Goats Are Sensitive to Humans’ Vocal Cues; Can Tell Your Mood Based on Voice Tone [Study]

Goats are smarter than you think. They can reportedly sense what you feel.

Goat Can Tell Your Mood Through Your Voice

A new study suggests that domesticated animals can determine a person's emotional state by listening to their speech. According to scientists, during their lengthy connection with humans, which dates back 10,000 years, goats have evolved a sensitivity to our voice cues. Goats are sensitive to both auditory and tactile stimuli. They can distinguish between a grin and a frown.

Experts intended to find out if goats could interpret emotional variations in other goats' cries, as it is already known that goats can do the same with human speech.

The animal rescue facility Buttercups Sanctuary For Goats in Boughton Monchelsea, Kent, was the site of their trials. Twenty-seven male and female goats were employed in the study. All of them were accustomed to human voices and handling.

The goats heard human voices repeatedly saying, "hey, look over here" through a speaker in their enclosure, either in a pleased or angry tone.

Most importantly, the goats were given time to get used to hearing a cheerful voice before it changed to an angry one, or vice versa. When the speaker's tone abruptly changed, most of these goats continued to gaze at them.

Dr. Marianne Mason of the University of Roehampton reports that the goats that gazed stared far longer after the playback emotion changed, indicating that the goats had observed and reacted to the shift in mood.

"This study offers the first evidence that goats can discriminate between cues expressed in the human voice, namely, emotional valence," said author Professor Alan McElligott at the City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK).

"These findings contribute to the limited literature available indicating livestock, like companion animals, are sensitive to human emotional cues."

Frozen Goat

The goat-antelope found in the Alps is comparable to other "ice mummies" or frozen remnants of dead creatures preserved by the cold and frequently at high altitudes. One well-known example was the 5,300-year-old mummified man known as the Iceman Ötzi, who is thought to have lived in the range of 3,400 and 3,100 BCE.

Named after the Ötztal Alps, where hikers found him in September 1991, Ötzi has become popular. Scientists examined the 400-year-old frozen chamois to better understand how to preserve historical DNA samples for use in lab research.

Albert Zink, the director of Eurac Research's Institute for Mummy Studies, said their objective was to use scientific data to develop a globally valid conservation protocol for ice mummies. He noted that an animal mummy would be examined for this purpose for the first time.

Only a portion of the chamois was visible because of the glacier's protection, according to Eurac Research, as the ice on the Alps receded. DNA is typically destroyed and barely present in mummified remains.

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