Research: Goats know when people are smiling and they like to see it happen

The study found that the goats’ first interactions were more often with the positive face overall and the goats tended to spend more time with the happy expression compared to the angry face.

The authors concluded that “goats can distinguish between happy and angry images of the same person, indicating that they can visually differentiate human faces conveying different emotional valences”.

The study also found that the goats preferred to spend time with the happy faces when they were on the right side of the testing pen. The authors theorised that this may be related to a difference in brain hemisphere engagement with happy expressions.