Goats show higher behavioural flexibility than sheep in a spatial detour task

Abstract

The ability to adapt to changing environments is crucial for survival and has evolved based on socio-ecological factors. Goats and sheep are closely related, with similar social structures, body sizes and domestication levels, but different feeding ecologies, i.e. goats are browsers and sheep are grazers. We investigated whether goats' reliance on more patchily distributed food sources predicted an increased behavioural flexibility compared to sheep. We tested 21 goats and 28 sheep in a spatial A-not-B detour task. Subjects had to navigate around a straight barrier through a gap at its edge. After one, two, three or four of these initial A trials, the gap was moved to the opposite end and subjects performed four B trials. Behaviourally more flexible individuals should move through the new gap faster, while those less behaviourally flexible should show greater perseveration. While both species showed an accuracy reduction following the change of the gap position, goats recovered from this perseveration error from the second B trial onwards, whereas sheep did so only in the fourth B trial, indicating differences in behavioural flexibility between the species. This higher degree of flexibility in goats compared to sheep could be linked to differences in their foraging strategies.

Climate Change is Likely to Alter Sheep and Goat Distributions in Mainland China

“…Further, it is noticeable that the fixed effect of slope on goats is lower than sheep, which means that sheep husbandry might be more sensitive to geomorphic change. It could be supported by recent animal science literature that compared to sheep, goat is more adaptive in mountainous and hilly regions (Raoult, et al, 2021).…”

The contribution of executive functions to sex differences in animal cognition

“…Studies on drugs abuse in laboratory rodents (mice and rats) have suggested that generally males have more difficulties in inhibiting prepotent responses compared to females (reviewed in Weafer & deWit, 2014). In the A-not-B task, in which subjects had to deal with a stimulus that changed position across different trials, goats did not show sex differences (Raoult et al, 2021). Last, studies on dogs' inhibitory control reported quite consistently a similar performance in males and females with various tasks: cylinder task and A-not-B task (Faganani et al, 2016); a task requiring to ignore a preferred, but unobtainable, food reward (Bray et al, 2014); a battery of three inhibitory tasks (Brucks et al, 2017).…”

Mason et al Preprint_Goat Emotions, Cognition and Personality

“…Meyer et al 2012, Nawroth et al 2014). However, behavioural flexibility is more commonly inferred from how well animals can inhibit or control a behaviour of interest or through their performance in reversal learning tasks (Nawroth et al 2016a, Raoult et al 2021, both of which have been explored in a variety of contexts in goats.…”

“…However, despite the wide use of this task, given performance can vary according to an individual animal's experience with or understanding of artificial, transparent barriers, its ecological validity is questionable (van Horik et al 2018). In an arguably more ecologically valid task, goats (but not all sheep) were shown to immediately detour around a physical barrier to retrieve food, despite momentarily increasing the distance between itself and the reward (Raoult et al 2021, Nawroth et al 2016a).…”