ManyGoats1 - Assessing the impact of human attention on avoidance distance in goats [Stage 1 Registered Report]
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Most studies on goat behaviour have been conducted on groups of animals characterised by specific individual factors and living conditions. Due to the contextual idiosyncrasies of individual testing sites, the results of individual studies could only be valid for a particular group of animals and thus may not always be reproducible. However, robust results are necessary to ensure that outcomes are broadly relevant; this is vital if such results are intended to contribute to improved husbandry and management conditions, and ultimately better animal welfare. Multi-site approaches can offer a resource-efficient opportunity to tackle this problem and increase the external validity of scientific results. For this reason, we established the ManyGoats initiative. With ManyGoats, we aim to increase the generalisability of findings in research on goat behaviour and cognition by implementing identical experimental protocols and simultaneously testing animals across different facilities around the world. In this first proof-of-concept study (ManyGoats1), we will focus on goats' behavioural responses to different human attentional states during an Avoidance Distance test. We hypothesise that the attentional state of a human approaching a goat will affect their avoidance distance, where subjects will show a greater avoidance distance when approached by attentive humans compared to inattentive humans.
