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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Goats display audience-dependent human-directed gazing behaviour in a problem-solving task [sciencealert.com]

Goats might not seem like the most cuddly animals, but researchers have found evidence that goats are as clever as dogs, and just as capable of building emotional relationships with humans as all the other domesticated animals we've let into our hearts and homes. The 2016 study showed that goats stare intensely at their owner when they're struggling to complete a task - a trait that's also observed in domesticated dogs, but not wolves.

[...] "From our earlier research, we already know that goats are smarter than their reputation suggests," said one of the researchers Alan McElligott [qmul.ac.uk]. "But these results show how they can communicate and interact with their human handlers even though they were not domesticated as pets or working animals."

Not only does that suggest goats have the potential to be awesome and loving sidekicks, just like dogs, it also indicates that living alongside humans for tens of thousands of years - regardless of whether they're companion animals or not - might have a bigger impact on species than we expected.

Goats display audience-dependent human-directed gazing behaviour in a problem-solving task [royalsocietypublishing.org] (open, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0283) (DX [doi.org])

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