“Giving the goat” is an expression meaning to cause someone to become angry. But goats can also be positive and sensitive animals. Goats are very intelligent and curious animals. Because they are very inquisitive, like dogs, they constantly like to explore and investigate anything with which they are not familiar. They “speak” to each other by bleating, and their mothers will often call to their kids to get them to stay close by.
Now, animal behavior and welfare researchers in Hong Kong say goats can tell the difference between a happy-sounding human voice and an angry-sounding one. The study – co-led by Prof Alan McElligott at City University of Hong Kong and Dr. Marianne Mason of London’s University of Roehampton. It was published in the journal Animal Behavior under the title “Goats discriminate emotional valence in the human voice.”
Due to their long association with humans, goats – like dogs and horses – developed a sensitivity to our vocal cues over their long association with humans. Long known for their rich voices, the goats in the study tended to spend longer gazing towards the source of the sound after a change in the valence – the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a human voice – when the playback switched from a happier to an angrier sounding voice or vice versa.
Goats have a sensitivity to vocal cues
“This study offers the first evidence that goats can discriminate between cues expressed in the human voice, namely, emotional valence,” said McElligott. “These findings contribute to the limited literature available indicating livestock, like companion animals, are sensitive to human emotional cues.”
The rationale for the experiment is that research that he previously conducted with his collaborators has already shown that goats can read human emotional expressions, suggesting that companion animals like canines and equines are not the only ones to perceive different human facial cues. He and his team have also demonstrated that goats encode their bleating with information related to their individual identity and emotional experiences. But can goats distinguish the emotional valence of the human voice?
In the experiment, goats listened to a series of voice playbacks expressing either a positive (happy) or a negative (angry) valence during the habituation phase – when the goat became accustomed to the human voice and valence so they would respond less as the phase progressed. The recording was then switched from a positive to a negative valence (or vice versa) before being reversed.
“We predicted that if goats could discriminate emotional content conveyed in the human voice, they would dishabituate, looking faster and for longer towards the source of the sound, following the first shift in valence,” said Mason.
The results indicated that 75% of the goats that looked at the speaker following a change in valence looked for more extended periods, suggesting these goats had perceived the shift in the emotional content of human voice playbacks. Not all goats responded to the auditory human voice cues in the same way; many goats failed to respond to the change in valence, which might be due to variations in cognitive abilities among goats to perceive human emotional cues, among other external factors. Also, the researchers didn't notice any significant physiological changes among the goats, such as a raised heartbeat when exposed to changes in voice valence.
Not all goats respond to cues
However, the results are essential for adding to our understanding of animal behavior, welfare, and emotional experiences, especially since goats and other livestock will hear the human voice in their daily lives, the researchers noted. Negatively valenced voices, like angry ones, may cause fear in animals. In contrast, positive ones may be perceived as calming and may even encourage animals to approach and help with human-animal bonding.
“Further research is needed to understand the importance of the human voice on the emotional lives and welfare of goats and other domesticated species,” McElligott suggested.