Goat

Goat?

I would do it in a boat, I would do it with a Goat

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Goat related media Bovidae Self projection as goat The Men Who Stare at Goats Needs Goat Goatspeed Goat Star Yak College fraternity Scapegoat Goat recipes Mouton v - t - e

The domestic goat (Capra hircus) was the first animal to train humans into protecting them full-time.^{[note 1]} Since the dawn of time, through the modern day, man has admired the beauty of the goat.^[4]

Scientists believe that humans evolved from a species of large Pleistocene goats.^[5]

Also, RationalWiki really likes goats. The species as a whole is kind of our mascot.

Goats in religion[edit]

Goats are believed to have been domesticated in this exceptionally peaceful area of the world.^{[note 2]} Or the Garden of Eden.^{[note 3]}

Uses of goats[edit]

Donating[edit]

Oxfam's 404 page. Less cute than their Goat Gift page.

Conservative Christians often buy goats for Malawi orphans to groom them,^[6] whereas liberals, such as Madonna, prefer to keep Goats as household pets.

Eating[edit]

The goat she is a tasty beast, but smelly

There's good eating on a goat, a staple in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of the Middle East, and in Dixon, New Mexico. By itself it has a very strong and gamey flavor, a bit like the taste of lamb or mutton on steroids.

In Nigeria, goat-head stew is a popular and stylish dish.^[7][8]

Goat cheese is famous, especially French chèvre and Greek feta. Goat cheese tastes delicious on pizza, specifically white pizza... with red peppers and grilled chicken. Awww yeah.

Goat is the meat that shish kebab was designed for. And if you have ever kept goats, you will understand why they must be turned into shish kebab.

Honey Bunches of Goats is a popular breakfast cereal.^[9]

After being weaned, goats themselves eat primarily plant matter, including paper products. The common misconception of goats eating tin cans may have been started by people watching a goat scavenging for the labels or licking the label glue.

Super-eating[edit]

A variety of sources, mainly in the Indian subcontinent, claim goat is virtually a superfood. "Goat meat is a great source of protein that is easily found" according to articlesofhealthcare.com.^[10] Many claims are based on the fact that goat meat has lower levels of fat and/or higher levels of some nutrients than other meats.^[11] Even though goat meat increases your cholesterol level and blood pressure,^[10] goat-eating advocates make a series of claims:

	Contains nutrients including B vitamins, selenium, calcium, potassium, and iron.[10][12] Figures show goat contains nutrients, although pork is higher in vitamin C, B6, folate, and thiamin (B1), and beef is higher in niacin (B3), B12, and folate (DFE); even icky chicken has more B6 and niacin.[13] SEMI-TRUE
	Good for the heart. According to promoters of goat flesh, it may lower inflamation of the heart and stabilize the heartbeat,[10] and it reduces the risk of coronary heart disease.[12] UNPROVEN
	Contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) fatty acids, which prevents cancer and inflammation.[10] There is evidence suggesting some CLAs can combat tumors, but the effects vary a lot between CLAs, so more work is required.[14] UNPROVEN
	Lower in saturated fat than beef;[10] US Dept of Agriculture figures seem to support a slightly lower level of most fats.[13][11] TRUE
	Prevents birth defects.[10][12] UNPROVEN
	Contains omega 3 fatty acid.[10] This is true, although other sources of omega 3 such as oily fish are probably more nutritious and lower in saturated fat. TRUE
	Good for autism due to omega 3 levels;[10] even though the Daily Mail claims omega 3 can treat autism, research does not back this up.[15] FALSE
	Delays aging by stimulating cell production.[10] There's no explanation for this and doesn't seem to be any evidence for it either. IMPROBABLE
	Good for the thyroid gland.[10] There's no explanation for this, either: some random sources claim meat in general is good for the thyroid,[16] but others warn patients with hypothyroidism to avoid red meat.[17] DUBIOUS

Drinking[edit]

Cheese made with goat milk.

Goat milk is extremely rich and hypoallergenic, making it more useful for nourishing human (and other) infants than cow's milk. For feeding babies, goat milk is traditionally regarded as the next best thing to breast milk, and historically it has been common in rural communities for mothers who had problems lactating to use a goat to suckle their children instead. Goats can become so accustomed to this that they come running when they hear the baby cry.^[18]

Goats are often associated with Bacchanalia, which continues to the present day. The South African vintner Goats Do Roam Winery offers such selections as The Goatfather, Goats-in-Villages, and Goat Door Chardonnay.

Voting[edit]

Images of goats are used for encouraging UK citizens to register to vote.^[19] The UK has not yet extended suffrage to goats, though.

Sporting[edit]

Some goats have a keen love of football, on one occasion even trying to join in the game. The human players unsportingly stopped it from doing so.

Dying[edit]

Professional exposure to goats causes a fivefold increase in the relative risk of getting a specific type of lung cancer as compared to other types of lung cancer.^[20] There's no data on amateur exposure, though.

What to do with a goat and a stool[edit]

Upon the stool you sit, and milk the goat a goodly bit. Then you'll be three tenths toward your certificate of Capra hircus-vaccimulgence.

Otherwise, you should avoid stepping in goat stool.

Fire protection[edit]

The Reagan Presidential Library and Getty Museum in California used goats to clear flammable scrub, therefore saving the buildings from wildfires.^[21]

How to get your goat[edit]

Many people prefer their goats farm-fresh, but it isn't always convenient for a busy city dweller. For those who want their goats fast and on time, it's easier to rent.^[22]

Russian reversal[edit]

In Soviet Russia, goats get YOU!!

North Dakotan impossibility[edit]

The socialist movement that controlled North Dakota politics starting in 1915 had a "goat that can't be got" mascot.^[23]

Romancing of goats[edit]

Dating[edit]

For those wishing to begin a relationship with a goat, there are goat dating sites with goat personal ads. These enable you to find the goat of your dreams and start a long and fulfilling relationship.

Marrying[edit]

You may now kiss the goat.

There has been much debate about what term to use for the union of goat and (usually) man. Some have opposed "marriage" as diluting the traditionally non-bestial nature of the institution.^[24] Also, many oppose granting spousal rights to goats. Others have proposed "covenant" unions, in which the relationship cannot be broken (except in times of famine).

Sometimes it has been necessary to use the law to help men "do the right thing". In one case, after being caught having relations with a goat named Rose, a Sudanese man was obliged to marry her.^[25] Unfortunately, the BBC reported that the goat died after choking on a plastic bag.^[26] The goat was apparently female, so, to the relief of many, there is no suggestion that the relationship might have been homosexual.

There has been no debate over marriage between goats. Uwiha Ch'uyay, a December 27 family tradition, is the sheep and goat wedding ceremony of Bolivia. The ritual often includes lighting candles, dabbing the animals' faces with blood, adorning them with flowers and corralling them into male and female pairs of either goats or sheep for a wedding. Throughout the ceremony, folk songs are sung to the couples. They are then force fed cocoa.^[27] There have also been rare sightings of marriages between goats and pigs. Such ceremonies allegedly involve physically tying the newlyweds together for the duration of their honeymoon, to symbolically cement the bond between them.

Goats, themselves, subscribe to a polygamous marriage system, in that a billy goat will control a small group of nannies (termed "the harem"), and mates with any of his nannies who he discovers are in oestrus. Polygamy in animals (goats or otherwise) is popularly anthropomorphized as having the dominant male lording over the members of his harem, but, in goats, at least, the billy goat actually has very little ability to control the behavior of his wives beyond limiting who gets to mate with them (namely, him). It is possibly of note that goats have pretty eyes and some have beautiful eyelashes. This may explain some of the events described above. Possibly.

Pornography[edit]

Some chunkay goat bootay.

Kid porn (sometimes incorrectly referred to as "kitty porn"^[28]) has become a near-obsession with such notables as NBC Dateline correspondent Chris Hansen, host of To Catch a Predator. The show's stated goal is to use a so-called "Judas goat" (a young goat called a "kid") to trap a sick old goat. Producers first bait goat traps on MySpace and Facebook with photos and bios of kids, and then film the take-downs of horny old goats for national entertainment.

There is no truth to the rumor that Chris Hansen keeps unedited copies of these take-downs in his special bedroom DVD collection. Since the magnetic field of his vibrator damaged his VHS tape collection, he stores his videos separately.

Inter-special relationships[edit]

There have been recorded cases of sheep and goat crossbreeding with sheep–goat hybrid offspring called either "geep" or "shoat".

In one Chinese zoo, a wolf and a goat have formed a "close friendship" and are now inseparable.^[29] According to Pakistan's Daily Times: "Since being put together, the wolf and the goat have done everything together - except share meals. The wolf sticks to his meat while the goat enjoys a vegetable diet."

Persecution of goats[edit]

Animal sacrifice[edit]

Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are hunted for sport in Colorado.^[30]

It was reported^[31][32][33] on 4 September 2007 that Nepal Airlines had a pair of goats sacrificed to the Hindu sky god Akash Bhairab in order to ensure that their aircraft — specifically, one of their two Boeing 757-200s — would stop malfunctioning. The scientific nature of this experiment in aircraft maintenance is still under investigation.

Medical quackery[edit]

See John R. Brinkley.

Horny Prisoners[edit]

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, goats have been known to be detained in jail cells — without access to legal counsel! — while awaiting trial. Their crime? Being sold illegally by the roadside.^[34]

Why a goat?[edit]

In 2006, Church of the SubGenius devotee Rachel Bevilacqua, also known as Rev. Mary Magdalene, temporarily lost custody of her son because she could not explain the humor in photos of her celebrating X-Day with a goat head mask. With the Judge repeatedly asking "Why a goat?", and never once asking "Why no chicken?"^[35][36] Even Chico Marx asked, "Why a duck?"^[37]

Goat hunting[edit]

It has been pointed out that some recent Vice Presidential candidates enjoy rather one-sided hunting of various beasts. It makes them more of a man, might be the accepted supposition. However, at least one user believes that goat hunting by helicopter should be a crime against humanity (goatanity?). For the love of Goat, if you want to hunt goats, do it the real manly way — with your bare hands.

When goats go bad[edit]

Goat-on-goat crime.

On Jan 23 2009, Reuters reported that Police in Nigeria were holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.^[38][39][40]

It seems that vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police, saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

Reuters quotes Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed as saying:

Assuming this is true, it can hardly be blamed on goats since it was presumably a human in disguise, rather than a goat who sometimes took the form of a human carjacker.

One Arizonan goat was arrested for "trespassing, assault, criminal damage and disorderly conduct" in 2022. He resisted arrest by urinating on a police officer, though they forgave his crimes out of respect for goatkind.^[41]

Goat ecology[edit]

• 

  Goats can thrive in tough urban environments as easily as they can on a farm. The one in the foreground held me up at knife-point and took my wallet.

• 

  A goat staring down its next prey: you.

• 

  The brown one is David. Don't ask why.

• 

  Mountain goats choose to grace the clouds with their presence. Star goats serve a similar role.

Desertification[edit]

Goats eat by pulling an entire plant up by its roots and eating it all. This is quite different to grazing, which is how sheep and cows eat. Consequently, any land in which goats are run swiftly turns into a barren waste in which only goats can survive. On the bright side, this makes them great for removing invasive species!^[42]

There are certain places in the peaceful and God-fearing Middle East that illustrate this with unintended clarity. Between the walls of the ubiquitous double-walled border fences, where the land is so heavily mined that not even a goat can set foot there without swiftly being turned into pink mist, the Garden of Eden returns and flourishes.

Goats in politics[edit]

Chèvre Guerra[edit]

Chèvre Guerra, or War Goat, was a young goat who toured around Latin America, witnessing all the slaughter of innocent goats by capitalist goat herders. He became a revolutionary, but was captured and convicted of being delicious. His pal Faundel Cabro would succeed in the revolution, but ended up butchering even more goats. Ashamed, Chèvre Guerra's carcass is turning on his spit.

Goats vs. Terrorism[edit]

The Pet Goat is a children's story about a goat who eats too much. Bush was reading this book with a group of youngsters at a photo-op school visit in Florida when he was informed of an aircraft hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11.^[43]

Goats in journalists[edit]

Journalist Mickey Kaus has not denied rumours of a goat relationship.^[44]

NPR has a section named Goats and Soda, a tasteful combination.^[45] They explained: "Traveling about in Africa, [Anders Kelto, a radio reporter on our team] saw a lot of goats. And a lot of soda."^[46]

Reason for not running for President[edit]

After Glenn Beck's 28 August 2010 rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Dick Armey was interviewed about the Tea Party movement. During the interview, he was asked if he was considering a run for the presidency. His response: "Oh, no, no, no, no. I’ve got 34 goats that depend on me daily. I couldn’t be away that long."^[47] (As Fruhlinger notes, the goat-penis jokes write themselves.) Indeed, many important questions were never answered about the Fox News commentator and goats.^[48]

As a metaphor for Obamacare[edit]

In January, 2017, US Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia compared Obamacare to a goat that got into his house.^[49]

Goats in legend[edit]

Santa Claus with his Yule Goat.

Pan[edit]

In the Greek Pantheon, Pan, son of Hermes, is the god of goats (and of goatherds and travelers in the wilderness). At least he was. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, Pan died sometime during the reign of Roman Emperor Tiberius (14-37C.E.). The nature of Pan's death might be viewed with suspicion if one considers the events taking place in ancient Palestine during that same time period, or that the death of Pan may have been staged as a part of a ritual in one of the many many mysterious Eleusinian Mysteries of the Eleusinian Mystery Cults. Also, because the modern world seems to lack satyrs, it is possible that a coordinated genocide took place at this time.

Satyrs[edit]

Satyrs, not to be confused with satire, were a human/goat hybrid.^[50]

Satyrs are the ultimate end of the evolutionary process on planet Earth, and are therefore the true top of the Great Chain of Being.

Greek mythology is rife with cross-species sexual relationships and their products, such as Pan. Perhaps this is a reference to our ancient goat-man forefathers.

Fauns[edit]

A faun eating an ice cream cone on the facade of the New Cathedral of Salamanca, Spain (at least we hope that's an ice cream cone)

A faun is a mythological half-human/half-goat; it is a manifestation of forest and animal spirits.

Se'irim[edit]

The se'ir (שע‬י‬ר, plural שע‬י‬רי‬‬ם se'irim) is a supernatural hairy goat creature in the Bible (e.g. Leviticus 17:7, Isaiah 13:21).^[51] This is totally not the product of early Iron Age goatherds from the Near East hallucinating while in the desert.^{[citation NOT needed]} Similar creatures are to be found in contemporary Assyrian myth.^[52]

Yule Goat[edit]

Santa Claus was alleged to have once ridden a Yule Goat. This was disproved as fake news created by neopagans who hate Christmas. And America.^{[ad hoc]}

Falker Satherhood[edit]

Falker Satherhood is a holiday that is celebrated each year on Cinco de Mayo. It originated in the tiny Eastern European country of Belgrid to commemorate the beginning of spring and the annual "Dancing Ritual of the Goats", or so we imagine.^[53][54]

Satan[edit]

In what is clearly a potshot at the aforementioned pagan Pan, satyrs, and fauns, Christians have a tendency to depict their favorite boogeyman as having caprine features such as horns and hooves.

Baphomet[edit]

…And apparently Christians also thought it would be spiritually profitable somehow to slander the Knights Templar and Muslims as demon-goat-worshippers. What in the tap-dancing hell.

Goatmen[edit]

In the following, note the recurring theme of goatmen appearing in far-right wingnut locations.

Texas
Jann reported seeing a goatman in Texas under his pecan tree in January 2002. Jann reports that this is unusual since there are no goats in this region of Texas.^[55]

Kentucky
Beneath the Pope Lick train trestle in Jefferson County, outside of Louisville, the Pope Lick Monster, half goat and half man, is said to dwell.^[56] Arguably, the fact that there is a train trestle called "Pope Lick" is stranger than the presence of any goatman.

Maryland
There's also one in Maryland Or something.

Utah
And the Wasatch Mountains on Ben Lomond Peak outside of Ogden, Utah.^[57]

Arizona
We're waiting with bated breath…

Chupacabras
We shall not speak of it…^[58]

Goats in the stars[edit]

Capricornus[edit]

Blobs and image noise Capricornus and Auriga pictured with a potato. Yes, it's hard to see they're goats.

Goats have also made it into the stars due to their representative, the constellation Capricornus. Or, half of a goat, at least, as Capricornus is referred to as "The Sea Goat" (no relation to goatfish), and having the fore-section of a billy goat, with the hind-quarters of a fish. Oddly enough, some allege that Capricornus represents Amalthea, either the magical nanny goat of the nymph who raised Zeus, or the nanny-goat herself, having been placed in the sky by Zeus in order to assuage his guilt over having made his armor by killing and skinning the goat who was his beloved wetnurse. Of course, those who allege that Capricornus is Amalthea never bothered to take into account that Capricornus depicted in art and astrology as a male, while (either) Amalthea is female, mostly because fact-checking had not been invented back in those days.

The constellation itself is rather faint having no bright stars, but it's conspicuous if one knows where to find it and includes some interesting deep sky objects.

Capella[edit]

Capella ("small she-goat"), the brightest star of the constellation Auriga (where the main stars that form it are often considered a goat with her litter), is yet another representative of the goats in the sky. This beautiful winter (summer for Southern Hemisphere observers) star is actually a pair of two evolved, luminous, yellow giant stars plus another pair of red dwarves far away from the former.

Goats in science[edit]

Goats in boats[edit]

Wolves eat goats.^[59] But not cabbages.^[60]

Goats in rooms[edit]

Monty Hall chose goats 2 out of every 3 times!

Goats figure prominently in the so-called Monty Hall statistical problem.^[61]

Goats in brains[edit]

"Goat" is a term used in psychological research to refer to a person with a skeptical bent, often a disbeliever in the paranormal or in psychic phenomena. Believers, conversely, are referred to as "sheep."^[62]

Goats on acid[edit]

In many languages, the trivial (i.e., non-systematic, and old-fashioned) names of hexanoic, octanoic and decanoic acid are derived from the Latin for goat, caper for the billy and capra for the nanny.

In English, they are respectively caproic, caprylic and capric acid. If you've smelt both them and goats, you'll understand why. The three make up about 15% of goat milk fat.

German has another trivial name for hexanoic acid: Ziegesäure, which pleasingly translates directly as "goat acid" without all that Latin tomfoolery.

Goatbirds[edit]

The nightjar, a species of bird, has the Linnaean name Caprimulgus, meaning "goatsucker" - which is also an old-fashioned English name for the European nightjar. Those names are based on an ancient myth that nightjars sucked milk from goats at night.^{[note 4]}

Goats in tubes[edit]

Google Chrome uses goat teleportation technology to deliver web sites to your computer at goatspeed

No comprehensive studies on the role of goats within the intertubes have been conducted yet, but there are several interesting facts that are readily apparent.

A high percentage of goats references on the internet are either profane or pornographic; an unfiltered Google search for the phrase "Goat" will turn up roughly 312,000,000 results, but if you take this same search and filter it for obscenity you will get only 294,000,000 results (data as of May 26, 2018).

Goats in computing[edit]

A Goat is a program file that contains runnable but useless code, used as a sacrificial decoy to study the effects of computer viruses instead of genuine programs. Of course, sometimes the virus ends up killed and eaten infected and absorbed by the goat.

Goat quotes[edit]

Famous statements about goats[edit]

"If she fails us, we better get used to herding goats." — Captain James T. Kirk, Who Mourns for Adonais

"Me? A goat?" — Professor Calculus, Destination Moon

"Put silk on a goat and it is still a goat" — Irish Saying

"It's no use going to the goat's house to look for wool" — Irish Saying

"Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side." — Yiddish Proverb

"Bring me a bowl of coffee before I turn into a goat." - Johann Sebastian Bach

"The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies." — Psalms, 104:18

"Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve?" — Job, 39:1

"You'll never guess what was in the curry. What meat they used. Goat. They made a curry with goat. Dirty bastards." — Catherine Tate

"Where can I hang my goat?" — Sir Winston Churchill (poss. misheard)

"There is no Goat but Goat, the one true Goat. All praise Goat!" — Rebuttal: A Goat’s Revenge.

"There is no Goat but Goat, and Muhammad is His prophet." — Islamic Shahada (poss. mistranslated)

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your goats!" — Shakespeare

"You could do it in a boat, you could do it with a goat." — Dr. Seuss

"Blessed are the meek, for they make great scape goats" — The Be-a-a-a-a-a-attitudes.

"All that glisters is not goat" — Wilhelm von Schackespier

"Everything for the Goat, nothing outside of the Goat, nothing against the Goat" — Benito Mussolini

"… thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead." — From Song of Solomon chapter 4, verse 1

"I'll get me goat" - catchphrase used by Mark Williams for one character in BBC comedy sketch show programme The Fast Show.

"Sheep go to Heaven, goats go to Hell" - CAKE.

Famous statements by goats[edit]

Famous actions of goats[edit]

Goats of note[edit]

• Bill the Goat, mascot of the U.S. Naval Academy.
• Hartford (Connecticut) Yard Goats minor league baseball team (AA affiliate to the Colorado Rockies), and their mascots, Chompers and Chew Chew.
• Frank the Goat is mascot, casual programmer and occasional help desk employee at the popular journal site LiveJournal. Some versions of his history recount his many adventures and his role in founding LJ.
• Heidrun is the female mythical goat from Norse religion that squirted life-giving drink for all inhabitants of Valhalla.
• William Windsor, a kashmir goat, is a retired lance corporal in the British army. His last name indicates he is related to the British Monarchy.
• Rose, a goat living in South Sudan, attained fame due to her marriage to a human, Charles Tombe. This of course was below her station, and occurred due to an unfortunate scandal involving pre-marital sex, which underlines some of the dangers of the practice. Mr. Tombe is now a widower after his lovely bride's untimely death in 2007.
• Muriel, a character in George Orwell's 1945 novella Animal Farm, who is shown to be one of the more intelligent animals. She is one of the few characters with no immediately apparent Soviet parallel. On closer reading, however, her benevolence and attention to old scraps of newspaper suggest that she may, in fact, represent goats themselves and the beneficent role they played in leading the Russian peasantry.
• Earl "the Goat" Manigault, an American basketball player famous for his superlative jumping ability. Pictures are rare, so it's unclear whether "the Goat" is an accurate descriptor or a flattering nickname applied to a human whose last name was misheard as "Nanny Goat."
• Shaun "the Goat" Goater, a Bermudian soccer player who was the top scorer for Manchester City for 4 consecutive seasons. "Feed the Goat and he will score!" the fans would sing. Or rather, bleat.
• Clay Henry, Sr. was elected mayor of Lajitas, Texas in 1986 as a reward for boosting tourism as a legendary beer-drinking goat. At least one of his descendants, Clay Henry III, was also elected to the post and later subject of an assassination attempt.^[63]
• An as-yet-unnamed goat has taken up Yeti impersonation.^[64]
• The Royal Welsh Regiment of the British Army have had a regimental goat since at least 1884. It's traditionally called Billy, and is chosen by the soldiers. That's even more disturbing than you first thought, isn't it?^[65]
• Boxer Muhammad Ali was known as "The Greatest" and later "The Greatest of All Time". A massive photo-biography of him was titled GOAT.^{[66][note 5]}
• American professional wrestler Bryan Danielson (a.k.a. Daniel Bryan), has been derisively called a "goat" by many members of WWEs commentary team, due to his long, flowing hair and immeasurably manly beard. This is despite a) his affiliated animal being the dragon (as per his original ring name, "The American Dragon") and b) fans trying to repurpose "goat" into the acronym G.O.A.T., which stands for "Greatest of All Time" (though to be fair, this is an accurate description of his wrestling ability).
• In 1945, the Chicago Cubs won their last National League pennant. In 1946, the Cubs refused to let Billy Sianis take his (rather aromatic) pet goat with him into the stadium. Enraged, Sianis placed the Curse of the Billy Goat on the Chicago Cubs. They have not won the league pennant since. The Cubs' ensuing dryspell didn't end until 2016, when they went all the way to Game 7 of the World Series against the Cleveland Indians, finally emerging as the victors in overtime. So ended the longest MLB championship drought on record, and the longest drought of any kind to be blamed on a goat.
• The Dreemurr family (Toriel, Asgore, Asriel) in Undertale and Ralsei in Deltarune. The Dreemur family were the ruling family of the Underground.

Goats in popular culture[edit]

Mario Kart proves only further how cute goats are.

• Goats, goat parts, and goat-like creatures were shown or mentioned in all 1,328 episodes of The X-Files.^{[citation needed]}
• A goat (see Judas goat) was used in Jurassic Park to lure the Tyrannosaurus Rex into the open.
• The three billy goats Gruff, apparently brothers, starred in a popular pro-goat story by Hans Christian Andersen. The goats in this story were notable for their intelligence, at least as contrasted to the common troll.
• One version of the truth about goats is allegedly available at this blog.
• A goat briefly appears in the movie version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
• In the fourth Harry Potter book we learn that Dumbledore's brother has a, let's say, strange fascination with goats.^[68] In the seventh book, we learn his Patronus is a goat. Since the form of a Wizard's Patronus often is related to the one they love, this has some rather strange implications.
• A goat with interchangeable horns appears in the movie Hoodwinked.
• A goat ate the payroll once on the television program M*A*S*H. On another occasion, Klinger served the others with a dish which, after they sampled it, he revealed to be Goat a la King. The episode ended on their expressions of disgust, surely just before they beat him to a pulp for sacrilege.
• Stephen Colbert once "wagged his finger" at goats.
• The Men Who Stare at Goats is a book by Jon Ronson (2004) which was made into a 2009 movie staring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey (unfortunately) and Jeff Bridges.
• Goat Brothers is:
  • Another name for the Hans Christian Andersen story listed above;
  • A 1993 memoir by Larry Colton;
  • A swap meet and bike show for motorcycle enthusiasts, held annually in October in Saratoga Springs, NY.
• A dyspeptic goat hosts the Neil Boortz show.
• The Rough, Gruff Goat Brothers Rap by Bernice Chardiet, Jon Chardiet and Jean-Claude Suares is a 1993 children's book and audiocassette bundle that retells the Hans Christian Andersen story in rap.
• Goatboy Bill Hicks
• [3] Everybody has a goat, but no one wants theirs to be gotten. Weird . . .
• Giles Goat-Boy, by John Barthes
• Chompy the Goat is the mascot of the city of Dimmsdale in Nickelodeon's "Fairly Odd Parents".
• Val Doonican once sang the story of Paddy McGinty's Goat.
• The Billy Goat Tavern is...
  • a Chicago pub that was the inspiration for the "Cheeseborger! Cheeseborger! Cheeps, no fries! No Pepsi ... Coke!" routine from the first years of Saturday Night Live.
  • famous for the so-called Curse of the Billy Goat that has supposedly kept the Cubs from winning going to the World Series until 2016. (A well-known story to all Chicagoans, although it gets a major eye-roll from White Sox fans.)
• Every Christmas, a town of Gävle, Sweden erects a goat in honor of an old Scandinavian tradition. Most years since 1966, the goat has been burned, smashed, or cut down.^[69]
• Goats have recently become a meme in the Emilie Autumn fandom, especially among Asylum Reformers. "Fight Like A Goat", indeed.
• The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble - poor regulation, perverse incentive structures, securitised debt, and the manic pursuit of wealth, with goats!
• In the MMORPG Lord of The Rings Online (or LoTRO), in the Moria region, you can get a goat as a mount. They run extremely fast.

A Rationalwiki editor at Conservapedia Screenshot of Goat Simulator (Android version).

• Gamers can now play as a goat in Goat Simulator, a computer game with (intentional) glitches and bugs. Goat-kind's destructive potential is fully and accurately realized. It is also the latest in goat simulation technology, bringing next-gen goat simulation to YOU. You no longer have to fantasize about being a goat, your dreams have finally come true! What are you waiting for? The developers have also released a DLC for an RPG goat simulator, which unsurprisingly, rivals MMO giants such as Runescape, World of Warcraft and Eve Online.
  • Also covered by Tierzoo in his series of videos covering potential builds in the longest-running MMORPG: Outside
  • Also showing their good taste, the game Warframe has visually-themed the Primed version of Oberon after a black goat, rather than the stag that the regular Oberon is visually-themed after.
• "A woman for a duty, a boy for pleasure, but a goat for choice." Ancient proverb.^[70]
• The Welsh folksong Cyfri'r Geifr is about counting goats.^{[note 6]}
• Goating is the act of taking over a Facebook page and filling it with pictures of goats with mocking captions.^[71] Bustatroll has been the main exponent of goating right-wingnut Facebook pages.[4]
• Black Phillip, the star goat of the critically acclaimed 2016 horror film The Witch became the first actor to be nominated for both Best Supporting Actor (as Satan) and Best Actor (as himself) for the same film in Academy history. While Black Phillip did take home the Best Supporting Actor award, he lost Best Actor to Leonardo DiCaprio, in what most Oscar observers viewed as a major upset.
• in Dino D-Day, you can kill goats and the top-right says (playername) killed a defenseless goat
• In Fallen London, players can purchase an Overgoat for an exorbitant amount of in-game resources. In the unlikely event that a player obtains two Overgoats, they can breed them together to produce an Übergoat. In the extremely unlikely event that a player obtains seven Übergoats (a bragging rights challenge among late-game players), they can then be combined to form a Heptagoat.
• The phrase "riding the goat" is jokingly used in Freemasonry concerning initiations into the Lodge. In reality, there are no goats ridden.^[72]
• Rolf, a character in the Canadian children's cartoon Ed, Edd n Eddy, owns a goat named Victor.

Fun goat facts[edit]

Stop looking at me and do some work.

• Goats have 15,000 tastebuds — that's 5-6,000 more than the average human!
• Goats were domesticated around 7000 B.C.E.
• Mohair comes from the Turkish Angora goat.
• Goats have rectangular pupils (as do all other artiodactyls, whales, and horses).
• A castrated male goat is called a "wether".
• Goats are very adaptable and live on every continent except Antarctica.
• Goats have a four chambered stomach.
• A Google search for "goat malawi orphans" returns this very page as the first result.
• A mea capra is an admission of goat.
• Many goats enjoy smoking cigars.
• Goats allegedly discovered the stimulant effects of coffee beans before humans did, according to the history of coffee by National Coffee Association USA
• So-called "mountain goats" aren't really goats at all, and are in fact more closely related to antelopes.

Goats in the Bible - The Holy Goats[edit]

There are many biblical references to goats.^[73]

There are many biblical references to goats of which the following is only a selection. A full list can be found at Goats in the Bible.

The scapegoat[edit]

Leviticus 16 tells us about the scapegoat. Two goats were to be selected and lots would be thrown to see which would be sacrificed^{[note 7]} as a "sin offering" and which would be released into the desert. Perhaps surprisingly, the released goat was the scapegoat and the other one got the joy of being sacrificed.^[74]

Tamar[edit]

Tamar was Onan's widow — he who gave his name that pastime beloved of teenage boys and others. While pretending to be a prostitute to seduce her father-in-law, she was promised a young goat for her services.

Michal[edit]

Michal made a pillow of goats' hair for the dummy figure of her husband, David, after he'd legged it because her father King Saul seemed to be on the verge of going postal (which he indeed did).^[75]

This goat may or may not have known the bowling score.^[76]

The joy of goats[edit]

The writer of the Song of Solomon seems to have had a definite thing about goats. When talking about his girlfriend's hair, he often comes up with similes like: "Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Gilead."^[77] To be fair to other animals, he also says things like: "Your teeth are like a flock of sheep coming up from the washing."^[78] So this may be an animal fixation in general and not really goat-centric.

Judas goat[edit]

With the recent discovery of the Coptic text the Gospel of Judas, Judas' actual role has been called into question. What's not questioned is that he had at least one goat.

Creationist views on goats[edit]

Creationists believe that goats co-existed with dinosaurs, because goats appear in historic hieroglyphs.

Goats are very important to creationists — the Bible mentions them 170 times!^[79] God made goats out of leftover cow parts, on the sixth day of Creation. This is similar to the process still used for making hot dogs. Goats are specifically mentioned in the Bible, therefore we know that they exist.

God regularly calls for goats to be sacrificed on altars by having their throats cut and blood drained. It is still a mystery as to what goats did to become the object of God's loving wrath (though, some suggest it was because the ancient Jews thought that goats made a perfectly acceptable substitute for humans).

Noah brought seven or fourteen goats onto the Ark, but unfortunately, one of the male goats was gay.^{[note 8]} Noah implemented a program of reparative therapy before he offered his burnt offerings to the Lord. The goats were able to live an appropriate life, and were fruitful and multiplied. God Bless!

Objective Ministries[edit]

"Mr. Gruff, the atheist goat" is a main character on the Objective Ministries website.^[80]

The devil's creation[edit]

Baphomet, the goat-headed occult symbol and all-round swell guy.

According to legend, God in His omniscience forgot to create goats, so the devil made them instead. Satan first made goats with fine long tails that kept getting entangled, so in a rage Satan bit every goat's tail off. When left alone, goats too often gnaw at or injure good plants, so God in His goodness and mercy sent wolves to tear those goats apart.^[81] Satanists revere goats as a mockery of the lamb of God^[82] as a relic of the pagan traditions, see above.

Wordplay with goats (goatplay)[edit]

G.O.A.T. as an acronym[edit]

Want to know where to get your acronyms on the cheap?^[83]

• GOAT - Glossary of Acronyms and Terms
• GOAT - God of All Things^[84]
• GOAT - Galveston Orientation & Amnesia Test
• GOAT - Gap/Overlap Analysis Tool
• GOAT - Gene Ontology Annotation Tool
• GOAT - Grouped Optimal Aggregation Technique
• GOAT - Graphics Optical Analysis & Translation
• GOAT - Government of All Talents (Gordon Brown's administration)
• GOAT - Greatest of All Time (LL Cool J music album, Cassius Clay Mohammed Ali, Valentino Rossi (allegedly))
• GOAT - Guru of All Trades
• GOAT - Goes Over All Terrain (vehicle)
• GOAT - Gone on a Trip
• GOAT - Get Out At Town (for bus trips!)
• GOAT - Garry Only Ate Toast (very short eulogy)
• GOAT - Go Away Troll
• GOAT - Get Our Act Together
• GOAT - Goofiest of All Terms (Okay, I made that up.)
• GOAT - Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test (Fallout 3 game)
• GOAT - Goat of All Time (made up, but this section needed a recursive acronym)
• GOAT - Greater Omaha Area Trail Runnerz (a running group in Omaha, Nebrazka)

Goat as an anagram[edit]

• Gato (a kind of submarine, also Spanish for "cat")
• OTAG (Oklahoma Tuition Aid Grant)^[85]
• Tago (a municipality in the Philippines)
• Toga (a kind of party)
• Go at (in an attacking/sexually advancing way)
• Gota (an Indian city)^[86] (also Spanish for water drop).
• At go (Being at a game of Go)

Goat in poetry[edit]

An idiotic human^[87] freestyling with Karl the Goat

Goat rhymes with many words: boat, bloat, coat, creosote, dote, eukaryote, float, gloat, groat, litote(s), moat, mote, note, oat, quote, prokaryote, rote, scrote, shoat, smote, stoat, symbiote, throat, tote, vote, wrote, and zygote. If you speak with a severe slur, it could even rhyme with "poet". Coincidence? I think not. See, for example, Kipling's "By the Hoof of the Wild Goat",^[88] which uses none of the above words. "Tom Murphy's Goat", by Oliver Thomas, rhymes it with "throat"… twice. But it's Australian.^[89]

Conservapedia and goats[edit]

Conservapedia has taken an appallingly disrespectful attitude towards goats.^[90] Versions of the article were far too short, full of right-wing bias, and have been repeatedly deleted and recreated^[91] to reset the page views and imply goats are far less notable and important than they actually are. Conservapedia's goat article was deleted by site owner Andy Schlafly with the inadequate edit summary explanation of "restore later". The page was later recreated, very appropriately, on St. Valentine's Day, 2010.^[92] According to the current version of the page, goats were domesticated between 6000 and 7000 B.C., meaning domestic goats existed 2000 years before the date God created the universe.

To be fair, goats are equally disrespectful toward Conservapedia. They justify this, claiming that being bucolic creatures, they are acutely sensitive to the stench of bullshit.

See also[edit]

• Everything else
• Sonya Fitzpatrick, "pet psychic" — for days when you need to talk to your goat
• The Men Who Stare at Goats
• Sheep, which sounds like a goat, is raised on a farm like a goat, and is edible like a goat, but is definitely not a goat.
• Voat, which uses a goat as mascot.

Want to read this in another language?[edit]

Wenn Sie diesen Artikel auf Deutsch suchen, kann er auf Ziege gefunden werden.

Cabra es la versión en español de este artículo.

External links[edit]

• Slate: Jon Katz's three goats won't stop jeering him
• Super Heavy Goat Ass MySpace page.
• Denmark, too, has its goat.
• The inevitable Facebook page.
• "GOATS STANDING IN TREES ZOMG", a slideshow from HuffPo
• The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation
• The Science of Goats: It's Okay to be Smart YouTube episode
• He blows goats. I have proof

Notes[edit]

Hoofnotes[edit]