastical. The idea is to mimic the natural cooling effects of volcanic ash and gas. When volcanoes erupt, they launch millions of tons of sulfur dioxide and other gases miles into the sky. Once there, they combine with water in the atmosphere to create small droplets that drift around the globe and remain aloft for several years.

These aerosols reflect incoming sunlight and have a temporary cooling effect on the planet. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, for example, global temperatures dipped by roughly half a degree (0.6 degrees Celsius) for two years.

In the past 30 years, the U.S. National Academies has issued three reports calling for more research on the potential consequences of solar geoengineering, to better understand the full range of options for dealing with climate change. But while most research has focused on what the technique would mean for warming in the atmosphere, the impacts on our oceans remain unclear.

For the study, Zarnetske, Kounta, and collaborators in the NSF-funded Climate Intervention Biology Working Group used computer simulations to forecast marine heat waves under future scenarios with and without solar geoengineering.

In her office, Kounta pointed to a graph showing what ocean temperatures could look like in the next 10, 20, 40 years. The future they depict looks bleak.

If we continue on the current path, the team’s modeling found, average ocean temperatures are on track to rise by 1 degree Celsius by 2069, with marine heat waves becoming hotter and longer across 97% of the world’s oceans.

In contrast to this “business as usual” scenario, the simulations suggest that solar geoengineering could offer some cooling, but the benefits wouldn’t be felt everywhere.

In one set of simulations, the team modeled a world where enough sun-blocking particles are pumped into the stratosphere to keep the Earth’s air temperature at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — a threshold we’re already beginning to exceed.

In another, more aggressive scenario, the team looked at what would happen to ocean temperatures if enough sun-blocking particles were released to reduce atmospheric warming back down to less than 1°C.

Kounta pulled up a map of the world’s oceans, showing the pattern of temperature changes the model predicted for the period from 2035 to 2069. 

“The degree of protection depends on how aggressively it is deployed,” Kounta said.

Under the moderate scenario, only 20% to 25% of the ocean was shielded from worsening heat waves. But under the more aggressive scenario, those numbers jumped up to 75%.

The regions that benefitted the most were the Tropical Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and the South Atlantic Ocean, “including the West African coast I know so well,” Kounta said.

“But other regions tell a very different story,” she added.

Even under the more aggressive approach, the simulations suggest that nearly 25% of the world’s oceans would still face longer, hotter heat waves in the decades to come, straining fishing communities in the North Atlantic, the Northern and Tropical Pacific, and parts of the Southern Oceans.

Despite the intervention, some regions could even stop suffering occasional spikes and enter a constant state of overheating by the end of the century.

“The geography of protection is deeply unequal,” Kounta said.

These patterns illustrate the central policy challenge when considering solar geoengineering: “Who decides whether to deploy?” Kounta asked.

Countries would need to reach an agreement regarding how to manage the technique, and how to stop or make adjustments if the results aren’t as expected.

“You need geopolitical collaboration, and importantly, you also need exit ramps if this was ever to be deployed,” Zarnetske said.

Critics of the strategy say it masks the symptoms of climate change rather than curing its root cause. That’s because it does nothing to alleviate the buildup of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases.

As CO2 levels continue to rise they diffuse into the ocean, making the water more acidic and corrosive to shelled animals like mussels, clams, urchins and sea snails that form the base of the ocean food chain.

And if a large-scale solar geoengineering project were deployed and then abruptly halted, some models predict a sudden, rapid spike in global temperatures if the hidden greenhouse warming were to hit the planet all at once.

“It's not a substitute for reducing emissions; reducing emissions is still the priority and is the most effective action to mitigate climate change,” Zarnetske said.

Important questions remain regarding other potential consequences of solar geoengineering, for everything from crop yields to rainfall.

“There's very little known about the ecological impacts,” said Zarnetske, who heads MSU’s Spatial and Community Ecology Lab (SpaCE Lab).

That’s a lot of “what ifs.”

“We’re studying this topic to learn about its potential impacts,” Zarnetske said. “As scientists, it's our responsibility to provide the best available science to inform decisions.”

The study was conducted with researchers from Louisiana State University, Colorado College, Cornell University, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Duke University, and University of Dakar.

This research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (1937699, 2218777), MSU’s African Futures Research Leadership Program, and by a seed grant from MSU’s Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program.

CITATION: "Climate intervention through stratospheric aerosol injection may partially mitigate marine heatwaves," Lala Kounta, Lifeng Luo, Gouri Anil, Daniel M. Hueholt, Cheryl Shannon Harrison, Daniele Visioni, Mari Rachel Tye, Tyler Felgenhauer, Amadou T Gaye, Phoebe L Zarnetske. Environmental Research: Climate, June 10, 2026. DOI: 10.1088/2752-5295/ae7b74

---

Journal

Environmental Research Climate

DOI

10.1088/2752-5295/ae7b74 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Climate intervention through stratospheric aerosol injection may partially mitigate marine heatwaves

Article Publication Date

10-Jun-2026