Did you know that goats can recognize human faces? “A good shepherd knows how to recognize his sheep” … But perhaps it is more the opposite. Thanks to this discovery, we can further understand animal cognition and how it interacts with us humans.
It was Christian Nawroth, a psychologist at the University of Leipzig, and his team who conducted the elusive experiment: they presented goats different images of human faces on a big screen. These portrayed familiar people (mainly, those who provided them with food) or faces never seen before.
Goats have been found to have very keen eyesight and are able to accurately recognize both shapes and colors. I am also able to understand facial information, such as the nose, mouth and eye shape; ergo, they are able to process visual data and recognize and distinguish people’s faces.
However, there’s still a lot we don’t know about animal interaction; not surprisingly, this is the first study that focuses on the ability of these to recognize human faces. However, further research has been done on goats in the past, which has shown that they are capable of solve complex problems and learn from your mistakes.