Touchscreen Tasks for Cognitive Testing in Domestic Goats (Capra hircus): A Pilot Study Using Odd-Item Search...

The cognition of large farm animals is important for understanding how cognitive abilities are shaped by evolution and domestication. Valid testing methods are needed with the development of cognitive studies in more species. Here, a step-by-step method for training four naïve domestic goats to use a touchscreen in cognitive tests is described. The goats made accurate touches smoothly after training. Follow-up tests were conducted to confirm that they could do cognitive tests on a touchscreen. In the pilot test of odd-item search, all the goats had above-chance level performances in some conditions. In the subsequent odd-item search tasks using multiple novel stimulus sets, one goat could achieve the criterion and complete several stages, and the results showed a learning effect. These suggest a potential ability to learn the rule of odd-item search. Not all goats could pass the criteria, and there were failures in the transfer, indicating a perceptual strategy rather than using the odd-item search rule. The experiment confirmed that goats could use the touchscreen testing system for cognitive tasks and demonstrated their approaches in tackling this problem. We also hope that these training methods will help future studies training and testing naïve animals.