News You Can't Use: Goats Prefer to Interact with Humans who Look Happy

If you're like most healthy human units you probably spend a lot of time wondering how you can improve your interactions with goats. I remember when I was twelve my friends and I would run up on a goat kept by a local farmer, wave our arms and shout or whatever and than run off. What I'm trying to establish is that I'm an expert at wasting the precious gift of life. Fortunately, decades later, a solution has been reached by lying scientists. It turns out you can improve your time around the cloven-hoofed can-chewers that same way you connect with your fellow wise, wise men: by walking around with a rictus smile carved into your greasy bloated face.

Goats recognise and are attracted to happy humans, a study has found.

I'm not going to make the obvious joke, so don't even ask. The word choice in the very first sentence isn't helping, obviously.

Much like us, they seem to be drawn to smiling faces. But don’t expect to make friends with a goat if you scowl at it.

Time to win over this goat by making scary faces. Why isn't this working?

Scientists showed 20 goats unfamiliar photos of the same human face looking happy or angry.

A football team that went 4-8 and this nonsense is what your student loan debt is funding.

The research, conducted at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in Kent, demonstrated that the goats preferred to interact with the smiling face.

So we're going to enter a goat sanctuary and hold up pictures of faces. Sold! Here's your grant money.

Released from a distance of four metres (13ft) they generally made straight for the happy image, exploring it curiously with their snouts.

Snout exploration is a good basis for any quality relationship, just like how snout-counting is the best way to elect our rulers.

This suggested that goats use the left hemisphere of their brains to process positive emotion, said the team from Queen Mary, University of London.

I mean, sure! Anything could be going on here.

Dr Alan McElligott, who led the research, said: “The study has important implications for how we interact with livestock and other species, because the abilities of animals to perceive human emotions might be widespread and not just limited to pets.”

Now when you're doing backbreaking and disgusting agricultural labor we'll force you to smile the whole time for the benefit of the livestock.

Co-author Dr Christian Nawroth, a member of the Queen Mary team now based at the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany, said: “Here we show for the first time that goats do not only distinguish between these expressions, but they also prefer to interact with happy ones.”

Scratch a German and find precision.

 Now with scientifically accurate human emotion interaction DLC.

Sheep are known to possess a powerful visual memory and an ability to recognise human faces from photographs. 

Being called "sheeple" is actually a complement on your visual memory.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Elementary School Pilot Program Replaces Detention With Yoga

Faced with the growing problem of our grammar schools becoming white line nightmares we've been offered two excellent solutions to chose from: a .44 magnum concealed in every instructor's lesson plan or hippie nonsense that's so obviously wrong it can't get even get a fair hearing. When making the movie "Class of 1984" a reality is considered a superior option to whatever pedagogical techniques you're hocking it might be time to pack it in, but I'm nothing if not fair and balanced so let's take a look.

A special grant from Denver Public Schools has allowed Doull Elementary to pilot a program where they trade out detention for Yoga.

Once they see that we have no power to actually punish the pathology and we're even willing to reward it, they're bound to become respectful good citizens.

“I teach children the practice of yoga and meditation,” said Trinidad Heffron.

I was a troubled youth who was put on the right path by a midnight yoga league.

For Miss Triny, as the kids call her, and for the school, this is about reevaluating the way they discipline, not taking it easy on the kids.

In my delusional mind this is all very defensible.

“Yoga and meditation, they’re not necessarily an easy practice. I would say it’s challenging, but useful,” said Heffron.
 
The ability to perform a heavily watered-down version of Hindu mysticism is what most employers are looking for.

“What’s more important? Punishing kids for a mistake they made or teaching them some skills that they can actually use in life to not make the same mistakes again,” said school psychologist Carly Graeber.

Hey, another false dichotomy!

“You can do yoga and you can practice yoga anywhere, any time and maybe when they are riding a bike, they can take deep breath and go, ‘Oh, I’m using my yoga breath,” said Heffron.

We're teaching you how to breathe. Look out, China.

I thought we'd be doing "Greatest of all Time" yoga, not this.

“Math and reading and science and social studies are all so important to us here, but also we’re really in the business of teaching kids social and emotional skills that they can use for their lives, so how to solve problems, how to deal with complicated feelings and things like that,” said Graeber.

We haven't completely given up, honest.

And so every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 3pm you’ll find the kids at detention, practicing mindfulness and hopefully learning how to stay out of trouble. 

My awesome hoping powers should fix everything.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.  

News You Can't Use: Goats are as Loving and Clever as Dogs, Say Smitten Scientists

We're definitely living in the age of the goat. First everyone's favorite can-eating symbol for the hell-bound enemies of God became synonymous with "The Greatest of All Time." Then a goofy video game, the highest honor anyone or anything can aspire too. As if that isn't enough, now the science that we all freaking love because having intense affection for a process is spiritually healthy has determined that nature's garbage disposal is in fact every bit as "loving" and intelligent as that other animal you allow to live in your house and ascribe human traits to for some reason.

They may seem an unusual candidate for the title of man’s best friend, but scientists have suggested that goats could rival dogs in forming an emotional bond with their owners.

After years of staring at goats, this is our amazing conclusion.

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London aim to prove that goats are much cleverer than previously thought and interact with people in a similar way to pets, having trodden a path of domestication for 10,000 years.

Well, it was that or try to cure cancer. We stand by our selection.

Their latest experiment, documented in Biological Letters, showed that goats will gaze imploringly at their owners when they are struggling to complete a task, a trait common in dogs but not wolves, for example, who have never learned how to co-exist with humans.

I think I'd rather hang out with the team of scientists that studies wolves, primarily by engaging in the last good fight against them.

The team has also demonstrated that goats can work out how to break into a sealed box using levers, a task used to gauge intelligence in apes.  

We tried this task on college students, but after an hour the box was still unopened and everyone was crying and begging for a safe space and for the government to come and open it for them. Better stick with apes and goats for this one.

“Goats gaze at humans in the same way as dogs do when asking for a treat that is out of reach,” said Dr Christian Nawroth, one of the study’s authors.

I spent countless hours exchanging loving gazes with cloven hoofed animals. Science!

In many countries, including Italy, and Germany the phrase “as stupid as a goat” is used as an insult.
 
In fairness the more correct translation of the German phrase is "As inefficient and lacking in will as a can-eating swine dog with horns."

“We know that in some areas goats are as intelligent as dogs, but there has been a lot more work done on dog behaviour and we are really just scratching the surface with goats.”

It's more likely to eat your slippers than fetch them, but it knows what it's doing.

“If we can show that they are more intelligent, then hopefully we can bring in better guidelines for their care,” Dr  McElligott said.

Why are all fudging scientists liars?

 The big brains of the animal kingdom.

In the most recent experiment the team trained goats to remove a lid from a box to receive a reward. In the final test they made the box impossible to open and recorded the goat’s reaction.

Someone is getting paid to mess with goats. Let this sink in for awhile.

The bemused goats turned towards their owners in a pleading manner, clearly asking for help in getting to the treat.

"I thought we were friends, baaaaa."

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.