None of us would want to hang out with a sad or grumpy face person, not even animals. A recent study has found that goats are much smarter than we thought and can understand human expressions. Animals from farms can react to humans with fear, indifference, or occasionally, in this case of goats hostility.
But, according to scientists, we can win them with a smiley face just like dogs.
Scientists have always wondered if animals are able to read human expressions and recently some researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, decided to find out if there’s any truth to it. At a goat sanctuary, they showed goats a pair of photos, one with a happy face and the other with an angry expression. And researchers were surprised to learn that all the goats were drawn to the happy face.
Goats will like you more when you’re happy which is a good enough reason to smile often. There’s a study published in the journal, Royal Society Open Science, that states further that goats are able to identify and understand human expressions.
During the experiment, the goats were let loose to explore and all of them approached the happy-face photos and examined them with their cute snouts. But this only worked when the happy photos were placed on their right-hand side. When the photos were reversed, the goats didn’t show preference to any of them, the reasons for this can be explained by the fact that goats only use one side of their brain to process information.
Of course, goats are not the only animals who can understand human emotions. There’s another study which was conducted in 2015 found that dogs can also identify the facial expressions of their human companions. The experiment was carried out in the same manner and it was found that dogs were more attracted to smiling faces.
Animals think you’re cuter when you smile, always remember that!