Fainting Goats
Domestication is a strange process. For thousands of years, humans have been taking wild animals (and plants), and matching them up to produce offspring that show a desired set of traits. Do that long enough, you can reduce the nose on a cat to almost nothing, turn a wolf into a chihuahua... or make fainting goats.
Goats are the earliest known domesticated farm animal, and fainting goats are a breed of goat that suffers from a genetic disorder -- passed on from parent to child -- called myotonia congenita. Basically, what happens is that whenever a goat gets startled or excited, all of its external muscles freeze for about ten seconds. Older goats learn to compensate by hopping around on stiff legs, but most younger goats just fall over.
This is a trait which wouldn't ever show up in the wild (at least, not for long), because any goats showing it aren't going to survive long enough to produce offspring -- imagine what would happen if every time a predator showed up to chase you, your muscles froze and you fell down. But if a trait is recessive, it can remain hidden in your DNA, masked by dominant traits, and come out if two parents carrying recessive genes produce an offspring that receives both of them.
For example, my Mum has blond hair, and my hair is dark, because my Dad's dark hair gene is dominant to my Mum's. But if I ever have kids with somebody who has blond hair in the family, my kids could be blond.
But if you're a farmer raising goats for food, a fainting goat is pretty easy to catch, and in the 1800's, somebody decided it would be a good idea to make some. All they needed to do was find two goats carrying that recessive gene, match them up until they had a kid that showed it, and voila -- Fainting Goat!
So fainting goats make pretty lousy wild goats, but they're very handy food animals. And they make pretty entertaining pets and show animals, too. They're also good at keeping weeds down on pasture land for your horses, and if you have an overgrown field you want to clear, using a fainting goat is much more fun than using a weed-eater.
The goats just take a lot longer to clear it.
Goats are the earliest known domesticated farm animal, and fainting goats are a breed of goat that suffers from a genetic disorder -- passed on from parent to child -- called myotonia congenita. Basically, what happens is that whenever a goat gets startled or excited, all of its external muscles freeze for about ten seconds. Older goats learn to compensate by hopping around on stiff legs, but most younger goats just fall over.
This is a trait which wouldn't ever show up in the wild (at least, not for long), because any goats showing it aren't going to survive long enough to produce offspring -- imagine what would happen if every time a predator showed up to chase you, your muscles froze and you fell down. But if a trait is recessive, it can remain hidden in your DNA, masked by dominant traits, and come out if two parents carrying recessive genes produce an offspring that receives both of them.
For example, my Mum has blond hair, and my hair is dark, because my Dad's dark hair gene is dominant to my Mum's. But if I ever have kids with somebody who has blond hair in the family, my kids could be blond.
But if you're a farmer raising goats for food, a fainting goat is pretty easy to catch, and in the 1800's, somebody decided it would be a good idea to make some. All they needed to do was find two goats carrying that recessive gene, match them up until they had a kid that showed it, and voila -- Fainting Goat!
So fainting goats make pretty lousy wild goats, but they're very handy food animals. And they make pretty entertaining pets and show animals, too. They're also good at keeping weeds down on pasture land for your horses, and if you have an overgrown field you want to clear, using a fainting goat is much more fun than using a weed-eater.
The goats just take a lot longer to clear it.