Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Goats

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/podcaster Kath Barbadoro (‘What A Time To Be Alive’ podcast, ‘Lie Cheat & Steal’ podcast) and comedy podcaster Patrick Monahan (‘What A Time To Be Alive’ podcast) for a look at why goats are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Hey, it's me, Alex Schmidt. I have two things for you quick. One, as you know, this is a patron-supported show. Your donations on Patreon.com make the whole thing possible. Second thing to tell you is that I've worked out an affiliate deal with Libro.fm because I think what they are doing is amazing and because I think you deserve an amazing deal on audiobooks. And I hope you take them up on it, because if you're already an audiobook listener, you are probably buying audiobooks from one giant corporation that sells most of them. Libro.fm partners with more than 1,300 local bookstores in the US, Canada, and a few other countries. So every time you buy an audiobook from Libro.fm, part of that purchase price goes to the local bookstore near you. It goes back to your local community for the exact same audiobook. I think that's amazing. That's why I partnered this show with Libro.fm, and because I did that, I can offer you a deal. If you use code SIFPOD at checkout, you'll get two audiobook credits for the price of one. Credits never expire. Credits can go toward any of more than 150,000 audiobooks in the Libro.fm catalog. Again, that deal is code SIFTPOD at checkout

at their website, Libro.fm. And just one more thing to say about that. Patrons of this show do not hear these kinds of promotional messages because they're already backing the show, already supporting it. So head to SIFTPOD.fun if these kind of promotions for things upset you. I think Libra.fm is an amazing company that's doing social good. Also, maybe you just want to get straight to the podcast. SifPod.fun offers you that experience and so much more. And without further ado, so much more. And without further ado, let's get your goat. Goats. Known for being animals. Famous for that, basically. Nobody thinks much about them unless they own them. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why goats are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks.

Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Kath Barbadoro and Patrick Monaghan are my guests this week. I am a huge fan of their podcast. It is called What a Time to be Alive. It's about news stories that will make you say the title of the podcast. They also have a third co-host, Eli Uden, who was on this podcast for the Microwave Ovens episode.

Now Kath and Patty are here, and I'm so excited about it. You may also know Kath from Stand-Up Comedy or from co-hosting her other podcast. It is called Lie, Cheat, and Steal. It's an amazing show about scammers, grifters, terrible politicians, everything else. And then both of them are incredible on Twitter. Kath is at Kath Barbadoro. Pat Monahan is at Patty Moe. Like always, everything is linked for this episode. I'm so excited for you to check that out. I'm even more excited for you to meet these people today. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Chicory peoples. Acknowledge Kath recorded this on the traditional land of the

Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Patty recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about goats. Goats have a special place in my heart. They also have a special place in science and in history and in the whole human experience. Let's talk about why. Please sit back or stand in your fancy stable because you're about to run the Kentucky Derby

and your goat friend has your back. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Kath Barbadoro and Patrick Monaghan. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Yeah, Patty, it's so good to have you. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can lead off. But how do you feel about goats? You know, I gotta say say I have some mixed feelings. I have, um, my experiences with goats have not been entirely positive in my life. And, uh, so,

you know, look, I'm, I try to keep an open mind, you know, life is long. Maybe this podcast will, will help heal some of the uh stressful goat related experiences that i have had but should i get into them specifically now or should i wait i'll just i'll just give my opinion i'll go for it okay okay oh dive right in so when i was a kid so i grew up in new hampshire which is like relatively rural and um yeah i i have a very vivid memory of um when i was in like a summer day camp when i was a kid um we went to a farm and it was like i don't want to say petting zoo because as i will now explain um the animals were not friendly but uh technically you could you could pet them if they allowed it i guess and yeah so we went to this farm and uh i have a very vivid memory of a goat rearing up on

its hind legs to five-year-old me and a camp counselor like grabbing me and like sheltering me from a mean goat that i wanted to kick me. I don't know, but it was very scary. Um, yeah. So the counselor did secret service stuff. They were like, I got you. Yeah, exactly. Like kind of scooped me out of the way. And, uh, yeah, so that was scary. But I also, I studied abroad in college in India where I was in a city, but like the way it works there is like people just have farm animals in the city and they kind of wander around the city and then walk home at night. So they're just like kind of out.

And there were tons and tons of goats just like wandering around and they were pretty chill. They were nice. They, they had been acclimated to the sights and sounds of a city and so did not try to attack me. So, so you know i feel good about that what about you patty yeah i i i think i made the mistake not going first because i don't have as much detail so i'm gonna sound very anticlimactic after that uh i um and you're allowed to have no relationship that's totally permitted that's that's yeah no part of the you know i i would say i didn't have a very strong opinion about goats one way or the other uh i think i probably went to a petting zoo or something

when i was a kid and uh you know we didn't you know eat goat or anything uh i don't think we really i've also eaten goat it's uh it's okay anyway sorry we were not a uh you know i'm a meat and potatoes kind of kind of family we were not a goat cheese family that i remember so i don't think i had anything like that um so it was they were not seen as uh livestock or food animals they were just kind of like i don't know like supporting characters at the farm from my perspective i guess you know i didn't really think of them yeah like they weren't there to do anything they were just there to eat tin cans i guess i don't really know what and since then you know i don didn't really think of them. Yeah. Like they weren't there to do anything. They were just there to eat tin cans, I guess. I don't really know what. And since then, you know, I don't know.

I think they had the, the eye thing is cool. Um, that was something that I learned about and thought was neat. And I, you know, the, uh, sort of, um, their place in lore and a very, in various cultures is interesting to me. So I guess that's kind of, that's more my place. Not a lot of real world, uh, experience with goats, I guess. more my place. Not a lot of real world experience with goats, I guess. They are, I think I've had a similar experience with them as animals in the US where I know they're totally livestock that people depend on, but I've mostly experienced them as like,

there was a, there was a place here in Durham where the neighborhood would call in what they called the goat squad. And it was a person who brought a group of goats to do landscaping. Like they'll eat all the kudzu and all the invasive plants. And so they would email the neighborhood like, the goat squad is coming Wednesday. And then a bunch of little children and me very excitedly went to watch.

We would just show up as spectators for the goat squad. You know, that was it. I love that. That's very fun to me. That's, that's like Flintstones style. Like just like an animal doing like appliances job. That's, I love that. Linda and Patty, since you mentioned the eye thing,

I think we can get into our first fascinating thing about the topic because it's a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And that's in a segment called I like to talk stats when I'm with you. Cause it's numbers. And that name was submitted by Captain Fat Strong on the Patreon. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Stats and numbers. Here we go. Because the first one's about the eyes of goats. The number here is 320 to 340 degrees. And that's out of 360, like angle degrees. That's the range of horizontal vision for a goat. So if you ever look at their eyes, they have horizontal pupils

because they can see, you know, almost all the way around themselves almost like an owl or something i didn't realize that was what it was for i thought it was just to look freaky just to be a be a demon in uh in our mythology i didn't realize they could see all the way around that's even creepier that's even more demon-like to me yeah right yeah they're in uh they're in panorama mode all the time that's i i i aren't they don't they also have the um is it is it always horizontal or am i remembering wrong they have like the like almost like triangular or square ones too sometimes i'm trying to think of like oh i could just be making that up i think of like the rectangular bar yeah as bar as the pupil.

Yeah, okay. Which I remember, again, when I realized that, which was when I was in India riding my bike next to a goat, and it looked at me, and I was like, whoa, that's wild. This is a very strange animal. But again, to your point about the landscaping, that was a lot of what they did when I was in India because there wasn't like good waste management. And so. Oh, wow. Basically, like they would like goats and cows in particular would kind of wander around the city and eat anything sort of biodegradable out of the trash to like cut down on waste.

sort of biodegradable out of the trash to like cut down on waste. So like banana peels and, you know, food leftovers and stuff like the goats would come and and munch on that and kind of walk around and look at me with their creepy pupils. That's awesome. They're powerful. Did you get any sense they had like specific owners or were they just around the community? Yeah, no, they have specific owners like the way it was so interesting, like there would be a rush hour at night of farm animals. Like when the sun was setting down, all the animals would commute back to where they lived and they would just go. And how like so they just kind of got let out. And it was sort of I don't know how it works, like with, you know, could can you milk a cow that's grazing in your on your street or something? But they did have owners and they would go back to where they lived. They just kind of wandered around until then.

It was really interesting. They were like American children in the 20th century before parents were scared. Like, well, it's sundown. I'll go back. Till then, forget it. Go to the dump. Exactly. Yeah.

Go outside and play until you get tired and the sun comes down and then you can come back. That's amazing. Did you find this pupil, Patty? No, I don't. I clearly don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know. I have just grafted something else from my memory onto. So that's fine. From what I was reading, I guess a lot of other hoofed animals also have something similar. So that might be something that have that. But goats have this horizontal pupil where, according to Mental Floss, they can see everything except for what's directly behind them. And easy to turn your neck a little to see that.

Mental Floss also says, quote, the drawback to the flattened pupil is that goats are unable to look up or down without moving their heads. So they just have very different vision than us, but you never think about it. And we can go to the next number here. It'll lead to India, actually, and some other things. But number here is a little over 2.6 million. And a little over 2.6 million as of 2012 is the U.S. goat population. And that's USDA data from Washington Post. Apparently, nearly 80% of them are raised for meat, 16% for milk, the other 6% for fiber. And then the main U.S. goat state

is Texas. It has eight of the top 10 counties for goats. So I've never lived in Texas, but apparently folks there probably see goats more often. That's so interesting that the percentage of what it's all for. Cause like, I mean, I eat goat cheese and I think like way more people eat goat cheese than eat goat meat. So it's interesting that 80% of them are used for meat. Granted you can use the same goat for more goat cheese probably for meat since you know, they don't regenerate but like but still that's really interesting to me because yeah don't know a lot of people eating goat meat every day you know did you see a lot in texas when you lived in texas did not see a lot of goats in texas i don't think austin had had many i think they're probably out in the hill country yeah but because yeah i mean texas obviously is so big that it can be

the top of a lot of things without it being a thing you associate it with but yeah i would not have guessed texas to be like the the goat epicenter personally there's a cow ranch in texas that is bigger than the state of rhode island like that's how big texas is king ranch it's like it's an entire state so i'd imagine imagine the goats are probably out in places like that, would be my guess. Yeah. Makes sense. It's really wild. It's huge.

And then also the other thing about this U.S. goat population is the U.S. is big. And compared to the world, we have very, very few goats here. I had a hard time getting an exact world goat population number. But either way, the Atlantic says goats are the most widely raised farm animal in the world. And we'll have a map linked from worldmapper.org. They rearrange the world's countries by goat population size. And it's basically just a map where several African and Asian countries are the whole world. And the US vanishes and Northern Europe vanishes. And the top three goat populations in the world are in China,

India, and Nigeria. Top goat milk countries are India, Bangladesh, and Sudan. It's just much more of a thing in other parts of the world. It makes sense that they're such a common livestock animal, though, because they're they're probably very inexpensive to to maintain because they eat everything. And they're you know, they don't take up a lot of space. Yeah. Yeah. Like they just seem a lot easier to deal with than like a cow. A cow seems like a real undertaking.

It seems that way. Yeah. And plus, just once I feel like once farmers get in the habit of an animal, they'll stick with it, too. And plus, I feel like once farmers get in the habit of an animal, they'll stick with it, too. I think there's just places where they don't see goats like I do, where it's a landscape or a fun sidekick. It's the main thing. It's what they're doing. It's the main event. Next number here is, speaking of American goats, the next number is nine.

That is the number of species in the genus Capra, which is the genus goats are in only reason i bring up this very boring thing is that it means that north american mountain goats are not technically goats like the mountain goats we have in north america are in a different genus called oriamnos and according to national geographic they are closer relatives of antelope man it's a different thing that means that goats evolved twice kind of yeah that's wild because like an antelope is not like a goat you know so if they're closer related to antelopes that means that they like evolution concluded that goat was the most efficient from two separate like starting points which which is pretty wild. I like that. I guess. Yeah.

And you know, you look at the North American mountain goat, they are kind of like jacked looking, you know what I mean? They're very jacked. Yeah. They're big. So they,

I mean, and you would think, I guess I would have thought that's because they have to like, you know, all they do all the climbing and that's just the way that their bodies develop. But I guess you can see kind of a little bit of a split in the, maybe the way that the bodies are,

are, are arranged from that, that I guess makes some see kind of a little bit of a split in the, maybe the way that the bodies are, are, are arranged from that, that I guess makes some sense, but they look pretty cool either way. I'm just going to say, I'm adding a lot to the conversation here by saying that, but I like those guys. They're cool.

They're really fun to watch climb up a vertical rock face. We probably shouldn't spend too much time on them since they are not, they are not goats. The show is breaking down. This is wrong. But it is true that the mountain goats are endemic to North America and then

regular goats came from Europe, Asia, Africa. And I like that idea of them coming up twice. Like, oh, that idea is so good. This other continent needs the other thing. We're gonna do it. Next number here. Speaking of jacked goats, actually, next number is the 1880s, which is a decade, the 1880s. That is the approximate origin of America's myotonic goats, which is a fancy term for fainting goats. Have either of you ever heard of fainting goats?

Oh, yeah. I love those guys. Did you see them? And I just keep thinking of New Hampshire and India as our goat places now. Did you see them either place? I've never seen one in real life, but I've I've watched YouTube videos of them and I adore them. They're so good. I've watched YouTube videos of them and I adore them.

They're so good. Yeah, according to the Livestock Conservancy, there was an itinerant farm laborer named John Tinsley who came to central Tennessee with four unusual goats that had stiff legs and a tendency to fall over and stay that way when they get startled. And they immediately became popular across Tennessee as fainting goats, across Texas as wooden leg goats. And they are a type of goat that is great for being a meat goat. They breed easily.

They muscle really well. And then also you can just scare them and they fall over for a long period of time. So that's their situation. Patty's shaking his head. He does not approve. They're getting like cosmically pranked. Like, well, they're great for you. You never want to be great for a meat of the thing you are.

Right. That's not a thing. Like, that's not, you know, I mean, it sounds like a compliment, but it's not a compliment. Doesn't bode well for you. Yeah. But the other thing is also it's funny if you start with them, they fall down. It's like, all right, well, we get to laugh at them while we're eating them. You know, like, come on.

That's a raw deal. I do think that like a fainting goat would solve the petting zoo problem that I have previously outlined, which is that some goats are very mean. that I have previously outlined, which is that some goats are very mean. So, I mean, if you can just go, and it falls over and is paralyzed, that seems like it would solve that problem. But I don't know.

Still never seen one, so I guess they're not a petting zoo goat. Maybe that would be even more upsetting for the kid. Like, I don't want to pet it now. It seems like it's... It's having a problem. Is it dead? Yeah, Jesus. Well, next number here is eight ounces. And eight ounces, or about a quarter of a kilogram, that is the amount of cashmere a goat can grow in a year. Cashmere comes from goats. It's their downy undercoat wool of certain goats. Also, the Atlantic says that in 2016, scientists in China said that they used

CRISPR gene editing technology to increase the amount of cashmere you could get from a goat by three whole ounces, or less than a 10th of a kilogram. But that's one of the things they say they put it toward. We were just talking about on our podcast, we just did a story about a merino sheep that like escaped captivity and kept growing and growing and growing and growing its wool. And it was like a big, gross cotton ball when they found it. And yeah, I remember we were talking about cashmere and we were we were all like what is it where does it come from yeah it's definitely some kind of animal hair but we don't know what it is i'm glad we i'm glad we know now but it seems like like with goat cashmere like it doesn't you don't have to cut it off right like it yeah it'd be it's not like the merino wool sheep it's just like it's there and then you take it and the goat is cold.

Yeah, I guess they they have under wool for winter that is cashmere and gets turned into fancy sweaters, even though they don't brand it as like goat sweaters. Yeah. But and then the outer hair is much rougher and they use it for like brush bristles and things. and they use it for like brush bristles and things. And they also don't end up like that amazing story of this huge sheep that looks like it Katamari Damaseed some other sheeps and now it's just wandering around. Yeah, no, that's exactly what it looks like. I didn't think about that for combs and stuff

because I guess there's like boar bristle brushes. I didn't think about, but yeah, you could use like goat hair for stuff. Cause I guess there's like, there's like boar bristle brushes. I didn't think about, but yeah, you could use like goat hair for that too, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, very different than cashmere, which is, uh, extremely nice. I owned a cashmere scarf once and it was, it was, it was pretty sweet. Yeah. I remember cashmere. I didn't realize that's another goat, I guess, connection that I have is, yeah, that was like the sweater I was afraid to wear when I was a kid or whatever. Right.

Because it was like too nice. Yeah. Yeah. If you if you get anything on it, like your life is over. Yeah. And the Seinfeld episode, too, I guess, with the red dot on it, the sweater. Yeah. When he's sleeping with the maid.

It is one of those intimidating fabrics. Right. Like, and how am I going to clean that? I'm not up to it oh yeah i can't any anything like even things that are just regular dry clean only are like that's a big step for me that's like a big a big deal if i buy something i have to dry clean and i feel like with cashmere it's like you can't you don't even dry clean you have to like take it to a specialist or something like like it's like getting your car tuned up or something if you have to clean it terrifying so scary what if you have to it's like three goats

in a long coat or something only they know how to do it i'd trust them final number here before we get into the big takeaways final number is four and four is the number of years in a row that the Yevla goat has survived. And the Yevla goat, it's a city in Sweden, it's spelled G-A with two dots over it, V-L-E. But this is a giant Yule goat that most years gets burned down. And the internet talks about it sometimes. But this one has survived four years in a row now. It's doing good. So do they they don't burn it down on purpose? It just sometimes accidentally burns down? This one's lived? So apparently, this town of Jävla in Sweden, and they started building a massive straw goat to celebrate Christmas each year in 1966.

And locals just took it into their hands to start burning it down. It's almost like a college prank or something. Like they're not supposed to burn it down. I see. And locals have just been going for it. And there was one 51-year period where it was burned 37 times. So most years somebody took it out. But it's on a good run right now.

Another unintended benefit of coronavirus. You know, there are very few silver linings, but it seems like people in Sweden are staying inside and not going out to burn this goat. So that's good. Very strange that it only happens some of the time. Like the idea that like it's a tradition, but only if people feel like it,

like, it's not like they have to get past security or something. Right. Like, it's just like, either they do it or they don't. So what I would love to know what makes the decision sometimes. I don't know. It's like a, there's a pretty robust list online of why it has, or has not burned down. And in 2017, the town added two layers of fencing and security cameras. 2018, they put a taxi cab depot in the square so there would be more eyewitnesses all the time. And then in 2020, it was actually like COVID was really the reason it didn't happen. The town was advised not to gather and not to go. So if anyone went, it was suspicious. This is interesting because there's such a strong association of goats with like paganism and Satan and

stuff like that in Christianity. And, um, I don't know when I see, I feel like this is like a big thing in Scandinavia when they do stuff like this is like, it's like, this is cool. And I, I don't, I don't, I don't think this about modern day Swedes or anything, but it's like, this is cool. And I don't think this about modern day Swedes or anything. But it's like, oh, this is a tradition? Yeah, you put someone inside that 1,000 years ago. Like, there's no. I was talking to my mom about Midsommar when that movie came out.

And she went to some Midsommar stuff in Scandinavia when she was in college. And that's what she said. She was like, it was really cool. I i'm really glad i went everyone was super nice but you can just see so clearly like yeah they they used to kill people at this like you can still tell they used to kill people at this and uh yeah so like big wicker man goat is very like that tracks to me with the sort of christian assumptions of of scandinavians and this the symbolism of a of a goat for sure maybe it's like a maybe it's like an angry atheist thing like like a tent like how they have like the fights over nativities and in town like we used to have issues with that with how i grew up in with like the nativity can't be

on the thing or what you know because people can't be on the statehouse lawn that was always it in my town because i grew up in the capital it's like you have to put it like an inch off the statehouse lawn to separate church and state and you can't pay for it and the state can't pay for it and like the idea that like this goat is inappropriate uh wherever it's based in this square or you know it has to be publicly or privately financed and if not someone's gonna burn it down maybe that's what it is this christmas goat it is cool looking it's a good it's a good design like i i like the the shape of it it has like these kind of semi-circular horns that go all the way to its back yeah and uh yeah it's it's pretty cool yeah we'll have

pictures linked for people it's it's probably multiple stories tall it's pretty cool. Yeah, we'll have pictures linked for people. It's probably multiple stories tall. It's a very large straw goat every year. Obviously, it changes every year because it keeps burning, but that's the idea year to year. And it also, according to the BBC, there is that pagan element in the sense that it's probably related to Thor. Because throughout Scandinavian Christmas, you see a lot of St. Nicholas or Santa Claus hanging out with a goat or maybe riding a goat. And it turns out the Norse God Thor had a chariot drawn by two goats. Their names were Tan Grisnir and Tan Gunnjostr. And that that's probably 1% of the correct pronunciation, but,

but there's like a, there is like a pagan stuff transferred over thing going on here. Oh, yeah. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne.

I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson,

John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. We have two big takeaways for the episode. Let's get into the first one here. Takeaway number one.

Goats are in many ways man's best friend. I know we were talking about some aggressive New Hampshire ones before, but across history in a historical sense, maybe even more than dogs, they have been a buddy to humanity throughout basically all human history. That's wild. And obviously mainly a Europe, Asia, Africa buddy going back until the Columbian Exchange, they weren't here. But that's the idea. That's really interesting.

But it also frustrates me because it's like, dogs were wolves, and we bred them to be more friendly to us. Why are goats still mean? Why haven't we made them nicer? Yeah, wow. My other goat experience was we stayed at a goat farm like two years ago in Ventura County in California. And they were definitely bred to be small and friendly. Like, I think you can dogify a goat if you want to. You know what I mean? I think that's an option. Like, I held one, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

That sounds good to me. I like the idea of a little, you know that kind of thing yeah that sounds good to me i like i like the idea of a little just like a little you know kind of oh i mean a baby one is the the best a baby goat is so cute yeah a little tiny guy is is great thumbs up yeah yeah i mean i guess i guess on balance you know if you're comparing them with dogs in terms of the, the variety of things they can provide, you know, at least culturally here you know, goats can make the ultimate sacrifice, you know, and help you out if you're going to starve they can give you milk and cheese. I don't think anybody wants any dog milk, at least not in the Western world.

Probably not. So, yeah, I think it's probably, you know, they're just not, maybe they're not as good a hang, but I mean, if you, Probably not. as far as we can tell, scientific evidence of that being a thing as far back as we go. If people have heard the episode of this show about butter, you heard that the beginning of permanent human communities was around 10,000 BC, or 12,000 years ago. And about 11,000 years ago, according to the journal Science, humans domesticated goats in the Fertile Crescent, probably the first dairy animal domesticated by humans, that or sheep. It was a little after dog domestication, but not only were goats our first dairy animal, there's a study here suggesting that humans and goats probably spread across Eurasia and Africa together. There was a team at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, and then the University

of Geneva in Switzerland, and the French National Museum of Natural History, they all teamed up on this DNA study of goats. And they found that unlike some other domestic animals like cattle, sheep, and pigs, today's descendants of the first domesticated goats are pretty evenly distributed across all the continents in the old world, and they're all from just a couple animals. And the story says, quote, this pattern suggests that goats followed humans in their earliest migrations, end quote. That's interesting. So like the initial spread of people,

goats were probably coming along. I wonder if there's like a goat Genghis Khan that's like the ancestor of all the goats. Like every goat comes from this one extremely prolific one that walked across Eurasia with people. No, that's cool. It's interesting that we did that. Like you think about domesticating an animal and apart from ones you ride, you think of that as being like agricultural.

But it's like, no, they were nomadic and they still domesticated them and they just walked with them and like hung out and then occasionally got eaten that's pretty rad yeah and like probably milked them some maybe but it was it was just bringing them yeah and like then they settled somewhere and then they domesticated cows seems to be the situation which is amazing that's yeah the domestication in general is a crazy thing to just i mean uh hats off to the people from uh you know 20 000 years ago or whatever he said because it seems like it was a real pain uh and you know like yeah dogs in particular not that not that dogs are you know livestock or anything but just like the idea of like oh it's a wolf well i'm gonna make it my

friend over a series of generations uh you know um just first i'm going to i guess like get him in a headlock and like wait until he kind of cools down a little bit and then uh yeah otherwise he's going to eat me and my family just a real well isn't that like isn't that like kind of how it started was like there were like one or two wolves that just kind of were curious and not mean and so they were like we like you you can come and then the curious and not mean gene just kept getting more and more pronounced is my guess because i feel like that's that's sort of like a mutual evolution because uh you know if it's not like that then the the failed experiments in that are just getting eaten.

So humans also are being evolved by the wolves, because if they're not domesticating them right, their line is extinguished. Takes two to tango. Exactly. It's also probably like that group of wolves is like, that one wolf is such a lame wimp for going over with the humans. And then that one wolf is basically Wolf Genghis Khan. It leads to a bunch of dogs forever. And the other ones die out. That's true. It's like, wait a minute, they're feeding him.

He doesn't have to go hunt. OK, hang on. Maybe he's got the right idea. Like they're just kind of. I like hunting, though. I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm not like you. Maybe, you know, I don't want to hand it to me.

But what if you could get food without hunting whenever you want it, and then you can just hunt a frisbee when you feel like it? Yeah, there you go. See? Not a bad deal. Not a bad deal. Yeah, it's also the first domesticated goats must have had to decide, do I want to live with these people and former wolves?

Right. That's a big decision. You know, maybe you trust the people, but I don't know. Former wolf, like your natural predator. I don't know. Right. Yeah. That's that's a big leap of faith.

And yeah, especially if they're walking around because it's like they're not keeping you in a pen. You just have to, like, walk with them. Yeah. That seems like a real choice on the on the goats behalf. Yeah. And and that fits in with other stuff here, too, I think, because it seems like for one thing, goats are very smart, but they also they seem to get along well with everybody. For one thing, they herd together with sheep very well. There's a source we've got here that says that when they're together, sheep will focus on grass and goats will focus on shrubs, trees, harder foods. So they can even eat different stuff. And because goats are smart and friendly, the sheep just go along with it.

So they're doing fine. There's also, it's very visual, so I just encourage people to Google it. But on the internet, you can find pictures of goats standing on cows, standing on top of horses, standing on top of camels. There's also that saying, got your goat? Like, oh, I really got your goat. It might be apocryphal, but there's a belief that that comes from a horse racing practice where a top racehorse would have a goat friend to keep it calm. And so the saying is, I stole your goat to sabotage your racehorse. Because goats are that cool. That's your deal. I did know about that, that they were often used as horse friends,

which is, yeah, pretty interesting when you think about it. Just like in their little pen, there's like a little goat guy hanging out on some hay to keep him company yeah it's a morale boost when animals that shouldn't be friends are friends that's that's what it's all about for me that's really that's really good and you're right like goats are very good at that based on all of the pictures i've seen on the internet so yeah they love to stand on stuff they love to be up high they're like chill with other animals yeah yeah i feel like most silly internet pictures of goats are also representative like it's not it's not like there was one weird thing happened like there are a bunch of fainting goats there

are a bunch of friend goats that stand on so like it's all real it's not it's not made up right it's not just one strange goat it's like they all do this. Yeah. And then goats work with each other very well. We'll have an NPR link to a 2012 study from Queen Mary University that suggests that goats bleat to each other with the equivalent of accents. And it's not clear why, but it might be part of they're so social they want to identify who's part of what group and from what place. And there's another study by that same team that says that goats might be able to perceive emotion in each other's voices. So very advanced communication with accents and everything.

Yeah, accents are really funny to me. Like the goats are like doing bits. They're like doing impressions to each other. Just my wife stuff back and forth yeah i like it yeah just the goats being offended by each other hey come on not cool are you mocking me are you mocking my accent i tried to watch the goat stand up special from the 80s but it's it a different time, man. It's not, you don't want to see it. Couldn't put it out today, that's for sure. Would not be, yeah. Then the other thing, as far as their group organization,

we'll have a link to a New York Times Trilobites piece by Veronica Greenwood. It's called Goats Don't Vote. There are two ways that groups of animals tend to move. One is called voting, which is where members do some kind of speaking up. It's like a meerkat member will say something or a bison will point a direction and the others agree. The other one is a copycat method where you just follow whosoever's next to you. The most famous one is a school of fish. But a new study of a group of Namibian goats found that they do the school of fish thing. They just copy each other. They just follow. There's no like debating or arguing

about who's in charge of where the group is going. They just do it. Wild. It's disappointing, you know? I mean, voting is important. I think we've seen that, especially recently. And the fact that goats are willing to just kind of go with whatever happens to them. They should do better. That's what I'm saying about goats, I think. This is why the goat is not a political party mascot. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's a good thing. Yeah, when you lose that to donkeys, you're really not branding well or trying hard. It's tough. You're really struggling. Yeah, or like an elephant that atkeys, you're really not branding well or trying hard. It's tough. You're really struggling. Yeah, or like an elephant that at the time they were picking the mascots, they thought was like a mythical creature. You know what I mean? Like they had like, who knows what they thought about elephants that's not true now, you know, back then.

Yeah, it was like being a dragon or something. Like they'd seen them, like they had them here, but it was definitely a very different kind of understanding of what was going on. Well, and the last goat psychology thing, they are extra, extra social with humans, even today, as far as we can tell. It's a bunch of different sources. Apparently, Queen Mary University London loves studying goat psychology. They're way into it. Because this is another study from 2018. A team put goats into a pen lined with black and white photos of humans

making happy faces or making angry faces. The livestock appeared to be more interested in the images of smiling people walking over to them and even touching them with their noses, which seems to indicate that goats like happy people more, which is smart. They can tell we're happy. Yeah, I guess that makes sense when you think about how long they've been domesticated. It's a good evolutionary trick to gravitate toward people that look happy because they're probably less likely to kill or hurt you and more likely to give you treats.

Yeah, right on. Yeah, that's all these animals that have been domesticated you're right you mentioned before cat like like it's sort of like a mutual thing like they have absolutely like evolving to like be a good companion animal is just learning how to trick the you know or just like or over a long enough time evolving to be cute and look like a baby like a human baby enough that they want to take care of you. Right. And that kind of thing. So that absolutely tracks. I got to say, these people at this, you know, they did this research.

If I could, you know, draw down a paycheck doing that all day, I think that'd be a pretty good job. Yeah, it seems fun. So I have to say. Pretty great. Yeah, it could be worse. I will say there is a tweet I saw a while ago that has never left my mind about somebody who does this kind of research. And they're like, people think it's all fun hanging out with goats or whatever. But the fruit fly that I spent like weeks cloning just flew up my nose and died.

And that's what my job is really like. And I was like, yeah, it probably is less, uh, less exciting than we think. Probably a lot of data entry and yeah, like CC flies,

uh, just dying on you all the time. That seems like about what it's like. Hey, you know, if you're doing data entry anyway, you know, uh, might as well be in evolving not involving goats or whatever so yeah it could be could be worse wow that's yeah i also i think if that fly experience happens to you you should just get to publish it

and get credit for it and stuff you know like i know it doesn't advance science but you should get whatever the the raise in status is of you went through that. Right. Good job. You're doing the work. Just embed the tweet in whatever journal that would the article was going to go. And it's like, all right. Accounts is credit for whatever, you know, we'll we'll we'll re up your funding because, you know, I think that's exactly. Yeah. You get your grants extended. You have a giant John Hammond coming in, you you know in the all white suit to a pop champagne you know it's like i saw the tweet you know we're gonna reopen

very much up your alley oh well and there's two more things like this here this was a study done at the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany. They got the sense that goats are very good at telling what gestures we're making. It was scientists with two buckets, one empty, one full of pasta, because I guess goats will eat pasta. Who wouldn't eat pasta? Come on. I like a bucket full of pasta yeah straggle nona style a reference that has come up on our podcast about a thousand times in the last impressive impressive working in of straggle nona into other stuff that's good that's i i mean a bucket of pasta that's very straggle nona it's true i should have seen that coming. This is on me.

So they sat between empty bucket, bucket full of pasta, and the goats were great at understanding several different kinds of gestures. Even when the person sat closer to the empty bucket, they're just very good at reading this stuff. And then one more study here, a study where a team was doing something about whether goats could get lids off boxes. And so that was the main thing they were checking. But they stumbled on a thing where there was a level of box difficulty that they considered impossible, like there's no way for a goat to do it. And when they made the box impossible, quote, the goats gazed imploringly at nearby humans in the same way that dogs do, end quote. Aw. So they even did dog stuff about it, which is smart fooling us because the dog thing works. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look sad at the nearest thing with opposable thumbs and you will get this box open. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I'm allergic to dogs, so I have limited types of dogs I can get. If I'm not allergic to goats, you know, maybe I can talk my girlfriend to just get a little goat up here, you know? Get a little pygmy goat. Get a little tiny guy.

And run around. Yeah. Clack, clack around your apartment. I mean, we all want you to do it now that I'm thinking about it. Pretty excited. Yeah. Well, everyone else wants me to do it. It's like, have you thought about why that might?

Yeah, it's like, well, okay. As a yeah it's like oh okay as a bit it'd be funny it's your life it's a funny bit it's what you have to just think of the few pictures and videos you could post but also it's what you have to deal with for you know all the time that you're not doing stuff like that anyway do it i don't know man i'm I'm looking up pictures of my Google image searches, full grown house pet pygmy goat. And it's nice. It's pretty good. It's it might be convincing. I have to stay away. I have to stay away from that. I'm afraid to see. Think about it. Well, there's we'll get into some more cute goat stories in the other takeaway, the main show. Here we go. Takeaway number two.

get into some more cute goat stories in the other takeaway the main show here we go takeaway number two a surprising number of american presidents have surprising relationships with goats there's going to be five different presidents that there's a goat story about uh they're they're just a lot more than i expected it's very exciting yeah uh i, I figure we should do the least cute one first. Donald Trump, folks. He's gone but not forgotten. And the thing with him is he has a surprising goat situation, which is that Donald Trump used goats as a tax dodge. That's just a thing you can do if you know things about New Jersey law that he knows. Do we have detail on how that happened?

How he used them as a tax dodge? Like he just owned a bunch of them or something? And it was, yeah, okay. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, the situation is, and there are many sources for this. We'll link the Wall Street Journal. But the 2016 campaign, people noticed him doing this.

In 1963, the state of New Jersey wrote a new provision into their state constitution. So very hard to change, but the provision created a bunch of tax breaks for farmland. And Donald Trump owns two golf courses in New Jersey and just does an incredibly minimal amount of farm stuff on them. And so that is, the courses are called Colts Neck and Bedminster. Both of them grow a little bit of hay. Both of them do a little bit of wood cutting, which apparently also counts for this.

And then he has eight goats at Bedminster. Through that move, he pays about $1,000 of taxes a year instead of $80,000. Damn. That's what he does. Yeah, sounds about right. Yeah. He was a president. I'm sure they helped landscape the golf course. They should do that. Yeah. I'm surprised they don't actually.

Yeah. They probably just did a pen somewhere. They should be out there on the fairway or whatever. But anyway, he's the next story here. John F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy had a key like situation of handling a goat in the launching of his political career. It was very useful for him. When Kennedy was 29 years old in 1946, he ran for a House seat in a Boston-based district. He had never held office before. The real race was the Democratic primary. He was up against two tough opponents and also up against being seen as a rich kid and a Kennedy. Like even before he was the president, people were like, ah, the rich Kennedys, get him out of here. According to Alice Obscura, the thing he did to turn the tide in the

race was join the Knights of Columbus. Do either of you know what the Knights of Columbus are in general? Vaguely, it's like a fraternal organization, right? Yeah, it's very Catholic. Exactly. Yeah. So he joined that and to join, he had to swear an oath and also participate in a parade. And the parade organizers gave all the new people something to carry or handle in the parade as like a symbol or a testament. And so they decided a goat, a symbol of humility was Kennedy's task. And so he spent three hours walking around the streets of Charlestown, Boston, trying to get a goat to come along with him in the parade. Aw.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. And the article, it has a picture of him where it describes him as flanked by a campaign staffer and a Knights of Columbus Grand knight while handling this goat. You can see super, super young, skinny JFK with a goat. And he won the House race, eventually became president, and invited those Knights of Columbus to the White House. It was a key thing I didn't know about, about Kennedy getting started. Did the goat get to go to the White House? It doesn't sound like it, no. I figured there had to be a picture if it did. So, so no. Disrespectful.

The rumors that he had an affair with the goat are false, by the way. The goat knew some mafia members, but, you know, that doesn't mean it was in the mafia. It's very different. Exactly. Look, everybody knew some mafia members. It was just the times. It's not the goat's fault. We got three presidents to go. Plowing forward, we next have George W. Bush. Bush's presidency in a lot of ways hinged on the fact that 9-11 was happening and he was at a reading event with a book about goats. But also it's misunderstood. People get it wrong, actually.

I didn't know the book was about goats. I was going to say. But also it's misunderstood. People don't, people get it wrong, actually. I didn't know the book was about goats. Yeah, it's My Pet Goat, right? Or something like that. Isn't that what it was called? Or yeah, that's what I remember from like late night stuff, probably. Yeah, it became kind of a myth, kind of not a myth about him on 9-11 because Bush was at a grade school in Sarasota, Florida. He was there for a pre-planned

event. Before the reading activity started, they told him one plane had hit one tower, we don't know what's going on. And then for about seven minutes, he is told the second plane has hit, but does not stop attending the reading event. And so the centerpiece of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 is that George Bush spent all this time reading a book called My Pet Goat instead of doing anything. That became like the big take on Bush on the morning was that he just was dumb and kept reading about goats. like a comedy prop version of a book called My Pet Goat. And it was a whole thing. We'll link a New Yorker article by Daniel Radosh, where he explores what this book actually is. And it turns out it was not a whole separate book. It was an exercise in a workbook called Reading Mastery 2. It was called The Pet Goat. And it was written by a guy who does not remember writing it because he wrote thousands of those things

like they asked him what's it like being the person who wrote that and he's like i don't remember that was me that's amazing i had no idea so it's called so it's called the petco not my petco and it's not even a book it's not even this is i'm reeling from this reveal that this is fake news. People were very unfair. Yeah. Wow. Well, and the one other thing about it, Wall Street Journal says that, as quote, the pet goat was designed to teach words ending in the letter E. So the story involves a girl whose parents insist she get rid of her pet goat when it eats everything in sight.

Then a burglar enters the house. The goat butts him and the grateful parents let the goat stay. Everyone smiles, but the burglar who says he is sore because that ends in E. But the whole thing is like, it's more of a vocabulary lesson in a workbook. I feel like he could have left more easily. I always felt like he partly stayed because the story wasn't over,

you know? Right. But it wasn't really a story. Also like, if the whole thing is a vocab exercise, reading it out loud doesn't really make a lot of sense. Like, reading that out loud to kids as the president is a strange way to teach the lesson that sore ends in E, you know?

Right. Yeah, like, you make them read it. You don't read it to them. You make them read it, and Yeah, like you make them read it. You don't read it to them. You make them read it and you like guide them through it. But hey, whatever works. I'm not a teacher. Like if I was a president mid-disaster,

I would teach the kids better. Is that how we all feel basically? Yes, yeah, yeah. Wheel in the Bill Nye. I gotta go. Well, the two Nye. I got to go. Well, the two last presidents here, they're pretty similar stories because these two last presidents owned goats and they owned them in the White House and their children used them for racing. This describes two presidents of the U.S., which is fun. One of them, Abraham Lincoln.

He had two goats named Nanny and Nanko. Mental Floss says the goats were beloved by Lincoln's son, Tad, who used them for chariot rides around the White House. That was just going on probably during the Civil War and stuff. I wonder where they house the goats. Are they on the White House grounds? Is there a goat enclosure there? I wonder where they were. We did an episode of this about cattle, and William Howard Taft had some cows that just lived on the lawn sometimes. Like, I think the lawn was really used as, like,

a field by certain presidents back in the day. They just put a car up on blocks out there, had some chickens running around. Last president here, much less known, Benjamin Harrison, who was in the late 1880s there. He had one goat that was named Old Whiskers. And the Atlantic says the animal was harnessed so it could ferry children around on a tiny cart. So that's what he was up to. All right. Part of the presidential duties. Gotta find a way to ferry children around on a tiny cart.

Yeah. Good for him. And then the extreme part of the story is the Atlantic is reporting what a newspaper called the Washington Evening Star reported in 1903. And apparently they partly reported it because Harrison had passed away and they felt like they could finally talk about it. One day, Old Whiskers the goat was carting Harrison's grandson, Benjamin, around the White House lawn. Then, quote, without warning, the goat started down Executive Avenue on a brisk canter, and then apparently was headed toward an open construction site. And so Benjamin Harrison chased it down and like grabbed it in the nick of time is the story.

That was what the president was doing one time. Nice. Yeah. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be the child in the cart and realize that the goat has made its own plans about where to go. That seems like it would be. I'm just thinking. So when I was a kid, my neighbor had a Samoyed dog. And again, I grew up in New Hampshire.

It's winters. We have a lot of snow and stuff. And Samoyeds are like they're sled dogs. So they would occasionally they would like attach a sled to Casper, this dog, and like let the kids in the neighborhood kind of the Casper would like run around the block with us attach a sled to casper this dog and like let the kids in the neighborhood kind of the casper would like run around the block with us on a on a sled and i i have a very distinct memory of being like five in a sled and uh casper seeing like a squirrel or something and just like forgetting his his current duties and uh it was pretty frightening, pretty frightening. Everyone ended up. Okay. But yeah, I feel like being the, being in the goat cart when it decides to go to a construction

site would be an early childhood experience of powerlessness. Yeah. I feel like you need to, you need to go back to the white house and you'd like a secret service goat to like control the other goat, you know, like you need to monitor a trained guy because then you know the other one's going to follow him because we've established that they you know they don't they don't do the individual you know they follow whoever's in front so yep you get like a secret service goat you know he's got the little earpiece like tied around his his horn and stuff and uh he can be the one to uh to to keep the kids safe you the kids safe. That's the way you got to do it. Like a Sinbad and First Kid type deal.

Yes. But a goat. But it's with an animal, even more marketable. I think we just made millions of dollars. It's great. Really good. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

That could easily be a mid-90s Disney comedy, for sure. I just remember the kid from First Kid is like a Bitcoin guy who ran for president i just remembered that no yeah his name is brock pierce check him out uh he's oh don't check him out you don't have to check him out i mean he didn't win the presidency so you know he's just a bitcoin guy so whatever whatever. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Kath Barbadoro and Patrick Monahan for being goats on this episode. In the sports acronym sense, G-O-A-T, greatest of all time. Anyway, I said that's the main episode, because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff

available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the two freakiest goat stories from the Texas-Mexico border. That's right, you get two stories. Also, both of them get pretty dark at places, and I think that's a fun, like, ooh, welcome to the spooky bonus kind of way to do it. So there you go. Please visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus

show, for a library of more than two dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring goats with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, goats are in many surprising ways, man's best friend. And takeaway number two, a surprising number of American presidents have a surprising relationship with goats. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. please follow my guests. They're great. Kath Barbadoro and Patrick Monaghan are, along with Eli Yudin, the hosts of What a Time to Be Alive, one of my absolute favorite comedy podcasts. I'm linking that show, which is free to hear, and also linking its Patreon, patreon.com slash whatatimepod, where you can hear weekly bonus episodes and more.

Also linking the podcast and the Patreon for Lie, Cheat, and Steal, co-hosted by Kath Barbadoro. They just did some amazing stuff on Madison Cawthorn, who as a North Carolina resident, I have thoughts about. And then I'm linking the Twitter accounts for both Kath and Patty. That's at Kath Barbadoro for Kath, at Patty Moe for Patrick Monaghan, two of the best people you could possibly follow. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in the New York Times Trilobites section. Trilobites is a bunch of fun science news. This article is by Veronica Greenwood. It's called Goats Don't Vote. It is brand new February of 2021 science about how goats move as a group. Another great article about goat

sociability from Mental Floss. It's called Goats Like People Who Smile At Them, and that's by Michelle Debchak. And of course, a huge roundup of articles about goats and U.S. presidents. One highlight is from The Atlantic. It's called The Great White House Goat Chase. That is by Brian Resnick, and it is about Benjamin Harrison. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show with two whole stories in it. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back

next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.