Effect of transportation and social isolation on facial expressions of healthy horses

Abstract

Horses have the ability to generate a remarkable repertoire of facial expressions, some of which have been linked to the affective component of pain. This study describes the facial expressions in healthy horses free of pain before and during transportation and social isolation, which are putatively stressful but ordinary management procedures. Transportation was performed in 28 horses by subjecting them to short-term road transport in a horse trailer. A subgroup (n = 10) of these horses was also subjected to short-term social isolation. During all procedures, a body-mounted, remote-controlled heart rate monitor provided continuous heart rate measurements. The horses' heads were video-recorded during the interventions. An exhaustive dataset was generated from the selected video clips of all possible facial action units and action descriptors, time of emergency, duration, and frequency according to the Equine Facial Action Coding System (EquiFACS). Heart rate increased during both interventions (p

Published in

PLoS ONE
2021, volume: 16, number: 6, article number: e0241532
Publisher: PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

SLU Authors

• Lundblad, Johan

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Rhodin, Marie

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Haubro Andersen, Pia

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Medical Bioscience

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241532

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113188