In a laboratory in France, researchers studied the voice boxes of horses, adding tubes and helium to figure out the mechanics of how horses actually whinny.
The scientists learned that a whinnying horse is essentially whistling and singing at the same time, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology on Monday.
“Horses have been domesticated over 4,000 years, and somehow we still didn’t know till now how they make sounds,” said Elodie Briefer, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and one of the paper’s senior authors.
The voice box, or larynx, is a muscular tube that contains tissues that produce sound when air passes through them. In general, big animals have big voice boxes and big vocal folds (also known as vocal cords), which vibrate slowly to produce low, rumbly sounds. Horses, with their high-pitched whinnies, seemed to buck this trend.
