Stop kidding me: Goats can tell when another is getting upset by sensing subtle emotional changes in their vocal calls, scientists claim
- Researchers measured behavioural and physiological changes in test goats
- They found goats look toward a vocal call when the emotion behind it changes
- They also found goats’ heart-rates went up when positive calls were played
- These results suggest they understand emotions and that their own are affected
Goats can detect subtle emotional changes in the calls of other goats when they’re getting upset, a new study suggests.
Researchers led by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) measured behavioural and physiological changes in goats.
They found that when the emotion of a call changed, the likeliness of the goats to look towards the source of the sound increased.
This suggests that they can distinguish the emotional content of calls of another goat, experts say.
Scientists say the discovery has important implications for how domestic animals, particularly livestock species, are cared for.
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Goats can detect subtle emotional changes in the calls of other goats when they’re getting upset, a new study suggests. Researchers led by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) measured behavioural and physiological changes in goats (pictured)
The study was carried out in collaboration with the University of Roehampton, ETH Zurich and University of Turin.
It also showed that the goats’ heart-rate went up when positive calls were played compared to when negative calls were played.
These results provide the first strong evidence that goats are not only able to distinguish call variants based on the emotion that they convey, but also that their own emotions are potentially affected, researchers say.
‘Despite its evolutionary importance, social communication of emotions in non-human animals is still not well understood,’ said Luigi Baciadonna, lead author of the study from QMUL.
‘Our results suggest that non-human animals are not only attentive, but might also be sensitive to the emotional states of other individuals.’
Experts found that when the emotion of a call changed, the likeliness of the goats (left) to look towards the source of the sound (right) increased. This suggests that they can distinguish the emotional content of calls of another goat, experts say
Many social animals live under environmental conditions where individuals are not always in visual contact with one another during the day or night.
Therefore, they could acquire an evolutionary advantage through the discrimination of the emotional content of the calls of others from their species.
In the study, researchers recorded calls of goats which conveyed either positive or negative emotions.
They then played one of these calls through a loudspeaker to another goat.
They subsequently exposed that goat to a variant of the same call type associated with the opposite emotion.
This was followed by a final call which was randomly selected.
The researchers also controlled variables often neglected in this field of research by assessing the emotional state of both the caller and the receiver.
In addition, only contact calls were used so that the reaction of the receiver would be purely dependent on the encoded emotions, rather than the function of vocalisations.
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.
