Goats ‘clever as dogs’ in taking instructions from humans

GOATS are just as good at following directions from humans as dogs, a new study has suggested.

Goats can interpret human cues, such as the pointing gesture, to gather information about their environment, a new study has revealed.

The study, in the journal Frontiers in Psycholog y, is the first evidence that animals’ ability to perceive humangiven cues is not limited to dogs and horses – who have a long history of domestication as companions.

Conducted at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in Kent, researchers set up a pre-test object-choice task, where they hid food in one of two buckets.

They then pointed at the location of the food and goats that succeeded in interpreting this gesture were transferred to the actual test.

In the subsequent test trials, the goats were confronted with a situation that was different but they were at a similar distance away from the food.

The goats succeeded in finding the correct location when the pointing gestures were presented in proximity to the food compared to when the experimenter was further away from it.

This indicated that goats can generalise their use of the human pointing gesture but might rely on local enhancement rather than referential information.

Dr Alan Mcelligott, the lead author, from the University of Roehampton, said: “From our earlier research, we already know that goats are smarter than their reputation suggests, but these results show how they can perceive cues and interact with humans even though they were not domesticated as pets or working animals.”

Dr Christian Nawroth, from the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology, Germany, hopes the study will lead to a better understanding of how skilled farm animals are in their capacity to interact with humans based on their cognitive abilities – and to an improvement in animal welfare in general.