When we think about intelligent animals, farm species aren’t usually the first to spring to mind. We may picture tool-using ...

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service sheep and goat program specialist and assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science, San Angelo. “Sheep and goats both have fairly seasonal ...

But my recent research suggests that sheep, goats and alpacas ... the positions of the cups so the animal had to mentally track the hidden reward. The goats again excelled at this task.

Of the three, goats came out on top—outperforming both sheep and alpacas in tasks testing memory and problem-solving. I set up a simple experiment. Each animal had to locate food hidden in one ...