98 Fun Facts About Goats

What is a young goat commonly called?

A young goat is a kid, from Old Norse kið; 'nanny goat' for the adult female dates only from the 18th century and 'billy goat' from the 19th.

Which of these fibers is primarily harvested from Angora goats?

Mohair is the lustrous fleece of the Angora goat, which grows it over its whole body; cashmere comes from a different goat, merino from sheep and qiviut from muskoxen.

What is the unique shape of a goat's pupil?

Goats, like many prey animals, have horizontal, rectangular pupils. This unique shape provides them with a panoramic field of vision (320-340 degrees) to detect predators, even when their heads are down grazing.

What is a group of goats typically called?

Herd is the usual word for a group of goats; older collective nouns such as 'trip' and 'tribe' also survive in word lists, while a pride is lions, a gaggle geese and a pod whales.

Goats were among the first animals humans domesticated, mainly in which region?

The Middle East, specifically Iran, produced the oldest remains of domesticated goats, about 10,000 years old, from Ganj Dareh; DNA evidence agrees on the timing.

Which goat breed is well-known for its exceptionally long, pendulous ears?

The Nubian (Anglo-Nubian) is the long-eared breed; it was created in Britain in the late 1800s by crossing native goats with lop-eared animals shipped from India, the Middle East and North Africa.

What is the average gestation period for a female goat?

The gestation period for a female goat, known as a doe, typically ranges from 145 to 155 days, which is approximately five months.

Which wild animal of the Zagros Mountains is the likely ancestor of nearly all domestic goats?

The bezoar ibex (Capra aegagrus), a wild goat of the Zagros Mountains, is the ancestor of domestic goats; the mouflon is the wild ancestor of sheep, and the markhor a separate Central Asian species.

What is the common term for a castrated male goat?

A castrated male goat is a wether, a word that also covers castrated sheep; a steer is a castrated bull, a gelding a castrated horse and a barrow a castrated pig.

Which goat breed is famous for 'fainting', a temporary muscle stiffness caused by surprise or fear?

The Myotonic (Tennessee fainting) goat has myotonia congenita: startled, it stiffens or topples without losing consciousness. Four goats of the type were first brought to Tennessee in the 1880s.

Which dairy goat breed is known for typically producing the highest volume of milk?

The Saanen, named for the Saanental in the Bernese Oberland, is the heaviest-milking dairy breed, averaging about 838 kg of milk over a 264-day lactation; it has spread to more than eighty countries.

What is the primary classification of goats based on their eating habits?

Goats are primarily 'browsers,' meaning they prefer to eat leaves, twigs, shrubs, and woody plants, rather than just grazing on grass like cattle or sheep.

What are the fleshy appendages that dangle from each side of the neck on many dairy goats called?

The dangling neck appendages are wattles, hair-covered skin flaps with no known function that appear in both sexes; a dewlap is the loose throat skin of cattle and caruncles are the fleshy growths on a turkey's head.

What is an adult female goat commonly called?

An adult female goat is commonly referred to as a 'doe' or 'nanny goat'. 'Ewe' is a female sheep, 'sow' is a female pig, and 'hen' is a female chicken.

What is an adult male goat commonly called?

An adult male goat is commonly called a 'buck' or 'billy goat'. 'Ram' refers to a male sheep, 'boar' to a male pig, and 'stallion' to a male horse.

Unlike many other mammals, goats have how many chambers in their stomach?

Goats are ruminants, meaning they have a four-chambered stomach consisting of the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. This complex digestive system allows them to efficiently break down fibrous plant material.

What is the term for a female goat giving birth, a process that usually passes without trouble?

Kidding generally occurs uneventfully; 'farrowing' is for pigs, 'calving' for cows and 'lambing' for sheep.

Which US president's family kept a goat named Old Whiskers at the White House?

Benjamin Harrison's grandchildren kept a goat called Old Whiskers on the White House grounds in the early 1890s; it once bolted through the gates pulling their cart, with the president in pursuit.

Which of these goat breeds originated in West Africa?

The Pygmy goat descends from the West African Dwarf; animals were shipped from German zoos to American zoos between 1930 and 1960 before the National Pygmy Goat Association formed in 1975.

What is the average lifespan of a domestic goat?

A domestic goat's life expectancy is 15-18 years; difficult births can cut a doe's to 10 or 11, and the stress of going into rut each year can cut a buck's to eight to ten.

Goats have how many lower front teeth?

Like other ruminants they have no upper front teeth at all, only a hard dental pad, and anatomists still argue over whether the eight are all incisors or six incisors plus two canines.

Which mineral, crucial for goat health, is often supplemented where soils are deficient?

Selenium is an essential trace mineral for goats, vital for immune function and preventing conditions like White Muscle Disease. It is often supplemented, especially in areas where soil is deficient in selenium.

The Oberhasli dairy goat breed originated in which country?

The Oberhasli comes from Switzerland, taking its name from the Oberhasli district of the Bernese Oberland; it is a chamois-coloured dairy breed with black dorsal stripe, belly and legs.

What is the scientific subfamily to which both sheep and goats belong?

Both sheep (Ovis aries) and goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) belong to the subfamily Caprinae within the Bovidae family, indicating their close biological relationship.

What characteristic means goat's milk needs no homogenizing and sits gentler on the stomach?

Because the small fat globules stay in suspension, the cream takes days to rise; cheesemakers actually avoid homogenizing it because that ruins the curd.

Which fast-growing meat goat breed typically has a white body and a red-brown head?

The Boer goat, white-bodied with a red-brown head, was selectively bred in South Africa's Eastern Cape in the early 1900s to thrive on thorn veldt, and is used worldwide to improve meat goats.

What is the common name for the fine, downy undercoat fibre combed from certain goat breeds and sold as luxury knitwear?

Cashmere has to be dehaired to separate the fine undercoat from the coarse outer coat; the Angora goat's lustrous fleece, mohair, is a different product entirely.

What is a healthy goat's normal body temperature?

A goat's normal rectal temperature is about 103°F (39.5°C), with a healthy range of roughly 101.5-104°F; readings above that are an early sign of infection or heat stress.

How does the lactose level of goat's milk compare with that of cow's milk?

Goat's milk has about the same lactose as cow's milk, roughly 4-5%, so it gives lactose-intolerant people the same trouble; its easier-digestion reputation comes from its smaller, well-emulsified fat globules.

What is the distinctive sound a goat makes?

A goat's cry is a bleat, a word it shares with sheep; French even splits the two, using 'bêlement' for a sheep and 'béguètement' for a goat.

In ancient Greek mythology, which goat-nymph was said to have nursed the infant Zeus?

In Greek mythology, Amalthea was a goat (or a nymph who owned a goat) who nursed the infant Zeus on her milk in a cave on Crete. Her horn became the cornucopia, a symbol of abundance.

Goats in Morocco famously climb which tree to eat its fruit?

Moroccan goats climb argan trees, scrambling metres up the branches to eat the fruit; the kernels they spit out or pass are gathered for argan oil.

Which word for goat meat, promoted by the USDA from the 1920s, never caught on?

Chevon, a blend of chèvre and mouton coined in 1922 and taken up by the USDA, never caught on; in South Asia and the English-speaking Caribbean goat meat is simply called mutton.

Goats generally have how many teats on their udder?

Two teats is the norm, in contrast to cattle's four; the Boer goat is the exception and may sometimes have up to eight.

What is the term for a female goat under one year of age?

A female goat under a year old is a doeling; young dairy-breed doelings sometimes come into milk before they have ever been bred. Heifer, gilt and filly are young cattle, pigs and horses.

Besides milk and meat, Neolithic farmers valued goat dung for what use?

Dried goat dung was burned as fuel; bones, hair and sinew went into clothing, buildings and tools too, so nothing on the animal was wasted.

Which goat breed has very small or absent external ears, called 'gopher' or 'elf' ears?

The LaMancha goat breed is distinctive for its extremely short or almost non-existent external ears, a unique genetic trait that sets it apart from other dairy breeds.

What kind of terrain are wild goats and their domestic descendants best adapted to?

Steep rocky outcrops are home: goats have been photographed grazing on near-vertical dam walls, and their wild ancestor, the bezoar ibex, lives on rocky slopes from Turkey to Pakistan.

Which Swedish city's giant straw Yule goat has been burned by arsonists dozens of times?

The Gävle Goat, a giant straw Yule goat raised in the Swedish city's Castle Square every Advent since 1966, has been burned or wrecked dozens of times, starting on New Year's Eve of its very first year.

The word 'scapegoat' comes from a ritual practised by which ancient people?

The rite is the Israelites' Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16: one goat was sacrificed and a second, bearing the community's sins, was sent into the wilderness to Azazel.

Some vets advise banding male goats only after 8 weeks to reduce the risk of which later problem?

Urinary calculi: early castration halts urethral development, so stones lodge in the narrow urethra of wethers, and mineral-imbalanced diets make it worse; farmers call the blockage 'water belly'.

The scent glands at the base of a male goat's horns exist mainly to do what?

The glands exist to attract does: some does refuse to mate with a buck whose scent glands have been removed, so the smell that farmers dread is doing exactly its job.

Roughly what share of the world's annual milk supply comes from goats?

Goats supply only about 2% of the world's milk, yet a good dairy doe in her prime gives around three to four quarts a day across a ten-month lactation.

Which country was home to about 150 million of the world's goats in 2022?

India was also the top goat-milk producer that year at 6.25 million tonnes, and slaughters roughly 41 percent of its goats annually.

A 2016 study found goats gaze at humans for help, like which animal?

Dogs: the 2016 Queen Mary University of London study found goats, like dogs and horses, look to a nearby human when a reward box cannot be opened, a sign of social problem-solving.

The constellation Capricornus shows a goat with the tail of which creature?

Capricornus is the sea-goat, a goat with a fish's tail, an image inherited from Babylonian astronomy; its brightest star is Deneb Algedi, Arabic for 'tail of the goat'.

Unlike sheep, nursing goats leave their young how?

Goat kids are hidden apart, 'lying out' while the doe feeds, whereas lambs follow the ewe; mothers also usually eat the placenta, which cuts the birth scent that draws predators.

In Norse mythology, which god's chariot was pulled by two goats named Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr?

Thor cooks and eats the pair at night, then resurrects them with Mjölnir the next morning; when a farm boy cracked a bone for the marrow, one goat came back lame.

In Hindu legend, which figure was beheaded by Shiva and then restored to life with the head of a goat?

Daksha had snubbed Shiva by leaving him off the guest list for his great sacrifice; after the gods pleaded, Shiva revived him with the head of a goat.

How many pairs of chromosomes does a domestic goat have?

A domestic goat has 30 pairs of chromosomes (60 in all); sheep carry 27 pairs, one reason a sheep-goat hybrid is so rare and, when one survives, usually infertile.

What is the most common outcome when a goat gives birth?

Twins are the usual result of a goat birth, with singles and triplets also common; litters of five and even six kids have been recorded.

Which unusual phenomenon sometimes occurs in male goats?

Lactation: bucks of dairy breeds occasionally develop an udder and give milk, and unbred young does also come into milk fairly often, so the udder does not strictly wait for a pregnancy.

The US military uses live goats mainly to train which personnel?

Live-tissue training for combat medics uses anaesthetised goats to practise treating battlefield wounds; goats took the role after the Pentagon dropped its dog-wounding 'wound labs' in the 1980s amid public outcry.

Chattanooga and Spartanburg hired goats to control which invasive plant?

Kudzu, the vine that smothers whole hillsides across the southeastern US, is goat food: they strip the leaves, stems and bark that machines struggle to reach, so both cities rented herds.

The 'Tomb of the Lord of the Goats' lies in the ancient city of Ebla, in which country?

Ebla, modern Tell Mardikh, lies in north-western Syria; the tomb holds a throne decorated with bronze goat heads, and Ebla's palace archive of cuneiform tablets is among the oldest ever found.

Finnish men dressed as goats, the Nuuttipukki, traditionally visit houses on which day?

St. Knut's Day, 13 January, ends the Finnish Christmas season; the nuuttipukki goat-men wore inverted fur jackets and demanded leftover Christmas food and drink, a scarier cousin of Santa.

Which country had an estimated 2.6 million feral goats in the mid-1990s?

Australia's feral goat population was estimated at 2.6 million in the mid-1990s; goats revert to the wild readily, and with water and few predators they strip native scrub and trees from whole landscapes.

Project Isabela, finished in 2006, eradicated feral goats from islands in which archipelago?

Project Isabela removed more than 140,000 feral goats from Santiago and northern Isabela in the Galápagos, using helicopters and radio-collared 'Judas goats' to find the last survivors.

Exodus says the curtains of the tabernacle tent were made from which goat material?

Exodus 26:7 specifies eleven curtains of goats' hair for the tent over the tabernacle; a goat's horn can also replace a ram's for making a shofar.

During the rut, a male goat sprays his own urine onto which part of his body?

He sprays his forelegs and face, beard included, with his own urine, curls his lip in the flehmen response and loses his appetite; the whole display exists to make him attractive to does.

What is a goat's horn made of beneath its outer sheath?

Beneath the keratin sheath the horn is a core of living bone laced with blood vessels, which helps with thermoregulation as well as fighting; rare polycerate goats have been recorded with as many as eight horns.

Breeding two naturally hornless goats together produces a high number of what?

Intersex kids: the polled gene in goats sits next to a sex-determining region, so polled-to-polled matings yield many sterile intersex offspring, which is why breeders pair a polled goat only with a horned one.

The name of the markhor, a corkscrew-horned wild goat, literally means eater of what?

Markhor is Persian for 'snake-eater', from a belief that it hunted and ate snakes; the species is the national animal of Pakistan and was one of 72 animals on the 1976 WWF coin collection.

By the 19th century, fewer than 100 Alpine ibex survived, all in which national park?

Gran Paradiso, then a royal hunting reserve in Italy's Graian Alps, held the last Alpine ibex; every Alpine ibex alive descends from that remnant, and reintroductions later rebuilt tens of thousands across the Alps.

Which wild goat was cloned back from extinction in 2003, only to die minutes after birth?

The Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo: its last wild member, a female called Celia, died in January 2000, and the 2003 clone grown from her frozen cells lived only minutes, making it the first animal to go extinct twice.

The Walia ibex survives only in the Simien Mountains of which country?

The Walia ibex lives only in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the animals often stand on their hind legs to reach shoots of giant heath.

Protecting the kri-kri goat helped turn which Cretan ravine into a national park in 1962?

Samaria Gorge in western Crete became a national park in 1962 largely to save the kri-kri; DNA shows the kri-kri is not a wild species but a feral goat descended from early domestic stock brought to Crete in Minoan times.

North America's mountain goat is not a true goat; it belongs to which genus?

Oreamnos americanus is a goat-antelope whose nearest relatives are the chamois, gorals and takins rather than true goats; its ancestors probably crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia.

Which wild goat relative was released for sport around New Zealand's Mount Cook in 1904?

The Himalayan tahr, a shaggy goat-antelope, was released near Mount Cook in 1904 for sport hunting; it spread through the Southern Alps, where the Department of Conservation culled about 12,000 in the 2019-20 season alone.

Which species is by far the most widely distributed member of the goat genus Capra, and also the heaviest and longest?

The Siberian ibex of Central Asia is the heaviest and longest of the ten Capra species, though the markhor stands taller at the shoulder.

Which Arctic animal is more closely related to goats and sheep than to cattle?

The muskox, despite its name, is a caprine: its genus name Ovibos means 'sheep-ox', and with the takin it is the largest member of the whole goat-and-sheep subfamily; yak and bison are true cattle.

The Angora goat breed originated in which modern country?

Turkey: the Angora goat is named for Angora, the old name of Ankara, and Turkish mohair had no serious rival until the mid-19th century; the goats appeared on the Turkish 50-lira note from 1938 to 1952.

Which country supplies more than half of the world's Angora goat fleece?

South Africa, chiefly the Eastern Cape around Port Elizabeth, produces more than half of the world's mohair, with neighbouring Lesotho second; Angora goats are shorn twice a year.

Pashmina is combed from the Changthangi goat of which high-plateau Himalayan region?

Ladakh's Changthang plateau, where winter temperatures fall to -20°C and below, is what makes the Changthangi goat grow the ultra-fine undercoat that is combed out each spring as pashmina.

Which posting saw Lance Corporal William Windsor, the Royal Welsh goat, demoted in 2006?

At Episkopi in Cyprus he broke step and tried to headbutt a drummer during the Queen's 80th birthday parade; he won his stripe back three months later and retired to Whipsnade Zoo in 2009.

Britain's royal goats descend from an 1837 gift to Queen Victoria from which country's ruler?

The Shah of Persia gave Queen Victoria a herd of Kashmir goats in 1837, and since 1844 the monarch has presented an unbroken line of them to the Royal Welch Fusiliers, each one a ranking soldier rather than a mascot.

Kashmir goats from the Great Orme roamed which Welsh town's empty streets in 2020?

Llandudno's Great Orme herd wandered into the locked-down town in March 2020; numbers boomed that year because wardens could not give the contraceptive injections that normally hold the population at about 200.

WWI Canadian army goat Sergeant Bill was once court-martialled for eating what?

Bill was court-martialled for eating the battalion's nominal roll, its personnel list; he was also credited with butting three soldiers into a trench seconds before a shell landed, and is displayed at a museum in Broadview, Saskatchewan.

Bill the Goat is the live mascot of which US military school?

The Naval Academy's goat tradition comes from sailing ships, which carried goats to eat scraps and give milk; the mascot has been called Bill since the early 1900s, and a bronze Bill stands outside Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

The Navy's first goat mascot, at the 1893 Army-Navy Game, was named after which hero?

A gift from the officers of USS New York, he watched Navy win 6-3 and was kept on; the 'Bill' name only arrived in the early 1900s.

A goat was the first creature to circle the globe twice, sailing with Wallis and then whom?

She sailed with Wallis on the Dolphin (1766-68) and then with Captain Cook on the Endeavour (1768-71) to give fresh milk; on her return she was pensioned off, the first creature to lap the globe twice.

The 1945 'Curse of the Billy Goat' was placed on which baseball team?

Tavern owner William Sianis was thrown out of Wrigley Field with his goat during the 1945 World Series and cursed the Chicago Cubs, who did not win another pennant for 71 years.

What was the name of the pet goat ejected from Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series?

The curse was finally lifted in 2016, on the 46th anniversary of Sianis's death, when the team beat the Dodgers for the pennant.

Goat Simulator (2014) was developed by which Swedish studio?

Coffee Stain Studios of Skövde built it from a joke prototype made in an internal game jam, and deliberately left in harmless bugs because they were funnier than fixes.

What is the name of the goat the player controls in Goat Simulator?

The goat is Pilgor; licking an object sticks her tongue to it so you can drag it around, and a ragdoll button hands the whole animal over to the physics engine.

In Norse myth, the goat Heiðrún feeds the einherjar in Valhalla with what from her udders?

Mead flows from Heiðrún's udders, filling a vat each day for the einherjar; she grazes on the tree Læraðr, and in the Hyndluljóð her name is hurled at Freyja as an insult.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a fairy tale collected in which country?

Asbjørnsen and Moe published it in the 1840s; the first English version appeared in George Webbe Dasent's 1859 translation.

Peter the goatherd and his blind grandmother appear in which 1880 children's novel?

Johanna Spyri's Heidi, published in two parts in 1880-81, sends the orphan up the alp each day with Peter the goatherd; it is set above the village of Maienfeld in Graubünden.

In Albee's Tony-winning play, architect Martin Gray falls in love with a goat named what?

The goat is Sylvia: the full title, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, borrows the song 'Who Is Silvia?' from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona; the play was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2003.

The 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats was based on a book by which journalist?

Jon Ronson's 2004 book investigated real US Army attempts at psychic warfare, including Jim Channon's 'First Earth Battalion' manual, which the film renamed the New Earth Army.

Goats Head Soup (1973) is an album by which band?

The Rolling Stones recorded it at Dynamic Sound in Kingston, Jamaica, while living as tax exiles from Britain; its single 'Angie' hit number one in the US.

Which singer-songwriter founded the indie folk band the Mountain Goats?

John Darnielle was for years the band's only member, recording straight onto a boombox cassette deck; the name comes from a lyric in a Screamin' Jay Hawkins song.

The Goat occupies which position in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac?

The Goat is the eighth sign, after the Horse and before the Monkey; the Chinese word yáng covers both goats and sheep, so the sign is read as a goat in southern China and a sheep in the north.

Capella, whose name means 'little goat', is the brightest star in which constellation?

Auriga, the Charioteer: classical astronomers saw Capella as the goat that suckled Zeus riding on the Charioteer's shoulder, and Bedouin stargazers made the whole constellation a herd of goats.

The Sun is directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn during which event?

At the December solstice the Sun stands overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn, named when the Sun then sat in Capricornus; precession has since shifted it into Sagittarius, and the tropic itself creeps north about 15 metres a year.

Which French occultist drew the goat-headed 'Sabbatic Goat' image of Baphomet in 1856?

Éliphas Lévi published the Sabbatic Goat in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie; the name Baphomet is far older, appearing in the 1307 Inquisition transcripts against the Knights Templar and, earlier still, in a 1098 crusader's letter.

The word 'tragedy' comes from Greek roots that literally mean what?

'Goat song': tragōidia joins tragos (goat) and ōidē (song); a billy goat may have been the prize for the best chorus, and the Parian Marble records that 'the billy goat was established as prize' for Thespis.

The goat-legged god Pan was first worshipped in which region of Greece?

Pan's cult began in Arcadia, the rugged heartland of the Peloponnese, and reached Athens only after the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC; the Romans folded him into their rustic god Faunus.