Life in groups requires social and sometimes selfless behavior. As a new study now suggests, goats are apparently capable. In an experiment, the animals provided other group members with food without getting anything. But not every goat was equally generous.
To help each other form the basis for social interaction. But not only we humans do good to each other and sometimes behave selflessly. For example, elephants have already been observed how they comfort other group members and rats as they free fellow species without consideration from cages. However, there are numerous other animal species in which such old -truist behavior have so far hardly been examined – including farm animals, although they often live in social organizations and would therefore actually be predestined for it.
A false apple tree as a moral gate
Annkatrin Pahl from the research institute for farm animal biology (FBN) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and her colleagues have now at least partially closed this knowledge gap. In a new study, they offered house goats the chance to shine with selfless behavior. For this purpose, the team constructed a test apparatus called “Fake Apple Tree” (“false apple tree”), which is inspired by the natural climbing behavior of the goats.
If a goat climbs on a pedestal – the branch of the tree – on the other hand, a feed dispenser moves down with delicious pasta. When the goat leaves your podium to go snacking, the feed dispenser jumps up again. Climbing onto the podium, the goat itself does not bring any snacks. At most, it can help a second goat on the test meadow. But would she really do that?
Goats help each other – at least sometimes
In fact: With two thirds of the jumps, the podium was attempts by the respective goats to get the pasta themselves. But at least a third of the actions interpreted Pahl and her team as a selfless act to give goat number two a snack. “Our results suggest that prosocial tendencies also occur in farm animals such as goats if the test conditions are adapted to their natural behaviors,” reports senior author Jan Langbein.
Interestingly, not every goat was equally generous. Six out of ten experimental animals were more selfish than altruistic, in three the ratio was balanced and the selfless vein only prevailed in one goat. “Food search is complex, and therefore selfish food intake could be the best way to ensure your own survival, especially if it is unsure whether the rewarded the prosocial act afterwards,” write Pahl and her colleagues.
But goats are not loners in nature. They live in dynamic social structures in which groups dissolve regularly and reorganize them. Such systems require a high level of social adaptability and at least occasionally a certain level of selflessness, the team emphasizes. In order to better understand this dynamic, it would be interesting to research in the future as to whether the relationship between selfish and prosocial actions will change if the goats have the choice to either reward themselves or themselves and a fellow species.
Source: Research Institute for Livelihood Biology (FBN); Specialist articles: Royal Society Open Science, DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.250556
