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Animals
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Featured Papers in the 'Human–Animal Interactions, Animal Behaviour and Emotion'...
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Featured Papers in the 'Human–Animal Interactions, Animal Behaviour and Emotion' Section

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Human-Animal Interactions, Animal Behaviour and Emotion".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2026 | Viewed by 1069

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Marcello Siniscalchi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Animal Physiology and Behavior Unit, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, 70121 Bari, Italy
Interests: animal physiology; behavioral neuroscience; brain lateralization; emotion; animal communication; human–animal relationship
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief of the“Human–Animal Interactions, Animal Behaviour and Emotion” section, I am very glad to announce the Special Issue, "Featured Papers in the 'Human–Animal Interactions, Animal Behaviour and Emotion' Section". This Special Issue will bring together a selection of outstanding articles that present recent advances and emerging perspectives in this interdisciplinary and evolving field.

Contributions to this issue will cover a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from animal behavior to the complexity of cognitive processes and emotional functioning in the animal brain that underlie their deeply rooted relationships with humans.

We welcome the submission of manuscripts, reviews and original research articles from leading researchers in this field.

Researchers are welcome to send short proposals for submissions of “Featured Papers” for evaluation.

I look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Prof. Dr. Marcello Siniscalchi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • behavior
  • emotion
  • human–animal relationship
  • animal communication
  • animal cognition

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 2933 KB  
Article
Chronic State and Relationship to Humans Influence How Horses Decode Emotions in Human Voices: A Brain and Behavior Study
by Serenella d’Ingeo, Marcello Siniscalchi, Angelo Quaranta, Hugo Cousillas and Martine Hausberger
Animals 2025, 15(21), 3217; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani15213217 - 5 Nov 2025
Viewed by 745
Abstract
Current research on acoustic encoding of emotional content suggests that there are universal cues, allowing for decoding within and across taxa. This is particularly important for human–animal relationships, wherein domestic animals are supposed to be particularly efficient in decoding human emotions. Here we [...] Read more.
Current research on acoustic encoding of emotional content suggests that there are universal cues, allowing for decoding within and across taxa. This is particularly important for human–animal relationships, wherein domestic animals are supposed to be particularly efficient in decoding human emotions. Here we investigated whether the decoding of the emotional content in human voices shared universal acoustic properties, or whether it could be influenced by experience. Emotional human voices were presented to two populations of horses, in which behavioral, cardiac, and brain responses were measured. The two populations differed in their living and working conditions: one population lived in naturalistic conditions (stable social groups in pastures) and were ridden occasionally for outdoor trail riding with one to a few different riders, while the other was kept in more restricted conditions (individual stalls) and participated in riding lessons involving many different riders. Assessment of the horses’ welfare state (animal-based measures) and their relationships with humans, performed independently of the playback experiments, revealed that the populations differed in both aspects. Whereas both populations appeared to react to the angry human voice, the population with the best welfare state and relationship with humans showed little differentiation between the different emotional voices and exhibited low behavioral reactions. On the contrary, the other population showed high behavioral and cardiac reactions to all negative voices. Brain responses also differed, with the first population showing higher responses (increased gamma, i.e., excitation) for the happy voice and the second for fear and anger (increased theta, i.e., alarm). Thus, animals’ affective state and past experiences appear very influential for their perception of (cross-taxa) acoustic emotional cues. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Featured Papers in the 'Human–Animal Interactions, Animal Behaviour and Emotion' Section)
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