A 70-year-old American animal communicator insists that animals do talk, and that horses are his favourite because they are straight talkers.

Bill Northern, who has been visiting New Zealand from the U.S. since 1989, even says that dogs can be too politically correct because they do not like to hurt people's feelings.

He, however, prefers not to deal with felines because he thinks that cats are fibbers and will say anything to get their way.

"I don't talk to plants because I don't have the patience," stuff.co.nz quoted him as saying.

Bill claims that all animals communicate with him in English, irrespective of which country they are in.

He also says that animals talk to him in distinctive voices.

"They wake me up a lot in the middle of the night to tell me I missed something (during an examination). It's terrible. They keep me up until I get up and write it down," he says.

Bill has revealed that he uses a plastic horse, kidneys and bladder included, to examine horses all over the world by phone and find out what ails them. He claims to have examined up to 400 horses over the past year.

Brought up in Virginia, Bill has found a second home in New Zealand, where he has built up a stable of regular clients.

He claims that he can find water, move underground streams and detect negative energy lines just by using instruments like a pendulum or divining rods.