How animals perceive the world around them is still a mystery to us in so many ways.

That’s true even for smart, social animals like goats, whose charisma has inspired a whole YouTube sub-genre: dozens of videos that highlight funny and cute goat moments and have racked up millions of views. Sanctuaries like Goats of Anarchy that care for neglected goats have hundreds of thousands of highly engaged followers on Instagram.

It can be tempting to anthropomorphize these expressive and gregarious animals. But in truth, we still know very little about what—and how—non-human animals think and feel. Little by little, however, our window into animal cognition may be opening.

A new study published in Frontiers in Zoology on