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There is perhaps one thing that the Internet, your mom, and scientists agree on: eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good for you. But according to a new study, following any one of five diets that are rich in these foods and some others could also boost your lifespan.

By following more than 100,000 people in the U.K. for years, researchers found that people whose food choices scored high in any one of five diet categories tended to live longer than people who scored the lowest. Specifically, the team found that even after adjusting for confounding factors—such as whether people smoked, how much exercise they took, and what their education and ethnicity was—study participants who tended to eat according to any one of the five diets were 18 to 24 percent less likely to die of any cause.

For women, that roughly translated into an extra 1.5 to 2.3 years of life. And for men, it added about 1.9 to three years. The findings were published on Friday in the journal Science Advances.

The five diets that were singled out by the researchers centered on fruits and vegetables, healthy fats and whole grains, with minimal processed foods. Fiber intake, in particular, showed a strong association with longevity, while consuming lots of sugary beverages was linked to higher all-cause mortality.

Marion Nestle, a nutrition and food studies professor emerita at New York University, says the results are not a surprise but that they add to the evidence for healthy eating.

“It’s always amazing to me that it takes research of this depth, complexity, and size to conclude that eating heathy diets is good for health and longevity,” she says.

“The study also confirms that there are lots of ways of eating healthfully, and they all work,” she adds.

“The secret to a longevity diet is not about finding the one magical formula,” says Liangkai Chen, an associate professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and senior author of the study. Instead, the findings suggest there are several health patterns for a longer life, the researchers wrote.

The diets in the study were more academic measures than a set of eating rules like those used in popular diets such as the “keto” or “Paleo” diets. They included the following categories:

Alternate Healthy Eating Index: A system that encourages foods known to combat chronic disease.

Alternate Mediterranean Diet: A system that is similar to the Mediterranean diet but tweaked to incorporate foods eaten by people who live outside of the region.

Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index: A diet-scoring mechanism that rewards plant-based eating and encourages people to consume fewer animal products.

Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension: An eating plan that focuses on heart-healthy foods that may help lower blood pressure.

Diabetes Risk Reduction Diet: A system that cuts back on high-glycemic foods—or foods known to rapidly raise blood sugar levels.

The researchers also considered the participants’ genetic predisposition to longevity. Interestingly, participants with higher odds of living longer tended to see less of a benefit from a healthy diet than people who were dealt a worse hand of genetic cards, notes Sofiya Milman, director of Human Longevity Studies at the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

She notes that following a healthy diet is generally a good idea regardless, however.

“This is a well-conducted association study,” says Sai Das, a professor of nutrition science at Tufts University, who was also not involved in the research. The study wasn’t a controlled experiment in which participants strictly adhered to the five diets, so it isn’t possible to say that their diets caused them to live longer. But the large sample size does add strength to the findings, she says.

“We’ve always known that diet is an important determinant of chronic disease,” Das says, adding that the diet categories in the study were “very well grounded in the science.”

There are several other limitations to the work. The study authors noted in the paper that they were not able to rule out potential confounding factors such as people’s access to health care or general “health consciousness.” And because the study was done in the U.K., it’s unclear if the findings would apply to people living in other countries.

Das recommends not sweating the specifics about how much diet adds to your lifespan. “It’s not about betting on 1.5 versus 1.7” years, she says. Instead, by adding in more healthy foods to your diet, “the point is that you are going to live longer.”

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As Mark Zuckerberg was ushered into the Los Angeles Superior Court early on Wednesday morning, one accessory in his entourage stood out: Meta Ray-Ban glasses.

Zuckerberg, wearing a navy blue suit and tie, arrived without any glasses. Flanking either side of him as he walked up to the courthouse were longtime executive assistant Andrea Besmehn and an unidentified man donning Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses.

Meta declined to comment about the accessory choice.

AI-powered smart glasses weren’t just a hot accessory in the California sun. They were a hot topic inside the courtroom.

The judge presiding over the trial announced that anyone using glasses to record inside the courtroom would be “held in contempt of the court,” according to CNBC.

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Mark Zuckerberg and his entourage arrive Los Angeles Superior Court.  Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images; Business Insider

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The rapid buildup of U.S. forces in the Middle East has progressed to the point that President Trump has the option to take military action against Iran as soon as this weekend, administration and Pentagon officials said, leaving the White House with high-stakes choices about pursuing diplomacy or war.

Mr. Trump has given no indication that he has made a decision about how to proceed. But the drive to assemble a military force capable of striking Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, and accompanying launch sites has continued this week despite indirect talks between the two nations on Tuesday, with Iran seeking two weeks to come back with fleshed-out proposals for a diplomatic resolution.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly demanded that Iran give up its nuclear program, including agreeing not to enrich any more uranium. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose country would potentially take part in an attack, has been pushing for action to weaken Iran’s ability to launch missiles at Israel.

Israeli forces, which have been on heightened alert for weeks, have been making more preparations for a possible war, and a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet was moved to Sunday from Thursday, according to two Israeli defense officials.

Many administration officials have expressed skepticism about the prospects of reaching a diplomatic deal with Tehran. The indirect talks on Tuesday in Geneva ended with what Iran’s foreign minister said was agreement on a “set of guiding principles.” U.S. officials said the two sides made progress but added that big gaps remain.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened that Iran must meet his terms or face severe consequences. But another attack, eight months after a 12-day war in which Israel and the United States assaulted military and nuclear sites across Iran, would potentially carry substantial risks, including that Iran would respond with a ferocious barrage of missile strikes on Israel and on U.S. forces in the region.

For a president who ran for office promising to keep the United States out of wars, Mr. Trump is now considering what would be at least the seventh American military attack in another country in the past year, and his second on Iran. Last June, after striking three Iranian nuclear sites, Mr. Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated.” But now he is considering sending U.S. military back to continue the job.

But unlike the U.S.-Israeli assault last June, Mr. Trump’s objectives now are less clear.

The U.S. military buildup includes dozens of refueling tankers, rushed to the region by United States Central Command, more than 50 additional fighter jets, and two aircraft carrier strike groups, complete with their accompanying destroyers, cruisers, and submarines, U.S. officials said.

The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, fresh from the Caribbean, where it was part of the naval fleet pressuring the Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro, was approaching Gibraltar on Wednesday as it made its way to join the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in the region.

“The president has always been very clear, though, with respect to Iran or any country around the world, diplomacy is always his first option, and Iran would be very wise to make a deal with President Trump and with this administration,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday.

“He’s always thinking about what’s in the best interest of the United States of America, of our military, of the American people, and that’s how he makes decisions with respect to military action,” she added.

In Israel, the two defense officials said that significant preparations were underway for the possibility of a joint strike with the United States, even though no decision has been made about whether to carry out such an attack. They said the planning envisions delivering a severe blow over a number of days with the goal of forcing Iran into concessions at the negotiating table that it has so far been unwilling to make.

The U.S. buildup suggests an array of possible Iranian targets, including short and medium-range missiles, missile storage depots, nuclear sites, and other military targets, such as headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Co

The ultimate decision on scope of targets is largely up to Mr. Trump, U.S. officials said.

Administration and military officials said the United States has bolstered its defensive assets since the president initially threatened to strike Iran in January.

At the time, Mr. Trump had requested options to respond to the Iranian government’s bloody crackdown on protests. But more recently, he has threatened to attack if Iran failed to reach a deal to limit its nuclear program and said that a “massive Armada” was heading toward the country.

Despite Mr. Trump’s tough stance, the Pentagon last month was in a poor position to back him up. The 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops scattered around the Middle East, including at eight permanent bases, were low on air defenses to protect them from expected retaliation.

The additional fighter jets necessary to conduct the kind of operation Mr. Trump spoke of were idling at American bases in Europe, and as far away as the United States. Much of the military hardware in the Middle East, accumulated over 20 years of war had since departed the region.

But over the past month, the U.S. military has moved the necessary air defenses — including Patriot missile defense and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems — into the region. Both systems can intercept Iranian ballistic missiles.

One military official said the U.S. military could now defend its troops, allies, and assets from any Iranian retaliation for American strikes on its nuclear and military targets, at least for a short campaign. But, the official said, the question remained as to whether the American military is ready to sustain a longer and wider war.

The American buildup also includes dozens of additional F-35, F-22, and F-16 fighter jets that have been flowing from the United States to Europe and onward to the Middle East in recent days, according to flight tracking data and U.S. officials.

Dozens of refueling planes, vital for a prolonged air campaign, have also been moved forward, those officials say.

The second aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford, and its three destroyer escorts could be in the Mediterranean by the weekend or early next week, military officials said. The Ford is likely to be deployed initially near the coast of Israel to defend Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities and towns, officials said.

A military official said on Wednesday that the carriers have their own defense systems, including accompanying destroyers that can shoot down missiles aimed at them. It is difficult to hit an aircraft carrier with a ballistic missile, he said, if the carrier is moving rapidly.

American B-2 bombers, which were used last year when Mr. Trump struck Iran, and other U.S.-based long-range bombers are on a higher alert status, officials said.

Senior national security officials have told the president that any operation that aims to change the Iranian leadership is not guaranteed to be a success, the officials said.

Mr. Trump’s decision to put off his threatened Iran strikes last month — which two administration officials said came about after military officials cautioned him that the Pentagon wasn’t ready — may have allowed Iran to better prepare for an attack.

“Diplomacy may give the U.S. more time to get its military ready, but it also gives Iran more time to plan its retaliation,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University. “Ultimately,” he added, “the president has to weigh the cost of attacking Iran. Ironically, his approach has made those costs more likely.”

More on Iran

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• Outrage Over Protester’s Death: Rights groups are investigating the death of Ali Rahbar in January as a potential extrajudicial killing. His family believes he was executed, but Iran denies executions have taken place.

• Rallying for Regime Change: People protesting the Iranian government gathered near the security conference in Munich, as well as in other cities.

• Aircraft Carrier to Middle East: The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford and its escort ships are joining the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group as part of President Trump’s resurgent pressure campaign against Iran’s leaders.

• Iran Commemorates Revolution: The authoritarian clerical regime in Tehran came to power in 1979. Today, it presides over a country that is deeply polarized and under threat of an American attack.

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The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, seen here in the North Sea last year, is making its way toward the Middle East. Credit…Jonathan Klein/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Space’s microgravity appears to shift the location of the brains of astronauts, without a clear effect on their health

Going to space is harsh on the human body, and as a new study from our research team finds, the brain shifts upward and backward and deforms inside the skull after spaceflight.

The extent of these changes was greater for those who spent longer in space. As NASA plans longer space missions, and space travel expands beyond professional astronauts, these findings will become more relevant.

Why it matters

On Earth, gravity constantly pulls fluids in your body and your brain toward the center of the Earth. In space, that force disappears. Body fluids shift toward the head, which gives astronauts a puffy face. Under normal gravity, the brain, cerebrospinal fluid, and surrounding tissues reach a stable balance. In microgravity, that balance changes.

Without gravity pulling downward, the brain floats in the skull and experiences various forces from the surrounding soft tissues and the skull itself. Earlier studies showed that the brain appears higher in the skull after spaceflight. But most of those studies focused on average or whole-brain measures, which can hide important effects within different areas of the brain.

Our goal was to look more closely.

How we do our work

We analyzed brain MRI scans from 26 astronauts who spent different lengths of time in space, from a few weeks to over a year. To focus on the brain’s movement, we aligned each person’s skull across scans taken before and after spaceflight.

That comparison allowed us to measure how the brain shifted relative to the skull itself. Instead of treating the brain as a single object, we divided it into more than 100 regions and tracked how each one had shifted. This approach enabled us to see patterns that were missed when looking at the whole brain, on average.

We found that the brain consistently moved upward and backward when comparing postflight to preflight. The longer someone stayed in space, the larger the shift. One of the more striking findings came from examining individual brain regions.

In astronauts who spent about a year aboard the International Space Station, some areas near the top of the brain moved upward by more than 2 millimeters, while the rest of the brain barely moved. That distance may sound small, but inside the tightly packed space of the skull, it is meaningful.

Areas involved in movement and sensation showed the largest shifts. Structures on the two sides of the brain moved toward the midline, which means they moved in the opposite direction for each brain hemisphere. These opposing patterns cancel each other out in whole-brain averages, which explains why earlier studies missed them.

Most of the shifts and deformations gradually returned to normal by six months after return to Earth. The backward shift showed less recovery, likely because gravity pulls downward rather than forward, so some effects of spaceflight on brain position may last longer than others.

What’s next

NASA’s Artemis program will mark a new era of space exploration. Understanding how the brain responds will help scientists assess long-term risks and develop countermeasures.

Our findings don’t mean that people should not travel to space. While we found that larger location shifts of a sensory-processing brain region correlated with postflight balance changes, the crew members did not experience overt symptoms – such as headaches or brain fog – related to brain position shifts.

Our findings do not reveal immediate health risks. Knowing how the brain moves in spaceflight and subsequently recovers allows researchers to understand the effects of microgravity on human physiology. It can help space agencies to design safer missions.

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“I’ve always really enjoyed the product marketing aspect of my work,” she says. “I really like talking to end-users about ‘Hey, this is how this thing helps you’ and how to articulate that.” However, she wasn’t able to work on it as much as she would have liked.

At the same time, Flax was in her 20s, living in London, and had stopped drinking alcohol. She began posting her journey in social media, talking about bars and places that were non-alcohol related.

Flax recalls, “The more and more I did that, I started having brands reaching out to me saying, Hey, we’d love to partner with you. We have this event coming up—would you come and speak about what it’s like living in London in your 20s and not drinking?”

By weekends and nights, Flax was organizing events and creating a lot of user-generated content for brands. She was able to exercise her creative muscle and passion for marketing, all while getting paid for it. Eventually, she left her tech job to pursue what is now commonly known as a portfolio career, where individuals make a living from multiple projects and streams of income. Today, she continues to do events and marketing for non-alcoholic beverage brands, alongside her career-coaching business, Pivot School.

Making money through multiple means is not a new thing. But in a landscape where side-hustles, gig work, and freelance contracts have become the norm and at times, necessary, Flax’s career trajectory is becoming more and more common.

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[Source photos: Adobe Stock Stock]

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Over the past year, the Trump administration has engaged in unconventional diplomacy, gunboat diplomacy and, in the most sensitive crises, diplomacy without diplomats.

On Tuesday, the administration tried all three tactics at once. In Geneva, President Trump’s most trusted envoys — his real estate friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner — engaged the Iranians in the morning, then the Russians and the Ukrainians in the afternoon.

It was a stark example of Mr. Trump’s conviction that the State Department and the National Security Council, the two institutions that have coordinated negotiations over global crises for nearly 80 years, are best left on the sidelines. And so, the Witkoff-Kushner duo has been at the center of recent efforts to end a nuclear crisis in Iran that has stretched over two decades, and a war in Ukraine that is days away from entering its fifth year.

By all accounts, Mr. Trump has confidence in their approach, reinforced by their negotiations last year to win a cease-fire in Gaza and the return of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas. And countries like Russia, Turkey, and the Gulf Arab states have welcomed the arrival of the two men, with their transactional approach born of New York property negotiations, especially given the greater flexibility offered by Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner.

They talk the language of deal makers, and do not spend much time lecturing on human rights or democracy building. And not infrequently, their interlocutors on diplomatic issues are closely linked to the business deals that the Trump and Witkoff families are negotiating.

“Some countries really welcome this informal structure at the Trump White House,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. But, she added, “I have not seen anyone hugely impressed with the diplomatic skills of the current team.”One person close to the Kremlin said that Russian officials appreciated Mr. Witkoff’s warmth and enthusiasm for the negotiations, even as they sometimes doubted his reliability as a messenger. But he was clearly new to the issues dividing Washington and Moscow, and at first brought no other American experts into his negotiations.

More recently, the Russians have been happy to have Mr. Kushner’s involvement, the person said, because of his more organized and structured approach.

Some Russians have taken to calling the duo “Witkoff and Zyatkoff,” because “zyat” is Russian for son-in-law. The Iranians also have a nickname for Mr. Kushner, using the Persian word for son-in-law: Damad Trump, again defining Mr. Kushner’s influence by virtue of his marriage to the president’s daughter, Ivanka.

Iranian media have dedicated coverage and columns to Mr. Kushner’s participation. Ahmad Zeidabadi, a prominent political analyst and columnist, wrote in Asr Iran newspaper that Mr. Kushner’s participation in talks was something “positive.”

“He represents the pragmatic and softer side of Trump,” he said.

Mr. Kushner, in an interview last October, said that his and Mr. Witkoff’s approach to diplomacy relied on being “deal guys” who “have to understand people.” Mr. Witkoff was known in real estate circles for major transactions, including buying the Woolworth Building, once New York’s tallest skyscraper, in 1998. Mr. Kushner followed his father, the real estate developer Charles Kushner, into the business and later expanded into private equity.

Mr. Kushner holds no official government title, and gets no government salary, while Mr. Witkoff is a U.S. “special envoy.”

In Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Kushner spearheaded the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries — though his hopes of bringing Saudi Arabia aboard have not yet come to fruition. Last year, his efforts negotiating the cease-fire in Gaza drew praise even from some Democrats, for pushing closer to ending a war that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could not.

Supporters of the administration see Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner as ideal negotiators in part because their personal wealth, they say, makes them more resistant to corrupting influences. But both men face questions over apparent conflicts of interest.

Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach is the chief executive of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company. An investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates purchased nearly half the company last year for $500 million.

Mr. Kushner raised several billion dollars before Mr. Trump’s second term from overseas investors, including government wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, countries he had worked with when he served as a senior White House adviser during Mr. Trump’s first term.

Yet as they engage with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, the Russians and the Iranians share a strategy: delay.

At the Munich Security Conference last weekend, several participants on the edges of the negotiations over Ukraine, which Russia invaded four years ago next Tuesday, said repeatedly that Russia had every reason to engage in the negotiations and little compelling reason to sign an agreement.

President Vladimir V. Putin believes he is winning, military and intelligence officials from several Western countries said in recent days. And he is convinced that even if it takes 18 months to two years to complete his hold on the Donbas region, each day of fighting and each night of Russian missiles and drones raining down on energy infrastructure and apartment buildings secure him more leverage.

For the Iranians, delay is the regime’s last strategy for survival. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Slovakia and Hungary early this week but is not participating in either of the Geneva negotiations, made the case for pessimism.

“It’s going to be hard,” he told reporters. “It’s been very difficult for anyone to do real deals with Iran, because we’re dealing with radical Shia clerics who are making theological decisions, not geopolitical ones.”

But the commonalities end there. In the Iranian case, Mr. Trump is backing up his diplomacy with a threat of fairly imminent military action if there is no progress — maybe in days, perhaps in weeks. In the Russia-Ukraine case, he has slowed down the military pressure, halting the direct provision of arms to Ukraine that took place — with strong congressional support — in the Biden years.

The president has also cracked down on the Russian “shadow fleet” selling oil, exacerbating Mr. Putin’s deepening economic troubles, even while the Trump administration floats ideas about U.S. investment in Russia if a deal, almost any deal, can be announced.

Given those dynamics, some analysts predicted that Mr. Putin could still make a deal to stop the fighting in Ukraine, especially if he secured a far-reaching rapprochement with the United States and a withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the rest of the Donbas.

The negotiations with Iran are overshadowed by the size of the U.S. naval force — a “great armada” in Mr. Trump’s telling — that is being assembled in the Red Sea, clearly positioned to strike if the president so decides. But the Iranians are hardly de-escalating. They have temporarily closed the Strait of Hormuz because of Iranian live fire exercises, a not-so-gentle reminder of the country’s ability to throw energy markets into chaos.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, did not contribute much to the spirit of finding a nonmilitary solution when he was asked about the presence of one U.S. carrier group and the arrival in a week or so of a second — a huge massing of firepower.

“An aircraft carrier is a dangerous machine, but even more dangerous than that is the weapon capable of sending it to the bottom of the sea,” he said as he commemorated the 1978 uprising that toppled the pro-American Shah of Iran. (The Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, was in Munich over the weekend, at one of many large protests around the world that echoed his calls for the Iranian government’s overthrow.)

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has episodically complained that he is being “dangled” by Mr. Putin, and over the past year has at various points blamed the Ukrainians, then the Russians, then the Ukrainians again for being too inflexible in the talks.

He is now back to blaming Ukraine and its leader, suggesting they failed to recognize that Russia is the larger, and nuclear-armed, nation.

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Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Israel last October. Credit…Nathan Howard for The New York Times

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The new moon on February 17 marks the start of the Lunar New Year, which is celebrated in many Southeast and East Asian countries. According to the Chinese zodiac, it’s also the start of the Year of the Horse, offering a perfect excuse to whinny about the science of horses and their animal relatives.

Domestic horses are the most famous members of the genus Equus, which also includes a wild relative called the Przewalski’s horse, in addition to three species of asses and three species of zebras. All trace their roots to North America, which was home to the very oldest known horse relatives up to 55 million years ago. But horses went extinct on the continent at the end of the last ice age; modern equids all hail from Africa and Eurasia, where domestication also occurred.

That development changed history for humans and horses alike. Horses carried many civilizations to their heights, only to find themselves something of an anachronism in modern society. Tellingly, scientific investigation into horse behavior is mere decades old, says Sue McDonnell, an equine behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

Scientific American spoke with McDonnell and Sarah King, a behavioral ecologist at Colorado State University, who specializes in horses and other equids, to highlight some of the most interesting science around these year’s star animals.

Horses are highly social

Domestic horses have three basic needs: freedom, forage, and friendships with other horses. That’s because the social nature of these animals runs very deep.

Turn horses loose, and something remarkable happens, McDonnell says. “They immediately reassemble in the social structure that they had when we first domesticated them,” she says. In that structure, each herd includes several so-called harems consisting of one stallion and a handful of mares and their offspring, plus a “bachelor band” of younger related males that faces down threats to the herd.

Studies have shown that the stallions with the most foals are also the ones with friendly relationships with their mares, not those who rely on aggression and violence. “Horse society really is held together by affiliative bonds,” King says.

Don’t look down on hooves

For domestic horse owners, hooves are a headache—they’re prone to splintering and require regular trimming and shoeing. But those problems only arise because of the hard surfaces domestic horses must walk on. Horses in the wild “have zero problems,” McDonnell says.

And the hooves of these horses go through seasonal changes in response to local climate and surfaces, she notes. In spring and fall horses tend to develop longer hooves, which act “like little skis” to help animals navigate softer ground. In winter and summer, when the ground is harder, and animals don’t move as much, hooves naturally become shorter.

The mixed landscape of wild equid conservation

Of the wild equid species, King is most worried about the critically endangered African wild asses (Equus africanus), which live around the horn of Africa. “They’re in a very inhospitable environment—there’s real deserts there—and of course, there’s a lot of political issues in that part of the world as well,” she says. The animals are also hunt

ed for food and medicine and must compete with livestock for foraged food.

In contrast, their distant cousins, the Przewalski’s horses of Central Asia, are rebounding after becoming extinct in the wild as of the 1960s. After a careful program of breeding in zoos, scientists began reintroducing the horses to the wild in the 1980s. And now, King notes, some populations are fully self-sustaining. “They are a real conservation success story,” she says.

READ MORE: The Last Wild Horses Are Finally Returning to Their Natural Habitat

Horses really can smell human fear

This one won’t surprise people who have dealt extensively with horses, but research published last month experimentally proves that horses can smell human fear. “Our emotions are central when interacting with horses,” said study author Plotine Jardat, a horse behavior and welfare researcher at France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, to Scientific American at the time.

Better research about exactly how human emotions affect horse responses is vital for animal welfare, McDonnell says. For example, defensive behavior in a horse can easily be misinterpreted as aggression, she notes, and that can make people fearful—which, the new research shows, can further put the horse on edge, resulting in a tricky feedback loop.

READ MORE: Horses Can Smell Your Fear, Bizarre Sweat Study Finds

AI may help owners take care of their horses

Horses have spent millennia evolving to avoid predators, and this has left them loath to show signs of pain or weakness around humans, McDonnell says. In recent years, veterinarians have begun trying to get around this by poring through video footage to look for cues that a horse is ailing. Once a horse is alone, she says, “you can detect a lot of subtle behaviors indicating discomfort.”

But it’s not a quick technique. That’s why McDonnell is working with artificial intelligence specialists to train a system that can skim through horse footage to hunt for the small cues veterinarians pick up on, but much faster than any human could.

Horses communicate more creatively than you might think

If cats meow and ducks quack, horses stereotypically neigh—but they also whinny and nicker and huff and squeal, and those noises have been, for the most part, overlooked. “We’re beginning to understand that there’s probably a lot more communication going on in those noises,” King says. “Understanding the context and what those noises mean, I think, is really interesting.”

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