![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Feb-24-horses-neigh-990x495.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A horse whinnies in a barn at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds in Oklahoma City, during a cutting horse competition, Monday, June 20, 2011. (AP Photo\/Sue Orgrocki<\/p>\n
Horses whinny to find new friends, greet old ones and celebrate happy moments like feeding time.<\/p>\n
How exactly horses produce that distinctive sound \u2014 also called a neigh \u2014 has long eluded scientists.<\/p>\n
The whinny is an unusual combination of both high and low pitched sounds, like a cross between a grunt and a squeal \u2014 that come out at the same time.<\/p>\n
The low-pitched part wasn’t much of a mystery. It comes from air passing over bands of tissue in the voice box that make noise when they vibrate. It’s a technique similar to\u00a0how humans speak and sing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Barrie’s News Delivered To Your Inbox<\/p>\n Stay up to date with what Barrie’s talking about. Get the latest local news delivered right to your inbox every day. Never miss out on what’s going on …<\/p>\n \t\tConsent Info<\/a><\/p>\n By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Central Ontario Broadcasting, 431 Huronia Rd, Barrie, Ontario, CA, https:\/\/www.cobroadcasting.com. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe\u00ae link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact<\/a><\/p>\n But the high-pitched piece is more puzzling. With some exceptions, larger animals have larger vocal systems and typically make lower sounds. So how do horses do it?<\/p>\n According to a new study, they whistle.<\/p>\n Researchers slid a small camera through horses’ noses to film what happened inside while they whinnied and made another common horse sound, the softer, subtler nicker. They also conducted detailed scans and blew air through the isolated voice boxes of dead horses.<\/p>\n The whinny’s mysterious high-pitched tones, they discovered, are a kind of whistling that starts in the horse’s voice box. Air vibrates the tissues in the voice box while an area just above contracts, leaving a small opening for the whistle to escape.<\/p>\n That’s different from human whistling, which we do with our mouths.<\/p>\n \u201cI’d never imagined that there was a whistling component. It’s really interesting, and I can hear that now,\u201d said Jenifer Nadeau, who studies horses at the University of Connecticut. Nadeau was not involved with the study, which was published Monday in the journal Current Biology.<\/p>\n A few small rodents like rats and mice whistle like this, but horses are the first known large mammal to have a knack for it. They’re also the only animals known to be able to whistle through their voice boxes while they sing.<\/p>\n \u201cKnowing that a \u2018whinny\u2019 is not just a \u2018whinny\u2019 but that it is actually composed of two different fundamental frequencies that are created by two different mechanisms is exciting,\u201d said Alisa Herbst with Rutgers University’s Equine Science Center, of the study in an email.<\/p>\n