'Goats that stare at men'--revisited: do dwarf goats alter their behaviour in response to eye visibility and head direction of a human?

Animal Cognition
Christian NawrothJan Langbein

Abstract

Being able to recognise when one is being observed by someone else is thought to be adaptive during cooperative or competitive events. In particular for prey species, this ability should be of use in the context of predation. A previous study reported that goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) alter their behaviour according to the body and head orientation of a human experimenter. During a food anticipation task, an experimenter remained in a particular posture for 30 s before delivering a reward, and the goats' active anticipation and standing alert behaviour were analysed. To further evaluate the specific mechanisms at work, we here present two additional test conditions. In particular, we investigated the effects of the eye visibility and head orientation of a human experimenter on the behaviour of the goats (N = 7). We found that the level of the subjects' active anticipatory behaviour was highest in the conditions where the experimenter was directing his head and body towards the goat ('Control' and 'Eyes closed' conditions), but the anticipatory behaviour was significantly decreased when the body ('Head only') or the head and body of the experimenter were directed away from the subject ('Back' condition). For standing alert, we ...Continue Reading

References

Aug 15, 2000·Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews·N J Emery
Mar 23, 2004·Animal Cognition·Juliane KaminskiMichael Tomasello
Nov 23, 2006·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Andrew J TateKeith M Kendrick
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Jul 11, 2013·PloS One·Leanne ProopsKaren McComb

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Citations

Jul 20, 2018·The Journal of Comparative Neurology·Muhammad A SpocterPaul R Manger
Jul 7, 2016·Biology Letters·Christian NawrothAlan G McElligott
Mar 7, 2019·Frontiers in Veterinary Science·Christian NawrothEberhard von Borell

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