Life Sciences Commons^™

Judgement Bias In Goats (Capra Hircus): Investigating The Effects Of Human Grooming, Luigi Baciadonna, Christian Nawroth, Alan G. Mcelligott

Emotion Collection

Animal emotional states can be investigated by evaluating their impact on cognitive processes. In this study, we used a judgement bias paradigm to determine if shortterm positive human-animal interaction (grooming) induced a positive affective state in goats. We tested two groups of goats and trained them to discriminate between a rewarded and a non-rewarded location over nine training days. During training, the experimental group (nD9) was gently groomed by brushing their heads and backs for five min over 11 days (nine training days, plus two testing days, total time 55 min). During training, the control group (nD10) did not experience …