Goats are really sociable animals, they can tell if you are happy or sad! Let’s discover five glamorous goats facts for kids.
There are many different types of goat that live all over the world and use their climbing skills to travel around their environment. Mountain goats can scale very sheer mountain sides with their incredible balance. Goats are picky eaters and don’t like eating food that has been trampled so they climb to reach fresher food. Goats in Morocco can be seen climbing into trees to eat leaves and berries in the high branches. Farmers that keep goats often build towers or structures that their goats can climb to keep them entertained.
Goats can digest a lot of foods which are toxic to humans. They digest their food twice using their four stomachs. Because ancient people saw goats eating poisonous things and not being affected they believed that goats had a poison antidote in their stomach. Food that can’t be undigested by the goats’ four stomachs is pressed into a stone which is called a Bezoar. Humans believed that bezoars would work as an antidote to any poison. This was disproved by Ambroise Pare, a French physician in 1565 who tested the theory and found it wasn’t true.
Goats need company as they are a herd animal and they enjoy playing with other goats. They even have accents like humans do and sound similar to other goats in their herd. Goats also like humans and can tell if humans are happy or sad. Goats can tell if humans are smiling or frowning so make sure to smile if you ever see a goat as they like to see a smiley face.
One unusual thing about goats is that their pupils are rectangular in shape rather than round like human pupils. This means they can see almost anything behind them as they can see 320 degrees around them. This helps them see and avoid predators in the wild. Their unusual pupils mean that they can’t look up or down without moving their head as their eyes only rotate clockwise or counterclockwise to look around.
Goats were one of the first animals that humans domesticated to use on farms. Humans have had pet goats for over 9000 years and their babies have been called kids since ancient times. Young goats were actually called kids before human children were as human kids weren’t called that until the 19th century. Now both goats and children are called kids.
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