Are Goats Smart? Memory, Puzzle-Solving and Reading Human Faces

Are goats smart? Yes, by the tests that exist, though no one has measured a goat IQ. In a 2014 study, 9 of 12 goats learned a two-step puzzle box in about 12 trials on average. After intervals of up to 10 months they solved it again within two minutes. They did not learn faster by watching another goat.

Below: what each study tested, why goats seem to learn alone rather than from each other, how they do against sheep, and what is still unknown. New here: the 10-month memory came with no sign of social learning, which cuts against the idea that clever animals always learn by watching others.

Key takeaways

• There is no goat IQ. IQ compares a person with a norm group of people, and no such group or test exists for goats.
• Memory: 9 of 12 goats learned a two-step food box, on average within 12 trials, and solved it within two minutes after up to 10 months (Briefer et al., 2014).
• Social learning: goats that watched a demonstrator learned no faster than goats that did not (4 observers, 3 controls).
• People: goats gaze at a person during an unsolvable task, and gaze sooner and longer when the person faces them (Nawroth et al., 2016). They also prefer happy human faces (2018).
• Sheep: in a detour test, 21 goats adjusted to a changed gap sooner than 28 sheep (Raoult et al., 2021).

Are goats smart, and do they have an IQ?

Goats are smart in the ways studies have tested, but they have no IQ. IQ compares one person with a large sample of people of the same age, and no such norm group or test exists for goats.

So any “goat IQ” you see online is a joke or a guess. Scientists test one skill at a time instead: memory, problem-solving, social learning and reading people. This guide follows the same approach. For other animals tested one skill at a time, see our guides on sheep, cows, pigs and horses.

How good is a goat's memory?

Very good for one task. Briefer and colleagues (Frontiers in Zoology, 2014) found that goats solved a puzzle box within two minutes after intervals of up to 10 months.

The researchers tested 12 adult goats at a sanctuary in Kent, UK. The box held food behind a two-step lock. Step 1: pull a lever out with the lips or teeth using a rope. Step 2: lift the lever with the mouth. Food then dropped into a bowl. Nine of the 12 goats learned the task, on average within 12 trials.

Those nine goats were tested again after retention intervals from 1 month to 9 or 10 months. They solved the box within two minutes after intervals of up to 10 months. The authors say they know of no earlier report of long-term memory for a task of this kind in any species. That is a claim about the literature they searched, not about all animals.

Can goats solve puzzles and learn from each other?

Goats solve puzzles alone. In the same study they showed no sign of learning from each other, though only four goats watched a demonstrator and three did not.

The authors read this as individual learning, not social learning. They had expected a clever, social species to learn by watching. They suggest instead that goat cognition, and perhaps that of hoofed animals in general, is driven more by foraging in harsh places, on plants that are hard to reach and process, than by life in a group. That would also fit why goats colonise new environments so well.

Treat it as one small study. The goats lived at a sanctuary, had been used in earlier experiments on emotions and temperament, and four observers is too few to rule out a small effect.

Do goats read human faces and voices?

They read faces and posture, and they ask people for help. Voices are less clear: the voice study we read used goats’ own calls, not human speech (Baciadonna et al., Current Zoology, 2019).

The 2016 authors say the gazing shows similarities with the behaviour of companion animals such as dogs and horses. They suggest domestication shaped communication with people more widely than was believed. The pointing study adds a caution: goats did not improve over time, and the authors say they may rely on local enhancement, meaning they go where the hand is nearest, rather than on the meaning of the gesture.

Are goats smarter than sheep, dogs or cows?

Goats beat sheep on one flexibility test. We found no study that ranks them against dogs or cows.

Raoult and colleagues (Royal Society Open Science, 2021) tested 21 goats and 28 sheep on a detour. Animals walked around a barrier through a gap, then the gap moved to the other end. Both species slipped at first. Goats recovered from the second changed trial on, and sheep only in the fourth. The authors link this to feeding: goats browse patchy food, while sheep graze. One task cannot make goats the smarter species, as our guide on whether sheep are smart shows.

We found no head-to-head test with dogs, and our cow IQ guide reports the only wider comparison we found: a 1981 maze test, described second-hand, in which cows did well against dogs, pigs, sheep and goats. Dogs have simply been tested on many more tasks. See our dog IQ guide for that evidence.

What does a goat's brain look like next to a human's?

We found no published count of the neurons in a goat’s brain, so we make no brain comparison. For scale, an adult human brain holds about 86 billion neurons, as our human brain facts page explains.

The goat authors note that domestication often shrinks brains, which made it fair to ask whether goats had lost mental skill. Their results suggest domestication has not dulled goats’ physical cognition. A small brain is a weak guide to skill. Our smartest animals study ranks the animals that do have published counts and scores, and our report on the smartest land animal shows how hard such rankings are.

What do we still not know about goat intelligence?

• The samples are small: 12 goats in the memory study, 4 observers, and 21 goats against 28 sheep in the detour test.
• Most studies come from a few research groups and sites, so independent replication would add weight.
• The tests used food rewards, so hunger, motivation and eyesight shape the results.
• No goat IQ exists, and we found no neuron count, so any ranking of goats among animals is a guess.
• Whether goats understand human speech is untested in the studies we read.

If you want a number for yourself, take the IQ test. It is built and normed for people.

Quick answers

• Are goats smart? Yes, at learning a task alone and remembering it. No goat IQ exists.
• How smart are goats? Nine of 12 learned a two-step puzzle box in about 12 trials, and solved it within two minutes after up to 10 months.
• Do goats learn from each other? Not in that study: goats that watched a demonstrator learned no faster.
• Are goats smarter than sheep? On one detour test, goats adjusted sooner. No study ranks them overall.
• Can goats read human faces? They prefer happy faces and gaze at people during a problem, with limits.

The bottom line

Goats are smart in the ways a browsing animal needs: they work out a hard lock alone, remember the answer for months and look to people when stuck. The weakest points are social learning, which the one study found no sign of, and the small samples. More in our animal series: are raccoons smart and are mice smart.

Sources

• Briefer EF, Haque S, Baciadonna L, McElligott AG (2014). Goats excel at learning and remembering a highly novel cognitive task. Frontiers in Zoology 11:20.
• Nawroth C, Brett JM, McElligott AG (2016). Goats display audience-dependent human-directed gazing behaviour in a problem-solving task. Biology Letters 12:20160283.
• Nawroth C, McElligott AG (2017). Human head orientation and eye visibility as indicators of attention for goats. PeerJ 5:e3073.
• Nawroth C, Albuquerque N, Savalli C, Single MS, McElligott AG (2018). Goats prefer positive human emotional facial expressions. Royal Society Open Science 5:180491.
• Nawroth C, Martin ZM, McElligott AG (2020). Goats follow human pointing gestures in an object choice task. Frontiers in Psychology 11:915.
• Raoult CMC, Osthaus B, Hildebrand ACG, McElligott AG, Nawroth C (2021). Goats show higher behavioural flexibility than sheep in a spatial detour task. Royal Society Open Science 8:201627.
• Baciadonna L, Nawroth C, Briefer EF, McElligott AG (2019). Perceptual lateralization of vocal stimuli in goats. Current Zoology.
• Photo: Blaise Mann, “Domestic Goat 1 Germany – State of Hesse”, Wikimedia Commons, CC0. The goat shown is not one of the animals in these studies.