Queen Mary University of London researchers have found goats to be far more intelligent than previously thought. The domestic animal can quickly learn to solve complex tasks and has exceptionally long lasting memories.
This might explain their extraordinary ability to survive harsh environments and hunt for plants in the wild.
For the study, researchers trained a group of 12 goats to retrieve food from a box by first pulling a lever with their mouths and then lifting the lid to get the reward. The animals learned the multi-step task within 12 trials. Before each learning session, some of the goats were allowed to observe the others demonstrate the task.
The goats' talent to remember the task was tested twice - after a month and after 10 months. About 10 months later, the goats were able to recall how to perform the task within less than two minutes.
"The speed at which the goats completed the task at 10 months compared to how long it took them to learn indicates excellent long-term memory," co-author Dr Elodie Briefer said in a press release."We found that those without a demonstrator were just as fast at learning as those that had seen demonstrations. This shows that goats prefer to learn on their own rather than by watching others."
This is the first study to examine goats' gift of learning complicated physical cognition tasks.
"Our results challenge the common misconception that goats aren't intelligent animals - they have the ability to learn complex tasks and remember them for a long time. This could explain why they are so successful in colonising new environments, though we would need to perform a similar study with wild goats to be sure," Co-author Dr Alan McElligott from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences,said.
The finding is published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.
Recently, University of Guelph researchers found bumblebees are capable of both scaffold (learning to solve complex problems step by step) and social (learning by observing and communicating with other bees) learning, particularly when a tasty reward is involved.
