Behavioral and Physiological Responses of Horses to Constant Traffic Noise

Johanna Henke-von der Malsburg's study, last updated in May 2026, investigates the short-term effects of recorded motorway noise on 20 horses. The dataset likely contains behavioral and physiological measurements, including foraging time, vigilance instances, spatial avoidance, and heart rate, collected during control and noise exposure phases. The data was gathered from horses housed in four stable groups across three facilities.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between noise levels and behavioral changes based on the described foraging and vigilance metrics.
• Analyzing acute stress responses in animals based on the described heart rate data.
• Evaluating spatial avoidance as a coping strategy based on the described proximity to noise source.
• Studying habituation patterns over time based on the described behavioral and physiological time-series data.

Strengths

• Includes physiological data (heart rate) from 20 horses, with specific baseline (57.60 bpm) and exposure (66.76 bpm) averages reported.
• Describes controlled experimental design with baseline, exposure, and washout phases, and specific noise levels ranging from 54 to 71 dB.
• Reports statistically significant behavioral changes, such as foraging reduction from 81% to 41% and vigilance increase from 9 to 54 instances per day.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is small (1.1 MB), which may constrain the complexity of analyses.

Provenance

Source

Johanna Henke-von der Malsburg via figshare

Collection Method

Experimental study with 20 horses exposed to recorded motorway noise; behavioral data collected via focal and scan sampling, heart rate monitored continuously.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-29 10:20:30; freshness should be verified.