“Animals” is an international and interdisciplinary scholarly open access journal concerned with publishing high quality scientific papers within the field of ‘animals’, including zoology, ethnozoology, animal science, animal ethics and animal welfare. In particular, this journal showcases scientific study describing animals’ interactions with the outside world, including humans. “Animals” is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure the addition of high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication.
This new paper describes the opportunistic collection and analysis of heart rate (HR; beat-to-beat intervals) and heart rate variability (HRV) of 10 horses being trained during Monty Roberts’ public demonstrations within the United Kingdom and is authored by Loni Loftus, Kelly Marks, Rosie Jones-McVey, Jose L. Gonzales and Dr. Veronica L. Fowler (lead author).
Key findings from the study include:
In conclusion, training of horses during public demonstrations is a mild stressor for horses. However the stress responses observed within this study were comparable or less to those previously reported in the literature for horses being trained outside of public audience events and was indicative of exercise at low-moderate intensity (physiological stress), rather than psychological stress.
The full paper will be available open access within 10 days.