Goats prefer positive human emotional facial expressions

Abstract

Domestication has shaped the physiology and the behaviour of animals to better adapt to human environments. Therefore, human facial expressions may be highly informative for animals domesticated for working closely with people, such as dogs and horses. However, it is not known whether other animals, and particularly those domesticated primarily for production, such as goats, are capable of perceiving human emotional cues. In this study, we investigated whether goats can distinguish human facial expressions when simultaneously shown two images of an unfamiliar human with different emotional valences (positive/happy or negative/angry). Both images were vertically attached to a wall on one side of a test arena, 1.3 m apart, and goats were released from the opposite side of the arena (distance of 4.0 m) and were free to explore and interact with the stimuli during the trials. Each of four test trials lasted 30 s. Overall, we found that goats preferred to interact first with happy faces, meaning that they are sensitive to human facial emotional cues. Goats interacted first, more often and for longer duration with positive faces when they were positioned on the right side. However, no preference was found when the positive faces were placed on the left side. We show that animals domesticated for production can discriminate human facial expressions with different emotional valences and prefer to interact with positive ones. Therefore, the impact of domestication on animal cognitive abilities may be more far-reaching than previously assumed.

Emotion Recognition in Cats

“…Moreover, dogs and horses show a functional understanding of human emotional signals and adjust their behavior according to the valence and intensity of the emotional message conveyed [ 11 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. Similar results have been recently reported by Nawroth and colleagues for goats, which discriminate human facial expression of anger and happiness and prefer to interact with the latter [ 60 ]. Studies on cats showed that they are sensitive to conspecific and human emotional signals, though to a lesser extent than dogs [ 10 , 42 , 50 ].…”

The Power of a Positive Human–Animal Relationship for Animal Welfare

“…Although beyond the scope of this article, these human factors should be considered when thinking of the HAR. There is also increasing evidence that animals can recognize human facial expression of emotions [dog ( 149 – 151 ), horse ( 152 ), goat ( 153 )] or human bodily expression [cat ( 154 )] and prefer positive human emotional expressions.…”

Understanding natural behavior to improve dairy goat (Capra hircus) management systems

“…Goats integrate visual and auditory cues to identify herd mates, especially for social partners ( Pitcher et al, 2017 ), indicating higher-order cognitive representations of individuals. Domesticated goats can distinguish between positive and negative human facial expressions ( Nawroth et al, 2018 ), can distinguish between different shapes, or can track the movement of objects (reviewed by Nawroth [2017] ). Goats can successfully categorize similar symbols and generalize to new symbols ( Meyer et al, 2012 ) and can identify a symbol that did not belong to a group; these abilities were previously attributed only to primates ( Roitberg and Franz, 2004 ).…”