Gender-neutral horses unconcerned by their rider’s sex – study
from Horsetalk.co.nz | 8 August 2014 7:44 pm |
http://horsetalk.co.nz/2014/08/08/gender-neutral-horses-unconcerned-rider-sex-study/

  • Do women and men ride differently? If so, horses can’t seem to tell the difference. Horses, it would seem, are unconcerned whether their rider is a male or a female. Scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna analysed how horses are affected by the sex of their riders. Various stress parameters were determined in horses and their riders when they covered an obstacle course. The level of stress on a horse appeared to be unaffected by whether a man or a woman was in the saddle.

  • Furthermore, the stress responses of male and female riders were found to be essentially the same. Christine Aurich is keen to reassure potential competitors that horses are truly gender-neutral. As she puts it: “Assuming that there is no difference in riding ability, from the horse’s point of view, it does not seem to matter whether the human partner is male or female. “Our results make it extremely unlikely that horses have a preference for riders of one sex over the other. And when male and female riders compete against one another in equestrian sports, all of them have similar chances of doing well.”

  • The article “Physiological stress responses and horse rider interactions in horses ridden by male and female riders”, by Natascha Ille, Christine Aurich, Regina Erber, M. Wulff, Rupert Palme, Jörg Aurich and Marie von Lewinski was published in the Journal of Comparative Exercise Physiology. DOI 10.3920/CEP143001