A mother goat is able to pick out her own baby from its voice alone by the time the kid is just five days old.
Researchers from University of London played kids' bleats to female goats and studied their responses. They were surprised to find that the animals were able to pick out their own kids' voices.
"A mother and the kid rely a lot on smell to recognize one another and, in the wild, during the first week of their lives, the animals hide in grass and don't call much. It's a strategy they use to avoid enemies," Dr Elodie Briefer, who led the research, explained to BBC News. "The mother calls to the kids when she wants them to come and feed, so we expected that kids would recognize the mothers' voices." In fact, this was the case for deer, which also use this hiding strategy, although they do not belong to the same family of species as goats.
She and her team recorded and played back young kids' calls to the female goats and recorded their responses. She explained, "Even when the calls came from kids that are five to six days old, we could see the mothers responding more to the voices of their own babies." Hearing the voices of their own kids, the females would look towards the speaker that the sound was coming from, moving around and calling in response.
The scientists say that understanding how goats behave and communicate is very important. "This helps us understand just how smart these animals are," said Dr Briefer. "Farmers might be able to change their way to raise goats considering this natural behavior."
