🐴✨ UNDERSTANDING DEEPER HORSE BEHAVIOUR: THE AMAZING FLEHMEN RESPONSE ✨🐴
THE FLEMHEN RESPONSE.
You know that ridiculous face horses make when they stick their head in the air, curl their top lip back and show you half their teeth? 😁🦷 Proudly being demonstrated here by Otto’s toothy grin.
That’s the flehmen response, pronounced FLEM-hen, and it’s one of those words we’ve probably all said while wondering if we’ve actually got it right❓The word originally comes from German and describes that characteristic curling of the upper lip.
But underneath that rather comical face, something quite extraordinary is happening. 🤩
👃🔬 SO WHAT ARE THEY ACTUALLY DOING?
Horses have an incredible sense of smell, but they also have another specialised layer to their sensory system involving a specialist organ called the vomeronasal organ (pronounced VOH-mer-oh-NAY-zul), or VNO.
The VNO is a pair of small sensory organs sitting between the nasal cavity and the roof of the mouth, containing receptors that allow the horse to investigate chemical information in much greater detail. 🧪
And that fabulous curled lip is part of how they do it.
When your horse raises their head, curls their upper lip and partially closes their nostrils, it changes the airflow and pressure inside the nose, helping funnel those interesting chemical compounds towards the VNO. 👃💨
So that ridiculous face is actually part of an incredibly sophisticated chemical detection system. 🤯
📖🧪 THEY DON’T JUST SMELL, THEY READ INFORMATION
Imagine every time your horse smells something, that smell is giving them information, very much like a paragraph in a book gives us information.
Except their paragraph isn’t made up of words, it’s made up of natural chemicals.
Who was here? Was it a horse they know? Male or female? Is a mare reproductively receptive? What have they been eating? Are they frightened, excited or aroused? Has something changed in their body chemistry? 🐴🔍
Pheromones and chemical signatures give horses an extraordinary amount of information about the animals around them and help shape their incredibly complex social lives. 🐴❤️🐴
We walk into a paddock and smell horses, they smell information, and the flehmen allows them to take a closer look at what’s written there. 👃📖
🍏🥕 SO WHY DOES YOUR HORSE DO IT?
It certainly isn’t just stallions investigating mares. Mares, geldings and foals all perform the flehmen response too, and you might see it after your horse investigates urine or droppings, encounters an unfamiliar smell or even tries a new treat.
You hand them something new, they sniff it, up comes the head, back goes the lip and they look as though you’ve just fed them something truly revolting. 😳🐴
Charming. 😂
But they’re actually investigating whatever has just caught their attention. 🔍
👩🐴 AND THEY CAN SMELL US TOO
Here’s another fabulous bit. You smell different to your horse depending on how you’re feeling. 🤯
Researchers have shown that horses can distinguish between human body odours produced during emotions such as fear and happiness, and respond differently to them.
So your horse isn’t only watching your face, listening to your voice and reading your body language, they can smell information about you too. 👃❤️
Perhaps horses really can smell fear after all! 😳
🌎🐴HOW AMAZING IS THAT
We can stand beside our horse believing we are both experiencing exactly the same environment, but we aren’t.
They are experiencing an entire layer of chemical information that we are largely oblivious to, and every now and again, that ridiculous curled lip gives us a little glimpse into it. ✨
⚠️🐴 BUT CONTEXT MATTERS
There is another really important reason for understanding the flehmen response, because horses can also show this behaviour, or a very similar curled lip expression, when they are experiencing pain or physical discomfort.
We can see it during episodes of colic, gastric ulcers and other digestive discomfort, and a similar response can sometimes be seen when a horse is experiencing choke or other illness.
This is why we always need to look at flehmen in context. 👀
If Otto has just been investigating an interesting smell and throws his head into the air with his magnificent toothy grin, I’m going to enjoy watching him. 😁🐴
But if a horse suddenly starts displaying the same behaviour and there is no obvious interesting smell to investigate, particularly if they are also off their food, pawing, flank watching, stretching, rolling, repeatedly swallowing or generally behaving differently from normal, that curled lip becomes another piece of information we need to pay attention to, as it can be a beneficial early warning system telling us to watch closer and help detect problems earlier. ⚠️
It’s just like rolling. A horse having a glorious roll is completely normal, but rolling alongside other signs of abdominal pain means something very different.
Behaviour is information, and context tells us what that information means. 🔎🐴
❤️✨ HORSES ARE JUST SO UTTERLY AMAZING
So next time your horse sticks their head in the air and curls that top lip, have a smile, but also appreciate what you’re watching. 😁
Behind that funny face is an animal investigating a chemical world that surrounds us every day and that we barely even notice exists. 🧪🌎
That's why, after more than 20 years of studying horses, they still absolutely fascinate me. ❤️🐴
If you found this article interesting and would like to learn more about understanding your horse, hop over to our website and have a look through our blog. 📖🐴❤️
