Goats Can Tell When You're Smiling And They Really Like It, Study Suggested

Watch to find out more about the study.

Video credit: KTNV Channel 13 Las Vegas

You’d probably like to spend your time with a happy and joyful person rather than a gloomy one. Turns out, animals have the same inclination, as revealed by a new study.

Since now, horses and dogs were believed to be able to perceive and respond to human emotions, the new research has now added another member in the list.

The study by the Royal Society found that goats can feel the human sentiments toward them and they like us when we are smiling.

If we were to talk about horses and dogs, we can easily perceive them to be able to understand human expressions as both of them are raised as human-companion animals.

But in the case of goats, it’s hard to believe the same since they’re raised as tamed farm animals. They’re not grown up in an environment that makes them favorable to interact with humans.

Domestication plays an important role in determining how the brains of these animals work. But the extent to which their emotional conduct is affected by the environment they’re bred in is still unknown.

In order to find out more on it, an experiment was conducted by researchers in the UK.

The scientists placed two pictures of humans, one with a happy expression and the other with anger on their face, in two corners of a pen.

The goats were allowed to stroll and roam around the pics for 30 seconds.

Surprisingly, the goats were found to be more likely to roam around and interact with the cheerful human picture as compared to the angry one.

The research concluded that even farm animals – besides horses and dogs – can understand and respond to human emotions.

So the next time you pass by a goat, don’t forget to give a gleaming smile to cheer up the innocent animal.