ACTA VETERINARIA ET ZOOTECHNICA SINICA ›› 2018, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (11): 2384-2393.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2018.11.009

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The Difference between White Cashmere Goats and Merino Sheep in Cognitive Abilities for Visual and Spatial Discriminations

QIU Xiao-yan, CHEN Yi-ke, XIAO Xiong, LING Wen-hui, WANG Ming-yu, LI Yue-min*   

  1. College of Animal Science & Technology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
  • Received:2018-01-08 Online:2018-11-23 Published:2019-01-23

Abstract:

The present study aimed to assess the cognitive capacity for color and space of White Cashmere goats as well as their comparison with Chinese Merino sheep. The cognitive function of 6 White Cashmere goats and 6 Chinese Merino sheep with similar age (about 8 months old) and body weight were tested by the visual discriminations and reversal test and spatial maze Y-test and reversal test methods in this study. The results showed that the animals in the two groups did not reach the correct rate of 75% in the 48 tests of color simple cognitive recognition in this study, therefore, the animals in the two groups did not learn to recognize the color easily in this experiment, but they all learned the cognitive recognition for the left and right space and the reversal recognition, and there was significant difference between the two groups (P<0.05). The group of White Cashmere goats performed better in reverse spatial discrimination, the faster learning and fewer mistakes made. These results suggested that, compared with sheep, under the more complex environment, goats could establish the correct left and right spatial cognition recognition more quickly. This study explored the cognitive recognition behavior of sheep and goat, and provided important reference for the study of the correlation between the sheep and goats and their cognitive learning ability.

Key words: cognitive recognition, color visual discrimination, spatial discrimination, goats, sheep

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