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Like&subscribe 👍🙏💖🥳The goat or domestic goat (Capra hircus) is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (C. aegagrus) of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the animal family Bovidae and the tribe Caprini, meaning it is closely related to the sheep. There are over 300 distinct breeds of goat.[1] It is one of the oldest domesticated species of animal, according to archaeological evidence that its earliest domestication occurred in Iran at 10,000 calibrated calendar years ago.[2]

Domestic goat
Temporal range: 0.01–0 Ma
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↓
Neolithic–Recent
Hausziege 04.jpg
A pygmy goat on a tree stump
Conservation status
Domesticated
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Mammalia
Order:
Artiodactyla
Family:
Bovidae
Subfamily:
Caprinae
Tribe:
Caprini
Genus:
Capra
Species:
C. hircus
Binomial name
Capra hircus
Linnaeus, 1758
Synonyms
Capra aegagrus hircus Linnaeus, 1758
Capra depressa Linnaeus, 1758
Capra mambrica Linnaeus, 1758
Capra reversa Linnaeus, 1758


Goat-herding is an ancient tradition that is still important in places such as Egypt.
Goats have been used for milk, meat, fur, and skins across much of the world.[3] Milk from goats is often turned into goat cheese.

Female goats are referred to as does or nannies, intact males are called bucks or billies, and juvenile goats of both sexes are called kids. Castrated males are called wethers. While the words hircine and caprine both refer to anything having a goat-like quality, hircine is used most often to emphasize the distinct smell of domestic goats.

In 2011, there were more than 924 million goats living in the world, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.[4]

Etymology

History

Anatomy and health

Reproduction

Diet

Behavior


An example of goats browsing together in Japan.

Goats blocking a road in Ladakh

Goats establish a dominance hierarchy in flocks, sometimes through head butting.
Goats are naturally curious. They are also agile and well known for their ability to climb and balance in precarious places. This makes them the only ruminant to regularly climb trees. Due to their agility and inquisitiveness, they are notorious for escaping their pens by testing fences and enclosures, either intentionally or simply because they are used to climbing. If any of the fencing can be overcome, goats will almost inevitably escape. Goats have been found to be as intelligent as dogs by some studies.[32]

When handled as a group, goats tend to display less herding behavior than sheep. When grazing undisturbed, they tend to spread across the field or range, rather than feed side by side as do sheep. When nursing young, goats will leave their kids separated ("lying out") rather than clumped, as do sheep. They will generally turn and face an intruder and bucks are more likely to charge or butt at humans than are rams.[33]

A study by Queen Mary University reports that goats try to communicate with people in the same manner as domesticated animals such as dogs and horses. Goats were first domesticated as livestock more than 10,000 years ago. Research conducted to test communication skills found that the goats will look to a human for assistance when faced with a challenge that had previously been mastered, but was then modified. Specifically, when presented with a box, the goat was able to remove the lid and retrieve a treat inside, but when the box was turned so the lid could not be removed, the goat would turn and gaze at the person and move toward them, before looking back toward the box. This is the same type of complex communication observed by animals bred as domestic pets, such as dogs. Researchers believe that better understanding of human-goat interaction could offer overall improvement in the animals' welfare.[34][35] The field of anthrozoology has established that domesticated animals have the capacity for complex communication with humans when in 2015 a Japanese scientist determined that levels of oxytocin did increase in human subjects when dogs were exposed to a dose of the "love hormone", proving that a human-animal bond does exist. This is the same affinity that was proven with the London study above; goats are intelligent, capable of complex communication, and able to form bonds.[36]