Three minutes with a donkey or mini horse can improve moods

By Stephen Beech

Donkeys and miniature horses improve teenagers’ mood in just three minutes, reveals new research.

Spending just a brief period of time with the beasts of burden or miniature horses made adolescents feel calmer and less lonely, according to the findings.

American scientists found that teenagers who picked up on the equines’ body language cues showed bigger reductions in loneliness and sadness — even if those cues involved the animal walking away.

The researchers say their findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, provide a new framework for improving animal-assisted interventions for both people and animals.

Rebecca Calisi Rodríguez said: “Our work raises this beautiful possibility that making the interaction better for the animal may be part of what makes it better for us.

“This has the potential to change how we think about designing animal-assisted interventions, from hospitals and schools to therapeutic riding centers and beyond.”

She says most previous studies of animal-assisted interventions have zeroed in on the benefits to humans while treating the animals as passive participants.

Calisi Rodríguez, associate professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at University of California, Davis, said: “You can’t stand in a pasture watching a child and a donkey interact and pretend only one of them is having an experience.

“They’re watching each other, they’re responding to each other, they’re both making choices.

“That realization became the heart of my work and the heart of this paper.”

Study co-author Claire Short, who manages the Green Care Lab at UC DAvis, said: “I noticed that the mini equines in our lab would react differently depending on how I pet them, and that it made me feel good to make them feel good.

“Then when I was reading papers on animal-assisted interventions, I saw that the results weren’t very consistent.

“I wondered if that was partly because different people interacted with the animals in different ways.”

To understand how reciprocity shapes human-animal interactions, the research team analyzed interactions between 61 teenagers and a small herd of rescued miniature horses and donkeys.

Each teen spent three minutes with the herd, which consisted of two miniature horses named Olivia and Randy and two miniature donkeys named Mary and Memphis.

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Half of the teenagers were instructed to gently stroke the animals’ backs, whereas the other half were told to vigorously scratch their necks in a way that mimics how equines groom each other.

The teens were also taught to recognize two equine behavioral cues: lip-wriggling, which indicates pleasure or enjoyment, and walking away, which indicates that the animal wants some space.

Based on the teenagers’ reports, the horses and donkeys wriggled their lips during 75% of neck-scratching interactions, compared with a 48% lip-wriggling rate for petting interactions.

Conversely, the equines walked away during 89% of petting interactions compared with 42% of neck-scratching interactions.

All of the teenagers reported increased calmness and lower levels of nervousness, sadness, loneliness and excitement — regardless of whether they were assigned to pet or scratch the animals.

However, participants who observed lip-wriggling showed bigger decreases in loneliness, and — to the research team’s surprise — teens who observed equines walking away from them showed bigger reductions in sadness.

Calisi Rodríguez said: “I love that this unexpected result challenges the assumption that more animal engagement is always better.

“A meaningful interaction may not require an animal to engage with us continuously.

“Seeing an animal exercise choice - being free to approach you, stay with you, or walk away - may make the interaction feel more authentic.

“This really isn’t a story about the best way to pet a donkey, as cute as that would be. It’s a story about reciprocity.

“If animals are going to become increasingly important partners in supporting human well-being, then understanding their well-being isn’t just an ethical responsibility.

“Our work suggests it may actually be part of understanding how these interventions work.”

By revealing that human interaction style influences animal behavior, which in turn influences human emotions, she says the findings could help design better animal-assisted interventions.

Calisi Rodríguez added: “Ultimately, what we want to know is whether we can predict the conditions under which an interaction is beneficial for both species.

“I would love to see animal-assisted programs become places where people don’t just receive care from animals but learn how to give care back.”