New research from Queen Mary University of London shows goats learn how to solve complicated tasks quickly and can recall how to perform them for at least 10 months, which might explain their remarkable ability to adapt to harsh environments. Credit: Brian Squibb Goats learn how to solve complicated tasks quickly and can recall how to perform them for at least 10 months, which might explain their remarkable ability to adapt to harsh environments, say researchers at Queen Mary University of London. 
 
 Writing in the journal Frontiers in Zoology today, the scientists trained a group of goats to retrieve food from a box using a linked sequence of steps; first by pulling a lever with their mouths and then by lifting it to release the reward. 
 
 The goats' ability to remember the task was tested after one month and again at 10 months. They learned the task within 12 trials and took less than two minutes to remember the challenge. 
 
 "The speed at which the goats completed the task at 10 months compared to how long it took them to learn indicates excellent long-term memory," said co-author Dr Elodie Briefer, now based at ETH Zurich. 
 
 Before each learning session, some of the goats had the opportunity to watch another goat to demonstrate the task. 
 
 Dr Briefer added: "We found that those without a demonstrator were just as fast at learning as those that had seen demonstrations. This shows that goats prefer to learn on their own rather than by watching others." 
 
 The video shows how much goats like cognitive challenges and their motivation to access the box. This goat, called Willow, had already learned how to use the box and retrieve the food. We can see how it jumps over a fence to access the test. Credit: Queen Mary University of London 
 
 This is the first time that scientists have investigated how goats learn complex physical cognition tasks, which could explain why they are so adaptable to harsh environments and good at foraging for plants in the wild, for example. 
 
 Co-author Dr Alan McElligott from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, commented: "Our results challenge the common misconception that goats aren't intelligent animals - they have the ability to learn complex tasks and remember them for a long time. 
 
 This sequence shows how the goats needed to learn how to retrieve food from a box. They used a linked sequence of steps; first by pulling a lever with their mouths and then by lifting it to release the reward. Credit: Queen Mary University of London 
 
 "This could explain why they are so successful in colonising new environments, though we would need to perform a similar study with wild goats to be sure." 
 
 The research was supported through a Swiss Federal Veterinary Office grant and Swiss National Science Foundation fellowship. The data was collected at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in Kent. 
 
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 More information: Goats excel at learning and remembering a highly novel cognitive task, Elodie F Briefer, Samaah Haque, Luigi Baciadonna and Alan G McElligott, Frontiers in Zoology 2014, 11:20, DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-11-20 
 
 ||||| Social and physical cognition 
 
 To assess whether goats can learn a complex task, and if they use social learning to this aim, we used an adaptation of the “artificial fruit challenge” developed for nonhuman primate research [46,47] (Figures 1 and 2). It allowed us to test for the potential existence of both simple (e.g. stimulus or local enhancement) and complex forms of social learning (e.g. emulation or production imitation), which have not been reported in ungulates [45].The artificial fruit is a box that contains food, which can be accessed through a certain procedure. Social learning is evident when animals learn faster with than without a demonstrator [48], or if they use the same solution as the demonstrator more often than alternatives, in case the food can be accessed through more than one solution [46]. Similar food boxes have also been used to test for innovation and problem solving abilities in birds [49], primates [50] and carnivores [51,52] (“food extraction tasks” or “puzzle boxes’’). Similarly, as in van de Waal and Bshary [47] and Caldwell and Whiten [48], our box contained food that could be accessed through one solution, but which consisted of a sequence of actions (two-steps). Goats had to pull out a lever with their lips or teeth using a rope (step 1; “pull lever step”). They then had to lift the lever up using the mouth or muzzle (step 2; “lift lever step”), which made a food reward drop from a dispenser into a feeding bowl (Figure 2; Additional file 1). Our study animals were trained to use the device with (“observers”; N = 4) or without (“controls”; N = 3) a demonstrator goat (N = 5; N = 12 goats originally trained in total; Table 1). We predicted that if goats have good physical cognition abilities, they would be able to manipulate the box and learn this task. We also predicted that if they use any form of social learning, they would be faster at learning after observing a demonstrator, than if they did not have that opportunity. 
 
 Figure 1. Two-step food box used in the experiments. (a) Frontal view and (b) lateral view of the box before the trial, showing the dimensions and the bowl where the food was falling after actionning the lever. Figure 2. Two-step task. One goat demonstrating (a) the first step (“pull lever”), (b) the second step (“lift lever”), and (c) eating the reward. Red arrows indicate the direction required to complete the action (see also Additional file 1). Additional file 1. One observer goat (female 7 in Additional file 2) performing the task on her last training session, followed by her first memory test after a retention interval of 28 days and her second memory test after a retention interval of 281 days. Format: MOV Size: 4.3MB Download file | Watch movie Table 1. Characteristics of the goats and number of trials to success 
 
 All goats (demonstrators, observers and controls) were trained to perform the two-step task in the same way, using a shaping procedure, starting with the lift-lever step (i.e. the lever was already pulled out at the beginning of each trial and the goats had to lift it up to obtain the reward) and then the two steps in a row (i.e. the lever was inside and the goats had to perform the two steps; Additional file 2). Observers were exposed to a clearly visible demonstrator goat in an adjacent stable (“model–observer dyad” [48]), performing the task three times, before every learning trial (from trial 1 to success). 
 
 Additional file 2. Shaping procedure used for the learning phase. Format: DOC Size: 33KB Download file This file can be viewed with: Microsoft Word Viewer 
 
 In total, 9/12 trained goats successfully learned the two-step task. This was done within 12.0 ± 1.4 trials (range = 8–22 trials; corresponding to 4.33 ± 0.54 days of training for the entire learning phase, range = 3–6 days; Table 1). Among these successful goats, the number of trials required to learn the task did not differ between goats that had a demonstrator (two observers: 11.5 ± 1.5 trials) and those that did not (four demonstrators and three controls: 12.1 ± 1.8 trials; linear model (LM): F 1,1 = 0.96; P = 0.51), suggesting that goats did not learn the task socially. Because of our small sample size, we carried out a power analysis to calculate the significance level to use in order to obtain a power of 0.8 with our sample size. This analysis revealed that the significance level would have to be raised to α = 0.32 (instead of 0.05), which is still lower than the p-value we found for the effect of the demonstrator presence (P = 0.51). 
 
 Ten of the 12 tested goats successfully learned the lift-lever step within 8.0 ± 0.6 trials (range = 5–10 trials). The number of trials taken by observers to learn this step (9.0 ± 1.0 trials; N = 3 goats) did not differ from the number of trials taken by goats that did not have a demonstrator (7.6 ± 0.6 trials; N = 7 goats; LM: F 1,2 = 0.07; P = 0.82). A power analysis revealed that the significance level would have to be raised to α = 0.32 to obtain a power of 0.8, which is still lower than the p-value we found for the effect of the demonstrator presence (P = 0.82). While learning the lift-lever step, goats lifted the lever for the first time after 4.4 ± 0.3 trials (range = 3–7). 
 
 Nine goats successfully learned to perform the two steps consecutively after 4.2 ± 1.2 additional trials (range = 3 trials for all goats except one with 14 trials). There was no effect of the presence of a demonstrator (3.0 ± 0.0 trials; N = 2 goats) or not (4.6 ± 1.6 trials; N = 7 goats; LM: F 1,1 = 0.19; P = 0.74) on this number of trials. A power analysis revealed that the significance level would have to be raised to α = 0.40 to obtain a power of 0.8, which is still lower than the p-value we found for the effect of the demonstrator presence (P = 0.74). While learning the whole sequence of steps, goats performed the two steps for the first time after 1.7 ± 0.6 trials. There was no significant effect of age (LM: P ≥ 0.26 in all cases), sex (P ≥ 0.26 in all cases) or breed (LM: P ≥ 0.18 in all cases) on any of the parameters (number of trials to success, to learn to perform the lift-lever step and to learn to perform the two steps consecutively). 
 
 One of the 12 originally tested goats (goat 9 in Table 1), who was an observer, succeeded in the lift-lever step in 10 trials, but was still unable to complete the two-step sequence by trial 22 and showed no signs of improvement. She was not used in any further memory tests. Two other goats (one observer and one demonstrator; goats 4 and 8 in Table 1), were removed from the experiments after the first 7–12 trials, because they tried to use their horns instead of their muzzle to get the reward and therefore risked damaging the box. 
 
 Although learning was assisted, most of the goats (9/12) were able to learn the task, suggesting good physical cognition abilities that allowed them to manipulate objects. However, we did not find evidence for social learning. From a total of four goats originally tested with a demonstrator (i.e. observers; goats 6-9 in Table 1), one of them used an alternative method (horns) to try to obtain the reward, and had to be removed from the experiment (goat 8 in Table 1). Another one learned the lift-lever step, but never learned the other step (goat 9 in Table 1). The remaining two goats did not learn faster than goats trained without a demonstrator. This absence of evidence for social learning could be due to the technical difficulty of our task. In some primates, social learning of step sequences revealed few (2/14 [53]; 2/12 [47]) or even no success [48] in opening a food box, suggesting that this is a cognitively demanding form of social learning that might not occur in goats. However, we could have found evidence for simpler social learning forms, such as local enhancement (i.e. observers would be attracted to the location of the box, immediately after the demonstrator interacted with it), or stimulus enhancement (i.e. observers would be attracted to the box itself as well as to similar objects, even when the demonstrator is not present [45]). Our results therefore confirm previous findings suggesting a lack of social learning by observation in goats [54]. 
 
 Goats are highly social animals that live in fission-fusion societies, with groups varying in size throughout the day and aggregating in permanent night camps in the evening [42,55]. They have been shown to use some form of social information; they follow conspecific gaze direction and human pointing, but not human gaze [56]. There is also evidence for perspective taking, as goats that receive aggression from dominant individuals prefer to eat food that dominants cannot see [57]. These show that they understand dominance relationships [37], and that they can use some basic forms of social learning. However, it is possible that the delay between the removal of the demonstrator and the training of the observer in our experiment was too long. Goats might be capable of local enhancement (i.e. they would be attracted to a demonstrator’s location while it is still present or immediately after it had been removed from that location), but not of “delayed local enhancement”. This social learning mechanism is a form of “stimulus enhancement” that would lead an individual to be attracted to the location of a demonstrator, for more than a short period after it has been removed [45]. The absence of delayed local enhancement in goats is consistent with results of our previous research, showing that goats do not copy the side to which the demonstrator goes to feed after it has been removed from the experimental apparatus [54]. Similar lack of social learning have been found with horses (Equus caballus) in studies in which observers were tested much later after demonstrators had been removed from the experimental arena (on different days), [58,59]. However, in tests when observer horses were tested immediately after the demonstration, social learning did occur [60,61]. In Krueger and Flauger [62], the side at which a demonstrator was eating influenced the behaviour of observers if the demonstrator was present (i.e. observers avoided the side of the demonstrator), but not if the demonstrator was out of sight. We suggest that wild and domestic goats, and possibly other ungulates, lack sophisticated forms of social learning, because individual and simple social learning mechanisms are probably more efficient for improving their survival or reproductive success [45]. Alternatively, this lack of social learning could be linked to domestication, following the relaxed dependency on conspecifics, as has been suggested for dogs [31]. 
 
 Long-term memory 
 
 To assess environmental intelligence, we measured long-term memory of the food box task. Memorizing information for extended periods of time (e.g. weeks or years) is limited by the size of brain parts, such as the hippocampus, suggesting that this process is costly in terms of brain tissue [63]. We tested if all the goats successfully trained on the two-step task (with or without a demonstrator; N = 9 goats), remembered it after retention intervals ranging from 1 month to 9–10 months. We predicted that if goats had long-term memory of the task, their latency to solve it after extended time intervals should be much shorter than the duration of the initial training, and should not increase with time. To our knowledge, long-term memory for obtaining a food reward from “artificial fruit” has not been reported for any species. 
 
 We tested the memory of the goats with a first test 26–33 days after the end of the learning phase (0.9-1.1 months; N = 9 goats), and a second test 281–311 days after the first memory test (9.2-10.2 months; N = 8 goats). One goat was tested at an intermediate stage of 168 days, followed by another test 139 days after her first test. All the goats solved the task within one trial. During the first memory test, all 9 goats solved the two-step task within 35.78 ± 7.95 s (range = 12–91 s; after 0.9-1.1 months of retention). During the second test, it took them 38.75 ± 9.38 s to solve the task (range = 6–72 s; after 9.2-10.2 months of retention; N = 8 goats). The goat tested during the intermediate memory tests took 4 s (after 168 days of retention) and 6 s (after 139 days of retention), respectively, to solve the task. 
 
 Additionally, we compared the latency to solve the task during the three last trials of the learning phase (successful trials required to reach the learning criterion; third-to-last learning trial, “T1”; second-to-last learning trial,“T2”; last learning trial, “T3”) with the latency to remember the task during the two memory tests (first memory test, “M1”; second memory test, “M2”; Figure 3). These analyses showed that the latency to perform the two-step task differed according to the type of test (T1-M2; linear mixed effect model: F 1,31 = 8.20, P = 0.0001). It decreased between T1 and T2 and then stayed constant between T2 and T3, T3 and M1, and M1 and M2 (Figure 3). This pattern is consistent with an increase in performance over the three last trials of the learning phase, followed by long-term memory of the task between T3, M1 and M2. Furthermore, there was no effect of the retention interval (range 26–311 days) on the latency to solve the task (linear mixed-effect model: F 1,9 = 0.03; P = 0.87; Figure 4). A power analysis revealed that the significance level would have to be raised to α = 0.76 to obtain a power of 0.8, which is still lower than the p-value we found for the effect of the retention interval (P = 0.87). This absence of increase in the time needed to solve the task with increasing retention intervals indicates good long-term memory. There was no significant effect of age (LM: P ≥ 0.18 in all cases), sex (P ≥ 0.40 in all cases) or breed (LM: P ≥ 0.22 in all cases) on any of the parameters (time to solve the task during the last trials of the learning phase or during the memory tests). 
 
 Figure 3. Latency to solve the two-step task during the training phase and memory tests. Dots represent the latency for each individual to perform the two-steps during the three last trials of the learning phase (T1 = third-to-last trial (first successful trial); T2 = second-to-last trial (second successful trial); T3 = last trial (third successful trial)) and the two memory tests (M1 = first memory test after 26–33 days of retention; M2 = second memory test after 281–311 days of retention). Lines show repeated measures of the same individual across tests. Large black squares indicate the mean latency for each test. Latencies differed between T1 and T2, but not between T2 and T3, T3 and M1 or M1 and M2 (Linear mixed effects models). Figure 4. Latency to solve the two-step task as a function of the retention interval. Individuals are indicated by different shapes. Lines show repeated measures of the same individual across test. There was no effect of the time elapsed since the last test on how quickly goats solved the task. For each memory test, all the goats that had successfully learned the task solved it within one trial and less than 2 minutes. 
 
 Although during the learning phase, goats lifted the lever up for the first time after an average of 4.4 trials, and performed the two steps for the first time after 1.7 additional trial, their performances (1 trial of 4–91 s to solve the task) over extended intervals (1–10 months) indicates that they very quickly remembered how to obtain food from the box. There was no increase in the time needed to solve the task with increasing retention intervals, suggesting that the goats retained precise information. Previous studies have shown that horses have exceptional long-term memory of 10 years for size concepts [64]. Similar findings have been reported in California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) that remember identity concepts [65], and in elephants (Loxodonta africana) that can remember family member vocalisations for at least 12 years [66]. However, those memories could be considered to be for more naturally occurring information in the environment. Our results present the first evidence for long-term memory of a highly novel and artificial food box. In a recent study, we showed that mother goats have long-term memory for the calls of their own kids (at least 13 months after separation [67]). Goats can also remember visual shapes for 42 days [68]. Here, we show that their remarkable long-term memory can be generalised across novel cognitive challenges. Finding food sources that are ephemeral and widely distributed in clumps requires more cognitive abilities to obtain than foods that are available all year and at the same locations [69]. Feral goats have colonised a large variety of novel, harsh environments worldwide, often becoming pests as a result [35]. The cognitive skills revealed in our study help explain why goats are so adaptable. 
 
 The mechanisms behind the long-term memory of the food box shown in our study are unclear. The most probable explanation would be that the process involved is recognition of the box (i.e. association of an object with one previously encountered) followed by procedural memory of the task (i.e. unconscious memory of skills), as opposed to recall, which would involve remembering how to solve the task in the absence of the box [70]. Further tests could be designed to investigate the exact mechanisms involved. In addition, comparisons between our results and cognitive skills found in wild goats would provide useful knowledge about the impact of domestication on ungulate cognition. Wild goats might be better problem solver and/or social learner than domestic goats, if the reduced natural selection pressures linked to domestication (e.g. easily available food, low or non-existent predator risk, relaxed dependency on conspecifics), compared to a wild environment, have resulted in a lower need for these cognitive abilities [21]. Alternatively, domestic goats could be better problem solver and/or social learner than wild goats if domestication results in a reduction in neophobia and thus in an increase in exploratory behavior [51,61,71].
– Goats aren't known for being the Einsteins of the animal kingdom, but they're highly adaptable to challenging environments—and that may be because they're a lot smarter than researchers had believed, Phys.org reports. Scientists in London and Switzerland gave goats what they called a "complex foraging task," per their paper published in Frontiers in Zoology: First, the animals had to pull on a rope to get at a lever. Next, they had to lift that lever to get a fruity snack, the Smithsonian reports. Nine of 12 goats tested were able to learn to do so within four tries. Two others tried to cheat using their horns, while one poor sap simply couldn't figure it out after 22 tries. Ten months later, the nine champs were given the task again. Seems they hadn't forgotten what they'd learned: They all got to the fruit within about a minute. "Our results challenge the common misconception that goats aren't intelligent animals; they have the ability to learn complex tasks and remember them for a long time," says the study's co-author. "This could explain why they are so successful in colonizing new environments, though we would need to perform a similar study with wild goats to be sure." Speaking of goat smarts, Smithsonian notes that some goats in Morocco are known to climb trees, and they're not the only animal to surprisingly do so.