Goats are known for being adorable creatures who make humans smile simply by being cute. Now, it’s been revealed that goats can actually tell when humans are smiling, and that making people happy brings them great joy.

A research team made up of scientists from U.K, Brazil, and Germany just concluded that goats greatly prefer happy faces to angry ones.

The researchers decided that they wanted to figure out if domesticated goats could distinguish human facial expressions at all. Though animals like goats have fewer muscles than humans, they still have facial expressions as well as other ways of expressing emotion.

The researchers wanted to see if goats good read human expressions, even though they aren’t bred to be companion animals. In going about this, the experts showed the goats two images of an unfamiliar human, one with a happy face and the other looking angry.

To complete this study, the researchers used 35 goats who had already spent time around humans. When the photos were placed in the goats’ enclosure, it quickly became clear that the animals preferred to be near and spend more time interacting with the happy photo.

After multiple trials that saw the researchers switching up the photos each time, they found that regardless of the person’s age or gender, goats preferred humans with happy faces.

It turns out that animals that don’t have a long history of domestication can still figure out when a human is happy or sad. It should be noted that the goats used in this study are cared for in a goat sanctuary, so they are used to being around humans. The next set of trials has already been scheduled to take place with goats who have not had much interaction with humans at all.

Even so, it’s nice to see that goats are happy when us humans are happy!