The emotional reunion between two horses who had been separated for years has left the internet in tears in a viral TikTok video.
In the clip shared on Monday by @wranglerbum, the horse owner walks one of the horses to the enclosure where the other one is waiting impatiently. He is seen running around in hysterics as soon as he sees his pal getting closer.
“Can’t tell me that horses don’t remember each other,” reads the layover text displayed on the video.
Once they’re face to face, the two horses lean toward each other, greeting one another with gentle headbutts, as if they’d been waiting for this moment all along.
“Do you think horse brothers remember each other after being apart for years?” the poster asks in the caption.
Stock image of two hoses greeting each other. Horses’ reaction to seeing each other after years apart has the internet in tears.
Getty Images
The horses in the clip clearly did seem to feel something upon seeing each other, but what does science say about horses’ relationships and whether or not they have the ability to remember other horses?
According to a study carried out by French scientists in 2020 and published on Nature.com, horses are not only able to recognize other horses, but they can also recognize people based on their facial features, even if they haven’t seen them for a while.
In the study, the horses were presented with photographs of their keepers, and some people they had never met before, and they were given a treat regardless of which face they touched.
The results show that the horses touched familiar faces a lot more times than they touched new ones, even though the reward for them was the same, indicating that the horses did recognize their keepers.
The video quickly went viral on social media, getting viewers from across TikTok. It has so far received over 2.2 million views and 246,300 likes on the platform.
One user, Jamieleegirlbrown, commented: “I’m so sick of crying over other ppls dogs, cats, raccoons, sea otter & HORSES!!!!”
Dee said: “[I] bet if you put them on the same side they would start running around like kids together.”
Tracie ’73 wrote: “I think I needed to see that, I literally just burst into tears of happiness.”
Jen added: “I had the opportunity to get an old mare back after about 10 years. She’d never been to our new house, but she 100% remembered her buddies and absolutely remembered me. It’s like she knew she was home.”
Newsweek reached out to wranglerbum for comment via TikTok comments. We could not verify the details of the case.
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