Goats and Humans: Can Goats Sense Emotions?
Goats Are Sensitive to People’s Emotions during Goat–Human Interactions
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Goats are sensitive creatures. They are very aware of their surroundings and the behavior of those around them—both goats and humans. Not only do they react to our actions, but goats can even sense humans’ emotions just by looking at us or hearing our voices. Many a goat-keeper will have experienced this phenomenon. Farmers know they have to remain calm around animals to manage them effectively—many remark on how responsive their animals are. One farmer spoke of how her goats treated her differently according to her mood, even nuzzling her when she cried. I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences.
Are these observations just our fanciful interpretations? Animal welfare scientists, such as Alan McElligott and Marianne Mason, have been gathering evidence that shows how sensitive goats are to human behavior and emotions.
Studies confirm that goats can read other goats’ and humans’ facial expressions. Furthermore, not only can they hear the emotion conveyed in other goats’ bleats, but they can also tell the difference between angry and happy human voices.
Goats’ Emotions and Goat–Human Interaction
Why should animal emotion matter to goat-keepers? Emotion is intrinsic to welfare and drives goat behavior. As social animals, perception of other parties’ emotions (whether goat or human) helps goats to make decisions. Goats learn to modify their behavior based on the emotions felt at the time of an event. A frightening experience will teach them to flee if the situation reoccurs. Conversely, pleasurable experiences can help a goat cope with potentially unpleasant treatments, such as health interventions.
In addition, an accumulation of emotions can alter a goat’s general mood. In other words, a succession of bad treatments can lead to a pessimistic or depressive general state, while pleasant experiences can promote a positive or contented state. Mood is important for goats’ mental health and welfare, which contributes to overall health. Confident and content goats have more strength to fight disease. They cope with changes in their environment or unpleasant incidents better than fearful or depressed goats. Understanding goats’ expression of emotion helps us meet their biological and social needs.
Finally, emotion is important to consider when handling animals: both to anticipate what the animals will do next and to modify our behavior to keep them calm and manageable. If they pick up angry emotions from us, they’ll avoid us and become harder to handle. On the other hand, if they anticipate affection, grooming, treats, or any other activity they enjoy, they’ll come to us more readily.
Emotional Dimensions
Emotion has two dimensions: arousal (how strong the emotion is) and valence (whether it’s positive/pleasant or negative/unpleasant). Joy or happy excitement is a high-arousal positive emotion, whereas relaxation is a low-arousal positive emotion. Fear and anger are high-arousal negative emotions, whereas depression is a low-arousal negative emotion. Experiences elicit emotions of varying degrees of arousal and valence.
Facial Expressions
Facial muscles respond to emotional experiences. As goats tend to hide obvious signs of sickness and pain, it’s useful to learn to read subtle changes on goats’ faces. Goats certainly can! In one experiment, goats reacted differently to photographs of goats’ faces expressing unpleasant sensations (an ice-block to the udder) than to those experiencing pleasant ones (grooming). But do goats respond to human faces? Goats were shown photographs of people’s faces at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats (UK), where they receive plenty of human contact. They approached photos of smiling humans more readily than those of angry ones. We can conclude that they preferred photos of smiling faces as they associated them with friendly people who might offer them affection, grooming, or treats.
Vocal Expression of Emotions
Humans and other vertebrates share vocal features that indicate the level of arousal. Highly aroused animals call more often with louder and higher-pitched calls than calmer animals. However, valence is more species-specific. Behavioral biologist Elodie Briefer recorded bleats of goats at Buttercups in different situations judged as positive (anticipating feed) and negative (not receiving feed while other goats ate—food frustration—or during brief isolation). The food anticipation and frustration situations were judged as highly arousing (from monitoring heart and respiration rates), while the brief isolation was less arousing.
She found that goat bleats were higher pitched and more shaky in negative situations than in positive ones. Similarly, human voices can come out higher pitched and wavering when we’re nervous or upset. However, as some goats have a natural quaver in their calls already, we need to be familiar with each individual to be able to hear the difference produced by emotion.
Briefer’s recordings were used to demonstrate that goats can tell the difference between positive and negative emotions in other goats’ bleats. Goats paid more attention when the emotion in the recordings changed. Furthermore, their heartbeat measurements gave signs of relaxation when listening to happy bleats.
Can Goats Sense Human Emotions?
So how do goats react to human voices? For her PhD, Marianne Mason worked with the friendly goats at Buttercups who participated willingly in the trials. She made several recordings of familiar and unfamiliar staff and volunteers saying, “Hey, look over here.” Each person made samples in a happy tone and in an angry one. Each goat listened to a series of different recordings of the same person’s voice. When goats repeatedly heard recordings expressing the same emotion, they got used to it and stopped looking at the speaker. When the emotion of the recorded voice changed, some goats resumed looking at the speaker and did so for longer than they had just before this change. This demonstrated that those goats had noticed the change in emotion.
Of course, goats have adapted to sharing their lives with us, over thousands of generations of selective breeding. Reading our emotions contributes to their success as domestic animals. Also, as a social species, they readily learn to associate our behavior—both visual and vocal—with consequences. Research shows how goats take cues from humans and attempt to communicate with us.
Can Humans Sense Emotions in Goats’ Bleats?
Anyone in charge of animals needs to recognize the sound of an animal in distress. Fortunately, we instinctively pick up the most urgent calls. But can we gauge the subtle everyday intonations of our herd? A group of scientists published an online survey to collect public ratings of various calls of several species. They found that people could correctly rate arousal better than valence. Correct ratings for goat calls were 57% for arousal and 56% for valence, which is slightly higher than guesswork.
If you are experienced with goats, especially if you know your individual goats well, you are more likely to correctly identify the emotional content of their call. So, it’s well worth getting to know your goats and familiarize yourself with their normal behavior and body language. But, remember that they’ll also be learning yours. So, keep calm and be happy for a happy, healthy, and manageable herd.
References
- Mason, M.A., Semple, S., Marshall, H.H., and McElligott, A.G., 2024. Goats discriminate emotional valence in the human voice. Animal Behaviour, 209, 227–240.
- Mason M.A., Briefer E.F., Semple S., McElligott A.G., 2024. Goat emotions, cognition and personality. In: The Welfare of Goats. Editors: Mattiello, S. and Battini, M. Springer Animal Welfare Book Series.
- Baciadonna, L., Briefer, E.F., Favaro, L., McElligott, A.G., 2019. Goats distinguish between positive and negative emotion-linked vocalisations. Frontiers in Zoology, 16, 25.
- Bellegarde, L.G.A., Haskell, M.J., Duvaux-Ponter, C., Weiss, A., Boissy, A., Erhard, H.W., 2017. Face-based perception of emotions in dairy goats. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 193, 51–59.
- Briefer, E.F., Tettamanti, F., McElligott, A.G., 2015. Emotions in goats: mapping physiological, behavioural and vocal profiles. Animal Behaviour, 99, 131–143.
- Greenall, J.S., Cornu, L., Maigrot, A.L., De La Torre, M.P., and Briefer, E.F., 2022. Age, empathy, familiarity, domestication and call features enhance human perception of animal emotion expressions. Royal Society Open Science, 9(12), 221138.
- Nawroth, C., Albuquerque, N., Savalli, C., Single, M.S., and McElligott, A.G., 2018. Goats prefer positive human emotional facial expressions. Royal Society Open Science, 5(8), 180491.
Lead photo by Author.
Originally published in the Winter 2024/5 issue of Goat Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.
