Goat facts

• Goats were probably the first domesticated livestock animal, according to the fossil record, and have spread far beyond their region of origin in the Middle East.¹
• There are several hundreds of breeds of goat all over the world, reared for milk, meat, skins or fibres, such as cashmere.²
• Goats have very adventurous palates. They taste-test a much wider variety of vegetation than sheep and are known as ‘browsers’ rather than grazers.³
• Goats have very sensitive and adaptable muzzles, which can manipulate around thorny, noxious or hard-to-eat foods.⁴
• Goats have rectangular pupils, giving them a 320-340 degree vision allowing them to spot predators without moving their heads.⁵
• Goats can climb near vertical surfaces thanks to their uniquely structured hooves with soft pads and split toes that grip rock with remarkable precision.⁶
• One of the most famous goat species - the mountain goat - is no goat at all! It belongs to the genus Oreamnos and is more closely related to antelopes.⁷ 

Goats are herbivorous mammals that have been domesticated around the world. They are part of the Bovidae family, alongside gazelles, African antelopes, bison, sheep and cattle.

In this family, they stand out for their gregarious attitudes. Compared to sheep, they behave more independently-minded and several studies have found that they are curious and highly reactive to human behaviour, which makes them fan-favourites on farmyards and the internet.⁸

Goats are ruminants, meaning they have four stomachs, which they used to digest the tough vegetation that makes up their diets. Across the genus, they come in a variety of sizes. From tiny African pygmy goats, with shoulders the height of a bowling pin, to large Boers, which can reach the height of a kitchen counter and the weight of a full-grown lionness, goats have been bred to satisfy different livestock needs.⁹

Goats are related to sheep (Ovis aries) and share some similar facial features. The two species both have rectangular pupils and a similar mouth structure. Goats can almost always be distinguished, however, by their narrower muzzles and short tails that point upwards. Many goat species have horns, while some species have beards and wattles – small, thumb-shaped tissues that hang under the throat. The function of wattles is still under debate, as they have no clear evolutionary purpose.¹⁰

Goats now live all over the world besides Antarctica, however, this hasn’t always been the case. Their journey around the world started approximately 10,000 years ago in a region called the ‘Fertile Crescent’ in the Middle East, when they were one of the very first animals to be domesticated by humans.¹¹

Since domestication began, humans have spread this versatile species well beyond their native range and ultimately all over the world. Selective breeding by humans combined with their natural adaptability allows goats to be flexible and resilient to most weather and geographical extremes. Often domestic goats re-establish themselves in the wild, creating large populations of feral goats in countries Australia, Great Britain, Lebanon, Madagascar and Cuba (to name a few!)¹²

There are now more than 300 distinct breeds of domestic goat, many of which are specially bred for either meat, milk or for the production of fibres such as cashmere, which is made from the soft undercoat of cashmere goats native to the Gobi Desert and central Asia.¹³

Today, there are approximately 1 billion goats worldwide._¹⁴ Wild goats, meanwhile, can be found in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. They prefer rocky areas, mountains, deserts, shrubland and forests.

The tell-tale beards are the first clue! Goats are related to sheep, but as well as tufty chins, they differ in appearance, behaviour and diet. Domestic goats are generally smaller than domestic sheep. They have hair – as opposed to wool – and their tails are often upright.

Apart from their appearance, goats differ from sheep in their eating habits. Sheep spend much of the day grazing on grass, where goats explore shrubs and more gnarly forage at pasture edges. It is possibly for this reason that goats have a more investigative and solo nature than other livestock.¹⁵ They are nature’s escape artists, and are often found outside of fences meant to contain them!

Because they have a varied diet, being curious and exploring their environment for different types of food is likely a beneficial trait.¹⁶ Their natural wanderlust and climbing ability makes it hard to keep them inside of fences, and they are more likely to become separated from a herd than sheep. When sensing an enemy, goats are also more likely to face a threat head-on, where sheep have a flocking behaviour.¹⁷

In recent years, scientists have argued that goats are intelligent animals. It is challenging to measure animal cognition, but scientists use a few metrics as guidelines. Like many intelligent species, goats live in complex social structures and are shown to have loud and active communication.¹⁸

Another sign of intelligence is that a goat can follow another’s gaze – or line of eyesight. Studies have found that they are also able to follow human lines of eyesight as well.¹⁹

Their bleats and contact calls “contain information about age, sex and body size, of the producer,” says Elodie Briefer, principal investigator of the Behavioural Ecology group at the University of Copenhagan.²⁰ All these factors allow goats to distinguish themselves as individuals, while also broadcasting their membership to a group. Similar communication is seen in other smart species like crows, dolphins and humans.

Briefer’s studies have also provided evidence that goats have sharp long-term memories. Goats can remember the solutions to solve complex puzzles for 10 months, and mothers can recognise their kid's bleats even a year after separation.²¹

Goats have a complex social life and tend to enact dominance in their herd more than sheep. They live in “fission-fusion” societies, which means a big herd will split during the day to eat and explore and before coming back together at night.²²

Typically, every group of goats establishes a social hierarchy led by a dominant female, known as a “herd queen”. The dominant queen is the de facto leader. She is generally the oldest and smartest doe who decides what to eat and who gets to eat it first. In a mixed herd, there is also a top buck, who oversees the protection of the herd and gets to breed with all the does.²³

Goats that are higher ranked in the social ladder express dominance over one another. To do this, a dominant goat lowers its head and points its horns at the subordinate goat, in an aggressive stance. If the lower goat accepts the challenge, the two will lock horns repeatedly until they have established a winner.²⁴

Generally speaking, goats do “get along” with humans – especially if they are socialized with people from a young age. Goats are known to be intelligent and curious, and domestic goat seek out attention and affection from their owners.

In recent years, scientists have committed to investigating whether goats will intentionally communicate with humans. One study has shown that goats, will look to humans (much in the way dogs do) if they are trying to get a treat that is out of reach.²⁵

“We already know that goats are smarter than their reputation suggests, but results show how they can communicate and interact with their human handlers even though they were not domesticated as pets or working animals” said Dr Alan McElligott, Associate Professor in Animal Behaviour at the City University of Hong Kong.

Studies have also found that domestic goats are able to distinguish between certain human emotions by such as sadness and joy by observing our facial expressions. They can also distinguish emotions through the sound of a human voice.²⁶

Wild goats evolved in mountainous and rugged habitats, so their physiology and behaviour adapted accordingly.

To escape potential predators and to find food, goats instincts drove them to explore vertical terrain. To become proficient climbers, goats evolved strong leg muscles to climb up steep cliffs and even trees.²⁷ Some domestic species can jump to heights of more than three feet.²⁸ Their small, flexible hooves allow them to find purchase on the narrowest of ledges.

A goat’s hoof is special designed to help them climb – they are split into two claws, or toes, both with a hard outer shell. The toes’ inner pads have a texture that provides additional grip on rocks and slippery terrain. Since they can operate independently (like a human’s middle and ring fingers) goats use their toes to grasp onto narrow surfaces or splay them out to increase their contact area.²⁹ Like a rodent’s teeth, goat the hard out material of a goat hoof keeps growing, so regular contact with rock and rough material is needed to wear them down.³⁰

While goats are good climbers, they are not as comfortable around water.

Goats can swim, but they seem to prefer not to. Goat handlers have observed that they rarely swim - and will intentionally avoid water - unless swimming is absolutely necessary to access food, or to escape a predator, for example.³¹

Though goats are capable swimmers when necessary, scientists speculate that avoiding water helps them avoid getting sick. If their coats get wet or contaminated coats, it could impact goats’ ability to resist cold temperatures.³² For similar reasons, most goat species will seek shelter in the rain. In what is likely related behaviour, most goat species also prefer to take shelter from the rain.

Across the world, there are many cases where domestic goat breeds escaped from captivity, forming large feral populations. Such populations can disturb the natural balance through overgrazing.³³ While they are not native to these environments, feral goat populations often thrive, living in an area long enough for people to view them as “part of nature”.³⁴ One example is in the Great Orme near Llandudno, Wales, where residents have embraced the descendants of escaped Kashmiri goats as quirky, local mascots.³⁵

There are nine species of true wild goats belonging to the capra genus, many of them ibexes. They can be found in the mountainous regions of Europe, Eurasia and North Africa.³⁶

One of the world’s most famous “goats”, the Rocky Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus), is actually not a goat at all.³⁷

It is a common source of confusion, given it’s name and the fact they share physical features with goats. According to the fossil record, however, Oreamnos evolved its “goat-like appearance” in isolation from the Capra genus. Rocky mountain goats split from the lineage of the “true goats” more than 100,000 years ago.³⁸

“Mountain goats are pretty unique in terms of their history and relationships to other species; they are probably more closely related to a muskox than a goat,” Aaron Shafer, species specialist and evolutionary biologist at Trent University in Canada, tells BBC Earth.³⁹ “We still don’t have a clear understanding of how it's related to its nearest species,” says Shafer.

Goats have rectangular pupils, an evolutionary adaptation that increases the animals’ field of vision across the horizon. Coupled with the fact their eyes are positioned on the side of their heads, goats can see between 320–340° around themselves.⁴⁰

More amazing perhaps, is the goat’s otherworldly ability to rotate its eyes 50 degrees within their sockets, ten times more than humans are capable of.⁴¹ A trait it shares with other grazers, this ability means their pupils lock on to the horizon line even as their heads dip into a vertical position to graze. Without this movement – known as “cyclovergence” – their horizontal pupils would become vertical, and less effective at keeping a lookout for predators.⁴²

Fainting goats can be seen all over social media. Online, there exist hundreds of videos of goats going stiff, often mid-run, and toppling over. The truth is – they are not actually fainting.

Here’s what’s really happening. When a “fainting” goat is surprised, its muscles go stiff with fear or excitement. Due to a genetic condition, called myotonia congenita, the muscles are prevented from relaxing again for several seconds and they can become stuck in a stiff pose for up to 20 seconds.⁴³

The “fainting” trait is not present in wild species. It is a genetic mutation that was first observed in the breeding of domestic goats and then became a sought-after trait by North American farmers, who went on to create the Tennessee Fainting goat breed. This breed is naturally more docile and less able to climb fences, which made them a prized meat livestock in the early 20th century.

Online, there are prevalent myths that goats will eat just about anything – even tin cans.⁴⁴ In reality, goats will not eat anything, but their behaviour might make it seem like they would. They use their lips and mouth investigate unfamiliar things like how we use our fingers and hands – they might put something in their mouths to feel it but not eat it.

What goats actually eat is made up of fibrous plant material (such as hay and long grasses), and tough, woody plants and bark.⁴⁵

Farmers are known to bring in goats to chow down on scrub – tough brambles that a sheep might shy away from.⁴⁶ Scientists caution, however, that while goats are capable of eating several common species of plants that are poisonous or inedible to humans and other livestock, there are still several common species, such as rhododendron, that will harm them.⁴⁷

On entering a new space, goats will search for food initially by sight and smell. Then they relegate to touch and taste. Although goats have a wide field of vision, their visual perception of the space in front of them is pretty bad. Instead, they investigate objects by probing with their lips, sent and tasting with their mouths to detect undesirable foods.⁴⁸

It's reasonable to say that their most “powerful” sense is their sense of smell, which they use to detect food quality, recognize other goats (and humans!) and to sense the reproductive status of other goats.

Goats, like other ruminants (such as deer, sheep and cattle) have a four-chambered stomach. This conveyor belt of digestion is used to break down tough plant cellulose and unlock their nutrients.

A piece of swallowed food will travel to the first two stomach chambers, then the rumen and then the reticulum. In the rumen – which accounts for 80 percent of the size of an adult goat’s stomach – the food ferments, sometimes over several days.⁴⁹

It is hard to break down tough plant matter into digestible pieces. To assist in the process, goats routinely regurgitate food back up to their mouths from the first and second chambers, for some extra chewing. This digestive repetition is known as chewing the cud, or rumination.

The cud (partly digested plant material) is chewed, swallowed and regurgitated until it is broken down enough to pass through to the third chamber. Then, the omasum, filters out water from the fermented particles before sending them to the fourth chamber, the abomasum, or “true stomach,” which, digests the food fully in strong stomach acid – like a human stomach.

Some goats climb trees to access food that isn’t available on the ground. In especially dry or barren environments, the highest quality food can only be found in trees. In Morocco, goats are well known for climbing the high branches of Argan trees to eat the leaves, fruit and bark.⁵⁰

The effects of climate change could have negative impacts on the rearing and farming of some of the most common livestock species including cows, sheep and pigs.⁵¹

Higher temperatures can cause heat stress in animals, reducing growth rates, fertility and milk and meat production. Extreme weather events like floods, droughts and wildfires reduce crop production, reducing the amount and quality of animal feed available.⁵² Droughts can be particularly problematic – stressing out animals with high water intake reducing pasture quality and potentially increasing the rate of desertification (when fertile land becomes a desert). As these impacts become more common – goats may offer the solution.⁵³

Goats are more heat and drought tolerant than other livestock animals. They can thrive in hot, arid environments where water is scarce. Their diet is easier to accommodate as well. Goat don’t require large pastures of grass like cows or sheep. Instead, they eat shrubs, tree leaves and tough vegetation which grows in degraded habitats. In general, goats require less water and food relative to their body weight than larger livestock species, meaning they provide more meat for less resources – a hugely valuable trait for small scale or subsistence farmers in regions vulnerable to climate change.⁵⁴

Featured image © Chris Robert | Unsplash

Fun fact image © Madison O'Friel | Unsplash

Quick Facts:

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Appendix: Interviews

Shafer, Aaron. 2024. Review of Mountain Goats Are Not Goats Interview by Laura Cole.