Their tendency to eat just about anything they can find may have given them a sketchy reputation.
But goats may be smarter than we think, a new study suggests.
Researchers have discovered that domesticated animals can tell whether people are happy or sad just by listening to our tone of voice.
Goats have developed a sensitivity to our vocal signals during their long association with humans, going back 10,000 years, the scientists think.
In addition to audio signals, goats also understand physical gestures and can even tell the difference between a smile and a frown.
Goats can tell the difference between a happy-sounding human voice and an angry-sounding voice, the new research shows
“This study provides the first evidence that goats can distinguish between cues expressed in the human voice, namely emotional valence,” said author Professor Alan McElligott from the City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK).
‘These findings add to the limited available literature showing that livestock, like companion animals, are sensitive to human emotional cues.’
It is already known that goats can recognize emotional differences in the sounds of other goats, so the experts wanted to investigate whether this ability also extended to human speech.
Their experiments took place at Buttercups Sanctuary For Goats, an animal sanctuary in Boughton Monchelsea, Kent.
Researchers used 27 goats, both male and female, all of which were accustomed to human voices and human interaction.
Through a loudspeaker in their enclosure, the goats were played with human voices that said the words “Hey, look here” several times, in a cheerful or angry manner.
Crucially, the goats were allowed to get used to the sound of a happy voice for a while before the voice switched to angry, or vice versa.
Experimental setup: Through a loudspeaker in their enclosure, the goats heard a series of human voices saying the words “Hey, look here” multiple times, either in a positive (happy) manner or in a negative (angry) manner
Crucially, the goats were allowed to get used to the sound of a happy voice for a while (‘habituation’) before the recording switched to angry (‘withdrawal’) – or vice versa
As suspected, most goats (18) looked at the speaker when the voice switched.
Also, most of these goats looked longer at the speaker when the tone of the voice suddenly changed (compared to before the voice changed).
Study author Dr Marianne Mason from the University of Roehampton told MailOnline: ‘Of the goats that looked, they looked significantly longer after the change in play emotion, suggesting that these goats had noticed and responded to the difference in the emotion conveyed. ‘
This suggests that the animals were able to detect a “shift in emotional content” in the human voices, the experts say in their paper, published in the journal Animal behavior.
The team admits that not all goats responded to the change in emotion, which may have been due to individual variations in their cognitive abilities.
The researchers also noticed no significant physiological changes in the goats, such as an increased heart rate, as a result of the voice changes.
Nevertheless, researchers think goats know what the two types of voices actually mean – and not just that one is different from the other.
Just like in dogs and cats, negative voices, as well as angry ones, can cause fear in goats, the researchers think.
Positive voices, on the other hand, can be experienced as soothing and can even encourage animals to approach and help the human-animal bond.
This could be because goats have a long history of being domesticated by humans.
Experiments took place at Buttercups Sanctuary For Goats, an animal sanctuary in Boughton Monchelsea, Kent.
According to Professor McElligott, goats were the first livestock species to be domesticated about 10,000 years ago.
So they probably evolved to “develop a sensitivity to our signals over their long association with us.”
“Further research is needed to understand the importance of the human voice on the emotional life and well-being of goats and other domestic species,” he said.
Professor McElligott and colleagues have already shown that goats can read human emotional expressions by telling the difference between a positive face and a negative face.
The 2018 study found that goats generally spent longer on photos of grinning people than on photos of frowning people.
Another study led by Professor McElligott found that goats can understand gestures such as pointing, just as dogs, cats and horses can.
This study had implications for how humans interact with farm animals, because animals’ ability to sense human cues may be more widespread than initially thought, the authors said at the time.