The question of whether or not certain head and neck positions make horses uncomfortable has received a lot of attention and research, but has anyone asked the horse? That’s what a team of German equitation scientists set out to do—sort of.

By studying horses’ body language while holding their head and neck in different positions, the researchers were able to “read” the horses’ comfort level. And horses appear to say they find positions behind the vertical to uncomfortable, said Kathrin Kienapfel, MSc, a researcher at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. She presented the research at the 2012 International Society for Equitation Science conference.

Kienapfel and her colleagues observed the behavior of 85 horses in various head-and-neck positions, with the nose in front of, in line with, or behind the vertical