Goats get us. Or at least, our hand gestures.
These goats seem to be happy together (Christian Nawroth/)It was like greeting an old friend. Each morning, without fail, Nadia, a snowy white goat with pink transparent ears, would heartily greet Christian Nawroth when he entered the goat pen. Even if Nawroth had an appointment with another goat, Nadia always made her presence known. “I’d say, ‘Hi, Nadia, how are you doing?’ and we’d cuddle a bit,” says Nawroth.Nadia is one of 141 goats residing at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats, located in Kent, England. From 2015 through 2016, they were mildly interested participants in Christian Nawroth’s studies of goat and human communication, motivated mostly by the possibility of pasta and cuddles from researchers. The study, recently published in Frontiers of Psychology on May 19, 2020, aims to shed light on animal cognition tests typically administered on dogs, cats, and apes, and bring them to livestock animals—in particular, the goat, which...