Goats have demonstrated an ability to follow human vocal cues to locate hidden food, a skill previously believed to be largely limited to humans and certain domesticated animals like dogs, according to researchers at the University of Zürich. The findings, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggest that goats can use the direction of a human voice—without any prior training—to guide their behavior.

In the study, 29 goats were subjected to a series of trials designed to test their responsiveness to human vocal signals. Two buckets, placed on either side of a wooden screen, were used as targets. During the familiarization phase, goats learned to associate food placement with researcher calls from behind the screen. In the actual tests, uncooked pasta was hidden in one bucket without the animals’ knowledge. A researcher then either stood near the empty bucket and called out excitedly toward the baited container while remaining hidden, stayed silent, or spoke while facing away from both buckets.

The goats were released after these cues, and their movements were recorded. When the researcher vocalized excitedly toward the bucket containing the treat, goats moved toward it about 60% of the time. By contrast, success rates dropped to nearly chance levels—47% and 49%—when no sound was made or when the researcher spoke away from the buckets.

These results indicate that goats can follow directional human vocalizations to find rewards, potentially reflecting an untrained sensitivity to human communicative cues. This ability has not been observed in chimpanzees, though it has been documented in dogs, suggesting a possible link to domestication. Goats, among humanity’s oldest domesticated species, may thus offer new insights into animal cognition and human-animal interactions.

Dr Stuart Watson, the study’s lead author, noted that understanding how goats perceive human communication could improve animal welfare and shed light on evolutionary adaptations that facilitate coexistence between humans and domesticated animals. Prior research has shown that goats respond to human pointing, can distinguish emotional tones in human voices, and prefer positive facial expressions.

The research team also highlighted the potential value of replicating the experiments with wild goats to determine whether this skill is an innate trait or a product of domestication. They further suggested exploring whether other species pay attention to the direction of conspecific vocalizations.

Professor Simon Townsend, a senior author on the study, emphasized that these findings contribute to a growing body of evidence that challenges assumptions about the uniqueness of human communication. “When we look, we actually start to see more and more similarities” between humans and other animals, he said.