According To a New Research, Goats Can Tell When You're Happy

• 01

  In the first study to ever assess this on goats, researchers explain that goats can differentiate between happy and angry facial reactions, and they prefer happy ones:

  
  via ZME Science

  Dr. Alan McElligott who led the study at Queen Mary University of London and is now based at the University of Roehampton, told ZME Science: "The study has important implications for how we interact with livestock and other species, because the abilities of animals to perceive human emotions might be widespread and not just limited to pets."

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• 02

  During the study, researchers showed 20 goats grey-scale pairs of unfamiliar human faces, exhibiting happy or angry emotions.

  
  via ZME Science

  The team at the Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in Kent, England reports that happy faces elicit greater interactions — goats were more likely to reach out to them and explore with their snouts. Furthermore, this was particularly prevalent when the happy faces were positioned on the right, suggesting that the goats use their left (opposite) brain hemisphere to process positive emotions. Overall, this shows just how adept goats have become at reading human body language.

• 03

  The first study that clearly shows goats prefer happy people:

  
  via ZME Science

  First author Dr. Christian Nawroth, who worked on the study at Queen Mary University of London but is now based at Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology, praises goats' ability to 'read' humans and says that while their ability was previously hinted on, this is the first study that shows goat prefer happy people: "We already knew that goats are very attuned to human body language, but we did not know how they react to different human emotional expressions, such as anger and happiness. Here, we show for the first time that goats do not only distinguish between these expressions, but they also prefer to interact with happy ones."

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