Concurrent recall of serially learned visual discrimination problems in dwarf goats (Capra hircus)

Studies of cognitive ability in farm animals are valuable, not only because they provide indicators of the commonality of comparative influence, but understanding farm animal cognition may also aid in management and treatment procedures. Here, eight dwarf goats (Capra hircus) learned a series of 10 visual four-choice discriminations using an automated device that allowed individual ad lib. access to the test setup while staying in a familiar environment and normal social setting. The animals were trained on each problem for 5 days, followed by concurrent testing of the current against the previous problem. Once all 10 problems had been learned, they were tested concurrently over the course of 9 days. In initial training, all goats achieved criterion learning levels on nearly all problems within 2 days and under 200 trials. Concurrently presenting the problems trained in adjacent sessions did not impair performance on either problem relative to single-problem learning. Upon concurrent presentation of all 10 previously learned problems, at least half were well-remembered immediately. Although this test revealed a recency effect (later problems were better remembered), many early-learned problems were also well-retained, and 10-item relearning was quite quick. These results show that dwarf goats can retain multiple-problem information proficiently and can do so over periods of several weeks. From an ecological point of view, the ability to form numerous associations between visual cues offered by specific plants and food quality is an important pre-grazing mechanism that helps goats exploit variation in vegetation and graze selectively.