06/06/2026
Animals heal. I’ve always known this deep in my bones. This post from the wonderful Selah Carefarm confirms what my gut always knew to be true!
Why is the human-animal connection (especially in traumatic grief) so important?
There is fascinating evidence that horses appear to be capable of detecting Earth's magnetic field (and other nonhumans possess this too). This unique capacity (called magnetoreception) in nonhumans may be used for situational orientation. One study of 3000 horses conducted at the University of Duisburg-Essen (across multiple countries) found that when horses felt safe and were relaxed and grazing, they tended to align their bodies roughly north-south. This magnetoreceptive effect weakened when close magnetic fields were disturbed. There are some who hypothesize that this increased awareness helps nonhumans stay safe.
While horses, and other nonhumans, also produce measurable electromagnetic fields, the benefits of interactions with humans are more plausibly explained by attachment, co-regulation, attentional focus, movement, and the horse's (and other animals') sensitivity to human emotions and actions. However, being more attuned to the earth might help them attune more to other living beings, suggesting that the world experienced by animals is far richer than the one humans perceive.
They are, in their own unique way, ordinarily mystical beings, exquisitely adapted to a sensory world that is broader than our own. These incredible beings remind us that connection does not always begin with words. Sometimes it begins with a deeper place of awareness, of being seen, feeling held in any given moment, while accompanied by another being who asks nothing of us except that we show up exactly as we are. In the aftermath of loss, that kind of witness can be transformative.
Perhaps that is why so many bereaved people here at Selah Carefarm describe feeling more understood by animals than by other humans. These animals do not rush grief. They do not diagnose grief. They do not attempt to fix grief. They simply stand with us. Their friendship offers something increasingly rare in human beings. It is a relationship free from judgment, expectation, and coercion or pressure.
Without any words at all, they see us because they are deeply aware and intensely sensitive. Maybe its a kind of 'emotional magnetoreception' that makes them so very important to us.
Thank you to everyone who so appreciates and loves what we all do here at Selah Carefarm; both the humans and the nonhumans.
-. Joanne Cacciatore
*pictured: connection, compassion, grief, and beauty in the field*
