Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's still October here on the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast. And you may have noticed that we've been
Speaker 1: talking a good bit about farm animals this month. That
Speaker 1: was not by design. It just sort of happened that way.
Speaker 1: But you know, it started with discussing elf shot, which
Speaker 1: was this folk belief about wounds inflicted off and on
Speaker 1: cattle and horses by supernatural fairy weapons. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: we talked about the cattle mutilation panic of the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and all this talk about livestock actually brought me back
Speaker 1: to a question I've wondered about in recent years, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're finally getting around to devoting some episodes
Speaker 1: to it. What is the deal with goats and evil incarnate?
Speaker 1: Modern audiences will probably think of a particularly awesome bit
Speaker 1: of goatish devilry from the historical horror film The Witch,
Speaker 1: directed by Robert Eggers. I don't want to spoil too
Speaker 1: much for those of you who still haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: If you haven't it's great, but uh, let's just say
Speaker 1: the movie overflow with with mega creepy goat stuff a
Speaker 1: link between goats and demons and Satan himself. And of
Speaker 1: course this link between goats and demons and occult magic
Speaker 1: is not original to that film. There appears to be
Speaker 1: a long running association between goats and beliefs about witchcraft
Speaker 1: and devil worship, not so much in New England, where
Speaker 1: that movie is set, but especially in continental Europe, where
Speaker 1: the goat form was an important part of for one thing,
Speaker 1: the imagery of Baffa Met, a figure that will definitely
Speaker 1: come back to in more detail later in this series.
Speaker 1: But I figured that I think Christians associate aided with
Speaker 1: evil because it was allegedly worshiped by the Knights Templar
Speaker 1: and later by other occultists. I think emphasis on allegedly
Speaker 1: with that square with your understanding, Rob, Oh, yes, yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: and well we'll touch on that later later then. And
Speaker 1: then also you can when you start talking about occultists
Speaker 1: and some of the occult usages of Baffa Met and
Speaker 1: uh and Baffa met iconology like that breaks down a
Speaker 1: bit as well, because you get into like, well, what
Speaker 1: what is worshiped, and what is what is the occult?
Speaker 1: And you can certainly go down some rabbit holes there
Speaker 1: as well. But apart from bath met even the goat
Speaker 1: pops up in all other kinds of continental witchcraft imagery.
Speaker 1: Some of the greatest examples that come to mind for
Speaker 1: me are two similar paintings by the Spanish Romantic artist
Speaker 1: Francisco Goya. The first one is a painting from called
Speaker 1: Witches Sabbath, which depicts a coven of women gathered in
Speaker 1: a circle around an upright he goat in the moonlight,
Speaker 1: and the goats horns are magnificently curled, as if curled
Speaker 1: by the physical substance of evil, and they're decorated with
Speaker 1: branches of oak leaf, and his four hoofs are outstretched
Speaker 1: like the arms of a man kind of like you
Speaker 1: you might see uh depictions of sleepwalkers with their arms
Speaker 1: stretched out in front of them, but also almost like
Speaker 1: a king holding out his hand so that you can
Speaker 1: kiss his ring. And the women worshiping the goat are
Speaker 1: offering up children for human sacrifice, and you can see
Speaker 1: bats circling the moon above. It is an absolutely splendid
Speaker 1: depiction of malignant magic and terror and I love this painting.
Speaker 1: This is an interesting painting because, on one hand, yes,
Speaker 1: it is invoking the the the very fictional idea of
Speaker 1: of witchcraft and and sacrifice that was, as we've discussed
Speaker 1: in the show before, is very much a part of
Speaker 1: the like the campaign against Imagine Choose and played a
Speaker 1: huge part in witchcraft persecution of very real human beings.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, this particular image is a lot
Speaker 1: more chill compared to some of the various woodcuts you
Speaker 1: see that we're used during the periods of witchcraft persecution
Speaker 1: and drumming up, you know, fantastic ideas of Satanic worship
Speaker 1: like this one. Aside from the offering of the children, um,
Speaker 1: and and even then the offering of the children, it
Speaker 1: could be you're just holding the child up to better
Speaker 1: see the great he goes um. Otherwise, you know, folks
Speaker 1: are just kind of hanging about and here's the goat,
Speaker 1: and the goat looks not particularly evil but but kind
Speaker 1: of regal. Well, yeah, I think some of that ambiguity
Speaker 1: might come down to what this painting was intended for,
Speaker 1: because I'll get back to that in just a second.
Speaker 1: After I mentioned there's another painting, um Strangely, this one
Speaker 1: is often known by the same title The Witches Sabbath,
Speaker 1: but with the subtitle The Great he Goat or El
Speaker 1: Grand Cabrone. Uh. This one was finished sometime in the
Speaker 1: early eighteen twenties, but I think it was not actually
Speaker 1: intended for public display. I think Goya just did this
Speaker 1: one like on a wall in his house. But in
Speaker 1: this one, once again you've got a congregation of which
Speaker 1: is gazing up at their goat lord in terror and awe.
Speaker 1: But now the goat is just a dark silhouette in
Speaker 1: the foreground with horns and a little billy beard, and
Speaker 1: his body draped in robes like a priest. As brimming
Speaker 1: with menace, as these paintings are, I think scholars of
Speaker 1: Goya do not typically understand these artworks as depictions of
Speaker 1: a literal belief in witchcraft, but more kind of the
Speaker 1: exact opposite, as satirical works about superstition, human brutality, and
Speaker 1: about religious persecution. Because Goya was apparently a devotee of
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment, and I've seen his occult paintings described as
Speaker 1: a sort of mockery of the witchcraft trial mentality and
Speaker 1: of the Spanish Inquisition. And the darker side of human
Speaker 1: nature in general, because Rob, as you just reminded us,
Speaker 1: of course, a belief in witchcraft and occult magic did
Speaker 1: lead to terror, oppression, brutality, and human sacrifice, but not
Speaker 1: so much at the hands of witches. Almost exclusively at
Speaker 1: the hands of people who thought they were opposing witchcraft
Speaker 1: in heresy rather than practicing it. Yeah. Yeah, and perhaps
Speaker 1: reaching for some faint evidence of the divine themselves. Uh.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of another piece by Goya that I
Speaker 1: actually actually talked about in a Monster Fact episode at
Speaker 1: some point in the last year or so. Uh. A
Speaker 1: seventeen piece titled the translation is here comes the Boogeyman
Speaker 1: or a coco uh. And it has a robed figure
Speaker 1: and children. There are these two children held by a
Speaker 1: mother and the children are screaming in terror, and you know,
Speaker 1: trying to look away from it, and the mother's gazing
Speaker 1: up at the boogeyman almost with admiration. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: it's a love image that touches on some of these
Speaker 1: elements you're talking about, because the backstory for this image
Speaker 1: is not the Boogeyman is real, or it is more like,
Speaker 1: look at at what parents have done by engaging in
Speaker 1: this kind of supernatural nonsense, uh, this kind of supernatural
Speaker 1: terror to control their children. Look at the world they're
Speaker 1: helping to make through this sort of thing. And yet
Speaker 1: I think it's funny that despite the clearly ironic intention
Speaker 1: of these paintings, Goya was a master at creating deliciously
Speaker 1: frightening monsters, uh and including these these great he goats,
Speaker 1: including the l Grand Cabrone. So the question for this
Speaker 1: series of episodes is why, what is the deal with
Speaker 1: this cultural association primarily stemming from Christian continental Europe between
Speaker 1: goats and devils or goats and wickedness? And does the
Speaker 1: thematic harmony of goat and an evil at all relate
Speaker 1: to the biological features of the goat as an organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great question, because really, if your main relationship
Speaker 1: with goats is via like goat satanic imagery and bapphamets
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you know, heavy metal like an
Speaker 1: agraphy and so forth, you might say, oh, yeah, goats
Speaker 1: are scary. But if you've been around goats, either goat
Speaker 1: farms or various petting zoos, you know it did zoos
Speaker 1: where children are encouraged to meet the goats and the
Speaker 1: sheep and to pet them and groom them. You'll quickly
Speaker 1: realize that in real life, goats aren't really scary at all. Like,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the scariest thing about a goat is, well,
Speaker 1: I might step in poop, or if they're a little
Speaker 1: revbed up, one might butt me a little bit, or
Speaker 1: or might nibble like if I have a map hanging
Speaker 1: out of my pocket or something. Uh, they might try
Speaker 1: and eat something they're not supposed to. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, yeah, the goat is is more comical and
Speaker 1: weird and at least to my eyes, as opposed to
Speaker 1: anything it is nefarious when you're actually experiencing them firsthand.
Speaker 1: I actually had a face to face with some goats
Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago at a at a farm
Speaker 1: that was attached to a restaurant I went to and
Speaker 1: the goats were just hanging out by the side of
Speaker 1: the fence. So I went and uh and communed with
Speaker 1: them a little bit, and I walked away from that thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: goats are kind of cool. They just seemed like chill like,
Speaker 1: kind of friendly, maybe more more of a sense of
Speaker 1: awareness from the goats than I've gotten when I've been
Speaker 1: around like cows, so there's a kind of curiosity or
Speaker 1: implied intelligence, but also that they were just cool. It's
Speaker 1: like they wanted to hang out. Yeah, they have a
Speaker 1: lot of personality I found. I mean, you also find
Speaker 1: something are totally zoned out in petting zos, like I've been.
Speaker 1: I've been touched and and and combed and brushed by
Speaker 1: children so much that I don't even register it anymore,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But but a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of times, Yeah, they have a lot of love of character,
Speaker 1: and the babies are quite cute. So uh so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in in of life, I find goats to be rather harmless.
Speaker 1: So I think it's probably good to put some very
Speaker 1: basic goat biology up front, and then maybe we can
Speaker 1: come back to more specific goat science questions after we
Speaker 1: explore more of the goat lore. So the goat for
Speaker 1: starters there. The goat is one of humanity's oldest domesticated animals,
Speaker 1: tracing back at least to the fifth millennium b C,
Speaker 1: perhaps to the region of Turkestan. Goats have spread around
Speaker 1: the globe with their humans since then, thriving everywhere except Antarctica.
Speaker 1: We we domesticated the goat we take the goat with us,
Speaker 1: and the goat tends to do really well in various environments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the goat is kind of rough and ready. The goat
Speaker 1: is hardy. Uh So. The scientific name of the domestic
Speaker 1: goat species is Capra hircus h I, R c U S,
Speaker 1: with the genus Capra belonging to the bovid subfamily Capra
Speaker 1: and I, also known as the goat antelopes. So the
Speaker 1: taxonomy from top down goes like this. You've got the bovids,
Speaker 1: and the bovids are all cloven, hoofed ruminant mammals. This
Speaker 1: includes antelopes, cows, bison, buffalo, things like that. And then
Speaker 1: the bovid subfamily Kaeperni includes an assortment of genera such
Speaker 1: as musk, ox and sheep, various kinds of four legged
Speaker 1: mountain critters that you would probably look at and say
Speaker 1: that's some type of goat. And then of course the
Speaker 1: genus Capra, which contains the true goats, with Capra haircus
Speaker 1: the domestic goat. There are hundreds of breeds selected for
Speaker 1: different traits, but broadly, most domestic goats are raised for
Speaker 1: one of three things, either milk or meat or skins
Speaker 1: and fiber for the coat. Uh So, when it comes
Speaker 1: to fiber, you can think about cashmere Cashmere wool that
Speaker 1: comes from goat breeds such as the cashmere goat, and
Speaker 1: mohair as in electric boots and mohair suits, is made
Speaker 1: from the wool of the angora goat. Confusingly, the wool
Speaker 1: known as angora does not come from the angora goat,
Speaker 1: but from rabbits. Goat milk, when especially when made into
Speaker 1: goat cheese, can be quite amazing. Yeah, it tends to
Speaker 1: have a friskier flavor than cow milk. Get more of
Speaker 1: that grass tang in there, I think. But so okay.
Speaker 1: Humans have been hurting domestic goats for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: probably going back ten thousand years or so, longer than
Speaker 1: most other domestic animal species. So how did that happen? Well,
Speaker 1: domestic goats are mostly from an original wild species known
Speaker 1: as the bees or goat or capra icagras, though there
Speaker 1: are a few breeds that are descended from another wild
Speaker 1: species known as the mark orps or capra falcon eerie.
Speaker 1: The markhorps is awesome, by the way, and worth returning
Speaker 1: to later. But I was reading one highly cited paper
Speaker 1: investigating the evolutionary history of the goat how we got
Speaker 1: from these wild ancestors to the domestic goat. And this
Speaker 1: was a paper by Sayed Nadery at All published in
Speaker 1: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: called the Goat domestication process Inferred from large scale mitochondrial
Speaker 1: DNA analysis of wild and domestic individuals. So, as we know,
Speaker 1: one of the most important turning points in the history
Speaker 1: of the human species, probably the single most important, was
Speaker 1: the emergence of farming, which includes both plant agriculture and
Speaker 1: domestication of livestock, and goats were one of these early
Speaker 1: domesticated farm animals, likely through a process where the wild
Speaker 1: ancestor of the goat was a prey species tracked and
Speaker 1: hunted by humans, and then at some point that hunting
Speaker 1: relationship transitioned into a herding relationship, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: fascinating to try to imagine the step by step process
Speaker 1: of how exactly that happens. But these wild goats, the
Speaker 1: ancestors of domestic goats, were typically a mountain dwelling specie
Speaker 1: is that lived in relatively harsh and rocky environments and
Speaker 1: in the woods rather than in just flat, fertile planes
Speaker 1: full of delicious grass. And this raises an important distinction
Speaker 1: for for goat biology, which is the grazing versus browsing distinction.
Speaker 1: So you can think of ruminant mammals like sheep and
Speaker 1: cattle as grazers. They usually prefer to eat low lying
Speaker 1: vegetations such as grass, whereas goats typically prefer to browse.
Speaker 1: So goats don't just put their heads down and eat
Speaker 1: nice grass. They browse on trees and shrubs, so they
Speaker 1: prefer to keep their heads raised up instead of down
Speaker 1: to the earth, and they'll pick it leaves and fruits
Speaker 1: and buds and twigs from higher up food sources. So
Speaker 1: at the same time you have a particular environment invites
Speaker 1: them to graze more or to to to to eat
Speaker 1: more from lower down. They will do that to their
Speaker 1: very versatile and that's one of the reasons they and
Speaker 1: so successful. Oh yeah, they will definitely eat whatever they
Speaker 1: can get. It's ah, but I think the distinction is
Speaker 1: that you're not gonna typically find like cows and sheep
Speaker 1: trying to browse up on variegated, higher, higher up food sources,
Speaker 1: and goats absolutely will. That's part of their natural repertoire, right,
Speaker 1: And it's also always amusing, you know, given their their
Speaker 1: their mountainous ancestry, that anywhere you find goats will often
Speaker 1: find them a top whatever they can get a top off,
Speaker 1: be at a rock or a shed, or occasionally the
Speaker 1: roof of a building, whatever they have access to. Goats
Speaker 1: goats like to to get a little height so they
Speaker 1: can see what's going on around them exactly. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: often see the goats up on top of the chicken coop.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the study I mentioned, by comparing DNA
Speaker 1: from modern domestic goats with the modern relatives of their
Speaker 1: wild and Hester's, this study zeroed in on the the
Speaker 1: idea that the earliest version of this hurting and domestication
Speaker 1: relationship and the emergence of the domestic goat probably took
Speaker 1: place in eastern Anatolia and possibly the northern and central
Speaker 1: Zagros Mountains, which a mountain range extending from eastern Turkey
Speaker 1: down through uh Iraq and Iran. And I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting that some of the traits still visible in domestic
Speaker 1: goats today can be traced to this evolutionary history we're
Speaker 1: talking about, especially if you think about uh, you know,
Speaker 1: goat bodies, goat brains, and goat behavior as adapted to
Speaker 1: more difficult environments like woods and mountains as opposed to
Speaker 1: plains full of green grass. Uh. And you can see
Speaker 1: this represented in some misconceptions about goats that contain a
Speaker 1: grain of truth. For example, if you watch old cartoons
Speaker 1: and stuff, and you see a goat in the old cartoon,
Speaker 1: what's it gonna do. It's gonna eat a tin can, right,
Speaker 1: no problem, goats just eat tin cans. Well, that's not true. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this is not real, and you should not feed metal
Speaker 1: or any other kind of potentially dangerous garbage to a goat.
Speaker 1: But there is a grain of truth there. It is
Speaker 1: reflective of the fact that humans have long noticed goat
Speaker 1: feeding behavior is more curious and adventurous and promiscuous than
Speaker 1: the typical feeding behavior of some other familiar domestic ungulates
Speaker 1: like sheep and cows. Yeah, and that's why many of
Speaker 1: the places you'll find goats in the world, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: find them often living in otherwise very urban environments, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and not concrete jungles perhaps, but but places
Speaker 1: where yeah, there's vegetation around there in between this building
Speaker 1: and that, and the goats can get to it in
Speaker 1: ways where you probably wouldn't have a cow grazing there. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: being natural browsers who eat leaves of plants that would
Speaker 1: be poisonous to other animals, wheat fruit and buds and
Speaker 1: twigs and shoots and sometimes even tree bark, goats will
Speaker 1: search high up in their environment for potential food sources
Speaker 1: and will try out all kinds of things. Like other
Speaker 1: ruminant mammals, goats break down their high fiber diet with
Speaker 1: the help of a multi chamber digestive system where the
Speaker 1: four got actually uses bacterial fermentation to break down the
Speaker 1: rough vegetation and extract the maximum usable energy. So the
Speaker 1: goats in their foregut they got a chamber in there
Speaker 1: where they're making sauerkraut out of the leaves and the
Speaker 1: grass and the twigs. Now we can come back to
Speaker 1: more discussion of goat biology later, but I was thinking,
Speaker 1: if we're looking for cultural links between goats and the devil,
Speaker 1: it might be good to look at the sort of
Speaker 1: mythic processing of other biological features of the goat and
Speaker 1: see what other products those features get baked into. So
Speaker 1: one thing that that screams for attention to me, if
Speaker 1: you're certainly to anyone who's familiar with Greek and Roman mythology,
Speaker 1: is going to be the creature known as the satyr
Speaker 1: or the fawn. Absolutely, and this is this is tremendously
Speaker 1: important to the discussion of of goat iconography in Western
Speaker 1: traditions and the classical use of course, uh, the idea
Speaker 1: of these these goat men uh that are generally human
Speaker 1: from the from the waist up with some goatish features
Speaker 1: of the head and then goat like from the waist down.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's there's a lot of number of wonderful
Speaker 1: works of art that have depicted these beings, and they
Speaker 1: kind of run the gamut, like sometimes the satyr seems
Speaker 1: kind of serene, you know, playing music in the woods
Speaker 1: or frolicking in the woods. Other times they have a
Speaker 1: very um uh, sinister edge to them. Other times they're
Speaker 1: just you know, being flayed alive that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: depending on the the artwork in question. There are numerous
Speaker 1: specific myths and tales about satyrs where the in the end,
Speaker 1: the satyr suffers a humiliation or punishment or defeat of
Speaker 1: some kind. They often just like that it doesn't turn
Speaker 1: out great for them. Yeah, and that the flaying in particular,
Speaker 1: that's a reference to the flaying of Marcias in which
Speaker 1: the god Apollo flays this particular satyer. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a grotesque sequence that you'll often see depicted
Speaker 1: in statues and paintings. So at any rate, yes, when
Speaker 1: we're talking about the classical Greek goat man, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the satyr. And this carries over as well into
Speaker 1: Roman traditions of the fawn. Uh. Carol Rose, the folklore's
Speaker 1: that often refer to, points out that the original satyrs
Speaker 1: were depicted as human males with goat legs and horns
Speaker 1: that represented quote, the fruitfulness of the land. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: I guess it's one of those things where if you
Speaker 1: have satyrs frolicking about, if your environment can support satyrs, uh,
Speaker 1: then everything's every thing is going all right. Like clearly
Speaker 1: this is an indicator of a of a very robust environment.
Speaker 1: But the form shifts over time, as mythic bodies tend
Speaker 1: to do. And at one point she writes, there's a
Speaker 1: type of satyr that is described as having no nose
Speaker 1: on its face and breathing instead through a big hole
Speaker 1: in its chest. Later uh, satyr's take on the form
Speaker 1: we're more familiar with human faces, pointed ears, horns, and
Speaker 1: the lower body of a shaggy goat the upper body
Speaker 1: of a human male. They attend their drunken leaders Silenus,
Speaker 1: and serve the god of wine, Dionysus or Bacchus. They
Speaker 1: live in the woods. They chase nymphs around, and they
Speaker 1: are known for their quote aggressive drunken sexuality, lechery, rudeness,
Speaker 1: and love of playing pranks. So you know, to humans,
Speaker 1: there's an unpredictability about the satyr. Uh, there's possibly a
Speaker 1: danger to the satyr um and they and in this
Speaker 1: they're also the origin of the words satire. Uh. But
Speaker 1: but also in all of this, I think they nicely
Speaker 1: sum up a lot of attitudes towards the wild. Like,
Speaker 1: the wilderness can be fun, the wilderness can be amusing
Speaker 1: and serene, but the wilderness can be dangerous and uh.
Speaker 1: And it may it may care nothing for you at all,
Speaker 1: It may take interest in you, the interests that you
Speaker 1: do not want. Now. By the medieval period, Rose writes
Speaker 1: that they become more of a grotesque hybrid and are
Speaker 1: often used to represent just pure debauchery and lust, often
Speaker 1: depicted with erect fallacies to to drive home this point.
Speaker 1: But at the same time it was also said that, uh,
Speaker 1: and of course we've've discussed this sort of thing before,
Speaker 1: where there are accounts of the monsters and strange creatures
Speaker 1: that live in distant lands. So it was also written that, oh,
Speaker 1: if you go to Ethiopia, you will actually find satyrs.
Speaker 1: They're difficult to catch, but they live there. The travel
Speaker 1: guides of the ancient world were so bad, zero stars.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so yeah, I was reading about satyrs and
Speaker 1: one thing I noticed is that they were being described
Speaker 1: in conflicting ways, like it seemed. Sometimes they're described as
Speaker 1: having these goat like features and other times I read
Speaker 1: them as having horse like features. So I was trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of that. Uh, and I found a
Speaker 1: good reference an Oxford University Press book called Classical Mythology,
Speaker 1: A Guide to the mythical world the Greeks and Romans,
Speaker 1: by a scholar named William Hanson. This was published in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, and according to Hanson, the overriding feature
Speaker 1: of of satyrs is that they're associated with the countryside.
Speaker 1: Of course, so you know, the wilderness as opposed to settlements,
Speaker 1: and that they are hybrid beasts. They are exclusively male,
Speaker 1: they tend to be hairy, they walk upright on two legs.
Speaker 1: They've got, as you said, often exaggeratedly large genitalia, and
Speaker 1: they incorporate some type of be steel features, though early
Speaker 1: on these teachers are the legs and tail of a
Speaker 1: horse rather than a goat. That's kind of interesting. Uh
Speaker 1: So some depictions lean more on the b steal elements
Speaker 1: and others make them more just kind of like ugly
Speaker 1: wild humans. But what's the deal with the horse features
Speaker 1: versus goat so Hansen says that satyrs were originally horsemen
Speaker 1: who again had the legs and tails of horses, but
Speaker 1: over time they blend together with depictions of the god
Speaker 1: Pan who was explicitly and always a goat man. So
Speaker 1: by the Hellenistic periods that's about the fourth century to
Speaker 1: the first century b C. After the conquest of Alexander
Speaker 1: the Great, at this point, satyr's are being depicted pretty
Speaker 1: regularly as goat men instead of horsemen. This horse goat
Speaker 1: uh split is interesting because we'll we'll come back to
Speaker 1: this again regarding uh and not not only the goat
Speaker 1: horse split. But the idea that's some hybrid intoday that
Speaker 1: are described in their different folk traditions the goat aspect
Speaker 1: night shift. Other times it maybe another creature, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it leans more goat. And I think you can learn
Speaker 1: things about what these animals mean in people's minds by
Speaker 1: seeing what kind of animals get swapped out for what.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so these later pan blended goat satyrs are
Speaker 1: usually shown hanging out in the countryside, playing the flute,
Speaker 1: chasing nymphs, dancing, associating with Dionysus, the god of the
Speaker 1: grape harvest, of fruitfulness and fertility, actually the god of
Speaker 1: a lot of things, of festivity and drunkenness, uh, and
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. In literary traditions, Hansen digs up
Speaker 1: interesting references to satyrs as being quote worthless and unsuited
Speaker 1: to work. But another thing that really caught my attention
Speaker 1: is that satyr's, since they are exclusively male, cannot reproduce
Speaker 1: to create their own kind, and are only said to
Speaker 1: be created by the union and of two otherworldly beings
Speaker 1: such as a god and a nymph, or by the
Speaker 1: union of a god and a human. And uh, there's
Speaker 1: an interesting comparison here, I think to other figures that
Speaker 1: are considered demonic in some way. For example, in ancient
Speaker 1: Near Eastern literature, I think of stories from early Judaism
Speaker 1: about the creation of demonic beings when the sons of
Speaker 1: God come down from heaven and father children with human women.
Speaker 1: The the offspring are often said to be giants or
Speaker 1: some kind of evil beings. If you want to read
Speaker 1: more about that, you can look up the tradition of
Speaker 1: the Nephelim or the story in the Book of First Enoch.
Speaker 1: Now I know there's more about satyrs we need to
Speaker 1: come back and talk about. But since satyrs were originally
Speaker 1: horsemen who became goatmen by merging in tradition with depictions
Speaker 1: of the god Pan, what was the deal with Pan?
Speaker 1: Who are? Who were these? Uh? What were these Panned
Speaker 1: illustrations all about? Well? Once again to reference that ou
Speaker 1: p hand book, but by Hanson. Hansen writes that Pan
Speaker 1: was the god of shepherds and flocks, and he makes
Speaker 1: his home in the wilds of Arcadia. And while you
Speaker 1: you'll find a lot of satyrs with horse forms in
Speaker 1: earlier sources, it seems like Pans grounding in the goat
Speaker 1: form is rock solid, so to read from the home
Speaker 1: Eric Hymns. The Home Eric Hymns, by the way, are
Speaker 1: an anonymous collection of hymns to various Greek gods, dating
Speaker 1: back to probably the seventh century BC or sometime around then.
Speaker 1: This one I found is number nineteen, and when I
Speaker 1: started reading it it was so good I just I
Speaker 1: have to like do an actual chunk of the text.
Speaker 1: So this is a hymn to the great God Pan.
Speaker 1: Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn White. The first part of
Speaker 1: the hymn goes like this, Muse tell me about Pan,
Speaker 1: the dear son of Hermes, with his goat's feet and
Speaker 1: two horns, a lover of Mary, bays through wooded glades.
Speaker 1: He wanders with dancing nymphs, who footed on some sheer
Speaker 1: cliff's edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd god, long haired, unkempt.
Speaker 1: He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and
Speaker 1: rocky crests for his domain. Hither and thither he goes
Speaker 1: through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams. And
Speaker 1: now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up
Speaker 1: to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks. Often he
Speaker 1: courses through the glistening high mountains, and often on the
Speaker 1: shouldered hills he speeds along, slaying wild beasts, this keen
Speaker 1: eyed god. Only at evening, as he returns from the chase,
Speaker 1: he sounds his note, playing sweet and low on his
Speaker 1: pipes of reed. Not even she could excel him in melody.
Speaker 1: That bird who in flower laden spring, pouring forth her
Speaker 1: lament utters honey voiced song amid the leaves at that hour.
Speaker 1: The clear voice nymphs with him and move with nimble feet,
Speaker 1: singing by some spring of dark water, while echo wails
Speaker 1: about the mountaintop and the God on this side or
Speaker 1: on that of the choirs, or at times sliding into
Speaker 1: the midst plies it nimbly with his feet on his back.
Speaker 1: He wears a spotted lynx pelt, and he delights in
Speaker 1: high pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and
Speaker 1: sweet smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass. Oh
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. And I think one thing that instantly hits
Speaker 1: me about multiple passages in this is it It almost
Speaker 1: seems like it's ruminating on the nature of the herdsman, because, uh,
Speaker 1: the hunter of course, goes out into the wild and
Speaker 1: acts as a predator essentially. Uh. And then when we
Speaker 1: have modern situations of saying highly industrialized farming and and
Speaker 1: the rearing of animals did only not with goats, but
Speaker 1: more of it's a cattle. There is the taking of
Speaker 1: the animal of the natural world, placing it an unnatural
Speaker 1: situation and treating it more or less like a thing.
Speaker 1: But with the this this this ideal, this older vision
Speaker 1: of the herdsman, the herdsman goes out and kind of
Speaker 1: lives like the goat, at least for periods of time.
Speaker 1: Like he. He has to go out with the goats
Speaker 1: to the places the goats want to be. And you
Speaker 1: can imagine this sort of merging of the two, like
Speaker 1: the herdsman and the goat as one. He he is
Speaker 1: a mountain critter. Yeah. And I like the delicate balance
Speaker 1: in this hymn, depicting Pan on one sense as a
Speaker 1: kind of dangerous outsider and earth rim roamer, and the
Speaker 1: on the other hand as a as a a soft
Speaker 1: and delicate and uh friendly representative of the of the
Speaker 1: Dewey Glades and the and the song of the Brook. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I wonder too about the detail about the wearing
Speaker 1: of the spotted lenk pelt. You know, they wears the
Speaker 1: pelt of the hunter that would otherwise endanger the flock.
Speaker 1: That's that's so many wonderful details in this So the
Speaker 1: part I read was just the first half of the Him.
Speaker 1: The second half of the Him tells the story of
Speaker 1: how Pan was born, and it says that he's the
Speaker 1: offspring of the god Hermes, who in this telling is
Speaker 1: a is a Rustic god, a god of again of
Speaker 1: the countryside uh and of a human woman. And the
Speaker 1: Him says that when Pan was born, he emerged with
Speaker 1: a goat's feet and with two horns, and he was
Speaker 1: noisy and loved to make mary. And then it says quote,
Speaker 1: but when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard,
Speaker 1: she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left
Speaker 1: the child. But despite the terror, he strikes in human hearts.
Speaker 1: Pan is loved by Hermes and the gods. Hermi is
Speaker 1: a big fan of this goat child, and he takes
Speaker 1: him up to Mount Olympus and shows him off to
Speaker 1: the other gods, and the other love him too, especially Dionysus,
Speaker 1: and they name him Pan, which literally means all because
Speaker 1: he delighted all of their hearts. So a list of
Speaker 1: things we have now learned about the god Pan. As
Speaker 1: we already established, he's a hairy wild man who has
Speaker 1: goat feed and horns and a beard like a billy goat,
Speaker 1: and he's the god of shepherds and flocks. He rules
Speaker 1: over the wilderness. Pan is known as a very lusty god,
Speaker 1: known for exaggerated and constant sexual arousal, and in keeping
Speaker 1: with this, he has power over the fertility of livestock
Speaker 1: such as sheep and goats. But here's another aspect that's
Speaker 1: really interesting for our purposes. Did you know that our
Speaker 1: English word panic actually derives from the Greek word panicon
Speaker 1: and the cognate there with the god Pan's name is
Speaker 1: not a coincidence. Panicon is said in ancient sources to
Speaker 1: mean relating to Pan. Originally, panic was not a noun.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a panic. Panic was an adjective describing a
Speaker 1: type of fear, often the type of fear that suddenly
Speaker 1: comes over people with no apparent rhyme or reason. And
Speaker 1: this seems to work on the logic that, since Pan
Speaker 1: was the lord of the wilderness, when a person walks
Speaker 1: alone in the woods or on the mountain side, and
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, they become infected with an irrational anxiety
Speaker 1: and a dread. Maybe they just heard a twig snap
Speaker 1: where they felt a breeze and they get that chill.
Speaker 1: It's like there's something watching me, there's something dangerous out here.
Speaker 1: That was panic con diema or the fright of pan
Speaker 1: m That's interesting, Yeah, because if we think back, you know,
Speaker 1: for the most part, the woods, the wilderness, this is
Speaker 1: the place where we would feel rational anxiety. Of modern
Speaker 1: humans get to pour their irrational anxiety into so many
Speaker 1: other things in places for particularly for non seafaring folk. Uh,
Speaker 1: this would be the place. This would be where that
Speaker 1: fear would overcome you totally. Now. But that is one
Speaker 1: type of panic fear. There's another type of panic fear
Speaker 1: described in other sources that seems to be more like
Speaker 1: the fear that suddenly comes over soldiers on mass draining
Speaker 1: them of courage and causing them to flee the battlefield. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is related to stories that the Greek god
Speaker 1: Pan also had such a booming voice that if he
Speaker 1: shouted over the battlefield, it would cause his enemies to
Speaker 1: to freeze in terror and give way to a route.
Speaker 1: But anyway, putting all this together, I think it's really
Speaker 1: interesting how well Pan, the god Pan, and the satyrs
Speaker 1: and fawns that were later stamped in his image match
Speaker 1: elements of the demons that would preoccupy some in the
Speaker 1: Christian world. So you've got a goat human hybrid with
Speaker 1: hair and horns, who is the unholy offspring of the
Speaker 1: union of God and human, who's got an association with
Speaker 1: sinful activity, with lust or lasciviousness, and who strikes panic
Speaker 1: into the hearts of fragile mortals like us. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: seems to be a direct line there. But the interesting
Speaker 1: stuff about Satyr's doesn't stop there. Yeah. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: about these these depictions of Satyr's it sounds like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, so many of these stories are again it's
Speaker 1: like encountering something something in the wilderness. It might be
Speaker 1: of danger to you, it might be of mild interest.
Speaker 1: And then we also have this mention of the like
Speaker 1: the Pan origin story of a child born as Satyr
Speaker 1: being found frightful and uh and and perhaps ominous, even
Speaker 1: if it does seem to be something that delights the gods.
Speaker 1: So I was rather amused when and interested when I
Speaker 1: read this passage from Jorge Lewis Borges book on Fabulous Creatures,
Speaker 1: which is totally worth picking up if you have a chance.
Speaker 1: But he shares this bit concerning the Roman general Sala,
Speaker 1: who lived one thirty eight through seventy eight BC. Quote.
Speaker 1: Legend has it that one of these minor deities was
Speaker 1: captured in a cave in Thessaly by the men of
Speaker 1: one of Sola's legions and taken to the general. It
Speaker 1: made inarticulate sounds and was so repulsive that Selah immediately
Speaker 1: ordered it be returned to its mountain layer. And that
Speaker 1: is from the Book of Imaginary Beings. So I that's
Speaker 1: just so fascinating the idea, like here, Selah's troops are out,
Speaker 1: they find a satyr or something like a satyr, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, we gotta bring this, we gotta pass
Speaker 1: this up the chain. Let's bring this to the commander.
Speaker 1: And he brings it to him and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is horrifying, Uh, please take it away,
Speaker 1: Or at least that sounds like what occurs in my
Speaker 1: reading of this one passage from the Book of Imaginary Beings.
Speaker 1: But but it gets more fascinating than that. I was
Speaker 1: reading into this a bit more so. First of all, Freeland,
Speaker 1: I'm unaware Solo was a powerful Roman general who ultimately
Speaker 1: revived the Roman dictatorship. And I found a fabulous discussion
Speaker 1: of this in A Satyr for Midas by Jeans Sorebella
Speaker 1: from two thousand and seven. And apparently this particular incident
Speaker 1: involving Sola comes from the writings of Plutarch regarding an
Speaker 1: incident said to have occurred near Apollonia in Greece. Quote
Speaker 1: here they say a satyr was caught asleep such an
Speaker 1: one as sculptors and painters represent, and brought to Sula,
Speaker 1: where he was asked through many interpreters who he was,
Speaker 1: And when at last he uttered nothing intelligible, but with
Speaker 1: difficulty a horse cry that was something between the neighing
Speaker 1: of a horse and the bleeding of a goat, Sola
Speaker 1: was horrified and ordered him out of his sight. Interesting
Speaker 1: that the nature of the cry could be read as
Speaker 1: either a horseman or a goat man, given that these
Speaker 1: are the two different traditions of the satyr. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Sabella writes that the tale in question here inserts mythic
Speaker 1: happenings into a straightforward biography, and this may stem from
Speaker 1: Sola's own memoirs, where where it was known that he
Speaker 1: he put an emphasis on dreams importance. It may also
Speaker 1: refer to traditions of King Midas and the finding of
Speaker 1: a goatman uh here is apparently meant to be a
Speaker 1: portent of victory as Sola returns to Italy, defeating his
Speaker 1: enemies ultimately and becoming a dictator of Rome. The finding
Speaker 1: of a sleeping satyr and even holding it temporarily was
Speaker 1: apparently seen as a good portent, despite the depictions of
Speaker 1: horror here upon finding one um uh, and despite the
Speaker 1: fact that one of the most famous stories of finding
Speaker 1: a satyr that involved in King Midas has a dark
Speaker 1: twist to it. So I found that fascinating. It's like,
Speaker 1: here is this strange creature we found in the in
Speaker 1: the wild that maybe this, you know, half divine entity,
Speaker 1: and it's horrifying to look at, it's horrifying to to
Speaker 1: listen to. But it also is a pause. It's not
Speaker 1: a dire omen it's not oh well, we're screwed now,
Speaker 1: because look what nature turned up. It's like, no, look
Speaker 1: at this strange marvel. It's horrifying. I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a good day tomorrow, even though he has to
Speaker 1: order it out of his sight. Yeah. Now, the myth
Speaker 1: of King Midas, of course, that kicks off with the
Speaker 1: finding of the satyr uh Silenus, and upon returning the
Speaker 1: creature to the god Dionysus, Midas is rewarded with the
Speaker 1: granting of his famous wish right, the result being that
Speaker 1: everything he touches turns to gold, which does not work
Speaker 1: out well for him. No, that's also a bad portent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank thank now. The later version of the Greek sator
Speaker 1: with goat like characteristics is often conflated with a Roman
Speaker 1: mythological creature no as the fawn. These are regarded as
Speaker 1: basically the same creature in most ways, and it does
Speaker 1: seem like there is a major overlap between the two.
Speaker 1: The fawns get their name from an ancient Italian deity
Speaker 1: called fawn Us, which in turn is similar to Pan,
Speaker 1: a god of the countryside who was half man half
Speaker 1: goat in the In the Italian tradition, he's associated with
Speaker 1: the wilderness and the sounds echoing through the woods, where
Speaker 1: you know, the voice of Fawnus and like pan he
Speaker 1: is also associated with the Dionysian side of life, or
Speaker 1: I guess in the Roman the bokic, or you might
Speaker 1: also just think of it as kind of the I
Speaker 1: in a way, like the drive toward hedonistic pleasure and marrymaking.
Speaker 1: Now understanding that a lot of these mythological goat flavored
Speaker 1: beast men were known for representing a kind of inhuman
Speaker 1: pleasure seeking behavior or specifically inhuman sex drive, it's worth
Speaker 1: asking is the actually reflective of anything about goats as animals? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a question that that I had because again,
Speaker 1: I've never raised goats. I haven't lived among goats, but
Speaker 1: I've I've been around them plenty of times, and I
Speaker 1: honestly don't remember being in the presence of goat copulation. Uh.
Speaker 1: Certainly there are other animals that I've I've seen in
Speaker 1: various places where that have engaged in such behavior. But
Speaker 1: but with the goat, I'm like, well, where does this
Speaker 1: come from? Is the goat actually randier than other domesticated species?
Speaker 1: So and see, that's so I was looking at a
Speaker 1: few different sources on this. Uh, you know, because obviously
Speaker 1: this becomes part of like we've discussed the sader myth,
Speaker 1: the idea of pan and and ultimately these ideas of
Speaker 1: Satanic goatmen and and the horned one. But but just
Speaker 1: for starters. When it comes to animals that actually have
Speaker 1: notably high reproduction or sex rates, goats generally don't make
Speaker 1: any of those lists. Generally, the real superstars in this area,
Speaker 1: certainly with with mammals, are going to be rodents, various
Speaker 1: species of rodents. Some are famous for like essentially rutting
Speaker 1: the males anyway, rutting themselves to death. But of course
Speaker 1: we have to remind ourselves that humans have been living
Speaker 1: in close proximity to goats for a very long time, uh,
Speaker 1: and simply get to observe more of the day to
Speaker 1: day goat life. And then of course we tend to
Speaker 1: personify anything animals do as well. Right, I was thinking that,
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got goat herds, not rat herds, so
Speaker 1: you don't you know, people are probably watching the goats
Speaker 1: more than they're watching the rats, right, And of course
Speaker 1: we we have a very long association with the rats
Speaker 1: and mice, but they stick to the shadows the goats
Speaker 1: do not. The goats have a privileged status within our environment,
Speaker 1: so I decided to look into goat reproduction more and
Speaker 1: so this led me to a few different agg science materials,
Speaker 1: including one very helpful article from the University of Arkansas
Speaker 1: at Pine blow Off by livestock specialist David Fernandez. And
Speaker 1: there's actually quite a bit of variety in the reproductive
Speaker 1: cycles of goats. Again, they've been investigated a very long time.
Speaker 1: You have different lineages of goats, different varieties of goats,
Speaker 1: and many of them are doing their breeding indefinite seasons
Speaker 1: such as fall, while others are going to be active
Speaker 1: sexually active year round. Latitude, Fernandez says, plays a key
Speaker 1: role in seasonality. But I think this bit from Fernandez
Speaker 1: does give us a bit more to go on regarding
Speaker 1: the randy nature of the he goat, especially in Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman tradition. Quote. Copulation in goats usually last less
Speaker 1: than two minutes, but they will often mate several times
Speaker 1: while the dough is an estrus. Bucks must be carefully
Speaker 1: monitored during the breeding season, especially young bucks, because they
Speaker 1: spend so much of their time mating that they fail
Speaker 1: to eat. Bucks can lose up to twenty five pounds
Speaker 1: over the course of the breeding season. Wow, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is starting to make sense. Yeah, so I think we
Speaker 1: can well imagine how and why the randy image of
Speaker 1: the he goat might stick in people's minds. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and they also have a vested interest in it, all right,
Speaker 1: because you want your goats reproducing, and you are also
Speaker 1: invested in the health of your he goats. So I
Speaker 1: noticed some other animal science papers also referring to goats
Speaker 1: as a quote unquote promiscuous species in which male goats
Speaker 1: are trying to make with as many females as possible.
Speaker 1: So again, take all of that combined it with the
Speaker 1: fact that people were living in close proximity to goats.
Speaker 1: They're seeing this, uh, you know generally like day to day,
Speaker 1: if you were out there as a shepherd, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's your job to keep track of what the goats
Speaker 1: are doing. And then again, we cannot help but personify
Speaker 1: the goat. We can't help but do this with any
Speaker 1: kind of of species, especially when we look at their reproduction. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, many of which are engaging in reproductive uh
Speaker 1: styles and cycles and relationships that do not translate well
Speaker 1: or favorably into the human realm Um. But we can't
Speaker 1: help but look at them as behaving as sort of
Speaker 1: like people, and then using those animals as models for
Speaker 1: different sorts of people and making often moral judgments based
Speaker 1: on that. One of the profound absurdities of the human
Speaker 1: condition is we're just going to be making moral judgments
Speaker 1: about the sex lives of goats. Um. I'd say another
Speaker 1: factor that they might be involved in ideas concerning satyrs
Speaker 1: and fauns is that goats can assume a bipedal posture,
Speaker 1: either to reach higher vegetation, to aid in climbing, or
Speaker 1: to aid in budding other goats. This is frequently if
Speaker 1: you've ever spent some time watching goats, and there, especially
Speaker 1: the younger goats like buck bucking each other, you know, headbutting. Uh.
Speaker 1: They'll often do this thing where they'll sort of rise
Speaker 1: up on their rear legs and then kind of use
Speaker 1: gravity to to to butt at something. But on top
Speaker 1: of this they can also balance on their back to
Speaker 1: legs and move around, which even today makes its way
Speaker 1: into buy year old goat videos. There's one, I think
Speaker 1: from somewhere in India that I sent you, Joe, because
Speaker 1: it's just a very short video of what appears to
Speaker 1: be just a goat walking down the street. Briefly on
Speaker 1: its hind legs. Yep, just a straight two leg walking habit.
Speaker 1: Like it's a like it's a you know, evil possessed
Speaker 1: somnambulist basically, But you only have to see that once
Speaker 1: given a like any given community, only one person would
Speaker 1: have to see that once to really sort of get
Speaker 1: the momentum going. I think for various other ideas well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's part of that Uncanny Valley
Speaker 1: principle that like, when you see an animal that's acting
Speaker 1: kind of human in a surprising way, that gets the
Speaker 1: mind churning about evil magic. And so yeah, seeing a
Speaker 1: goat walk on two legs, you can easily imagine somebody
Speaker 1: getting freaked out about that. But it's also interesting to
Speaker 1: think about the underlying biological reasoning there. Uh, And I
Speaker 1: haven't confirmed this is the reason, but just supposing on
Speaker 1: my part, I think it's reasonable to assume that as
Speaker 1: brow mosers rather than exclusive grazers, goats may well be
Speaker 1: adapted to get back up on those two legs, not
Speaker 1: just so they can head bud each other, but just
Speaker 1: so they can reach higher branches, like if they're browsing
Speaker 1: on trees and shrubs, you know they want to pop
Speaker 1: up and forage from something that's a little higher up.
Speaker 1: It would be useful for them to be able to
Speaker 1: balance on back legs for a moment, right, because a
Speaker 1: lot of tasty bites you might be able to achieve
Speaker 1: by by climbing up with your your front legs a
Speaker 1: little bit. But sometimes you gotta just you gotta just balance.
Speaker 1: You gotta just go into a bipedal posture and get
Speaker 1: up there. Okay, I got another goat biology uncanny Valley
Speaker 1: thing I want to explore, because this is a biological
Speaker 1: characteristic of goats that I could easily see causing people
Speaker 1: to look at goats in a sinister light. And it
Speaker 1: is that some goats sometimes bleat in a way that
Speaker 1: sounds remarkably similar to a human voice, moaning, wailing, or
Speaker 1: even just screaming. This is not an observation original to me.
Speaker 1: It is actually the subject of a number of once
Speaker 1: again Internet memes and viral video compilations going back nearly
Speaker 1: a decade. Yeah, I mean, goats do sound a little
Speaker 1: bit human sometimes. Um, And of course they're not the
Speaker 1: only ones. I just spent a lot of time around
Speaker 1: sea lions in the galapago silence, which will come back
Speaker 1: to you later. But I have to mention these creatures
Speaker 1: briefly because especially the females in the pups sound very
Speaker 1: human at times as well. That can be distracting and
Speaker 1: even maybe a little a little uncanny where it either
Speaker 1: sounds like like a human is coughing, or it's that
Speaker 1: they're warbling trying to speak like they just don't know
Speaker 1: English or whatever your Spanish or whatever your your native
Speaker 1: language happens to be, but they're trying to say something,
Speaker 1: perhaps to you. Oh. Absolutely, it is clearly an unsettling
Speaker 1: experience to have a non human animal address you in
Speaker 1: tones that sound too close to human. Let's hear a
Speaker 1: few those goat screams. Now. A big qualifier is that
Speaker 1: not all goats sound the same, as one could tell
Speaker 1: just by listening to the diversity of humanoid groans and
Speaker 1: yelps heard even within these goat voice supercuts. Goats produce
Speaker 1: a wide range of vocalizations, and it is only some
Speaker 1: goats some of the time that can Wilhelm scream. And
Speaker 1: I tried to find a good source with a zoologist
Speaker 1: explaining the similar sounds in the cries of anguish and
Speaker 1: torment that you hear from you know, a goat just
Speaker 1: standing there versus a human and you know, in in
Speaker 1: like the pivotal dramatic scene in the movie. I didn't
Speaker 1: find anything super compelling. One thing I came across was
Speaker 1: a article in Slate by Forrest Wickman which addressed this
Speaker 1: question by interviewing a few goat experts, and here were
Speaker 1: some of the main takeaways there. First of all, for
Speaker 1: some reason, several of the goat wizards interviewed here did
Speaker 1: not seem to find this subject especially amusing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Another is that some of the animals producing humanoid screams
Speaker 1: and these viral videos are not actually goats, A few are,
Speaker 1: you know. A few sheep snuck in there too, so
Speaker 1: again not exclusive to goats. So maybe we should be
Speaker 1: saying that while some sheep and some goats and maybe
Speaker 1: some sea lions to make these humanoid noises. Um. One
Speaker 1: thing that did seem useful to know is that goats
Speaker 1: yell for a number of different reasons. So goat handlers
Speaker 1: will tell you that sometimes they yell when they want
Speaker 1: to be fed, you know, if they're lining up at
Speaker 1: the fence for a meal. Uh, they might scream at
Speaker 1: their caregiver. Mother goats and young goats both yell when
Speaker 1: they become separated. Uh. And then there is a quote
Speaker 1: in this article from Dr Jean Marie Lugan Boule of
Speaker 1: North Carolina State University, who specializes in goats, and this
Speaker 1: researcher says, quote, in my experience with goats, it does
Speaker 1: not take much for them to scream bloody murder as
Speaker 1: if you are torturing them when simply handling them. So
Speaker 1: sometimes goats are kind of dramatic. Now, what you mentioned
Speaker 1: about mother goats and young goats yelling when it becomes separated,
Speaker 1: that that also reminds me of sea lions a bit,
Speaker 1: in that some of the vocalizations that occur with the
Speaker 1: females and with the the young ones are communicative in nature. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: as best I can tell, the primary explanation for the
Speaker 1: similarity in the sounds would just be that there are
Speaker 1: some coincidental structural similarities in the vocal production organs of
Speaker 1: humans and goats and apparently some other animals, some sheep
Speaker 1: and some sea lions and stuff. However, I did turn
Speaker 1: up one very interesting goat behavior study that again does
Speaker 1: not directly answer this question, but kind of grazes it.
Speaker 1: And the study is by uh Elod F. Briefer and
Speaker 1: Allen gy mcgilliot, published in Animal Behavior in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: called Social effects on vocal ontogeny in an ungulate, the
Speaker 1: goat Capra hircus. Now, you might notice a stark difference
Speaker 1: in the range of vocalizations that are available to humans
Speaker 1: compared to those that are available to most other animals.
Speaker 1: Humans have a large degree of what the authors here
Speaker 1: called vocal plasticity, meaning quote the ability of an individual
Speaker 1: to modify its vocalizations according to its environment. So we've
Speaker 1: got good vocal plasticity. But most animals that are capable
Speaker 1: of producing sounds with their voices actually produce a relatively
Speaker 1: constrained repertoire of sounds. But there are a few exceptions
Speaker 1: found among mammals and birds. You can probably easily think
Speaker 1: of the birds that have a big range of vocal
Speaker 1: modulation and control. Interestingly, some of the mammals with high
Speaker 1: vocal plasticity UH include bats and whales. But one kind
Speaker 1: of unique feature of human vocal plasticity is that it
Speaker 1: is affected by our social environment. We modify our voices
Speaker 1: and speech to sound like the people around us, especially
Speaker 1: the people around us when we're growing up, and this,
Speaker 1: of course is why people who speak the same language
Speaker 1: but grow up in different regions will end up with
Speaker 1: different accents. The authors argue that prior to their study,
Speaker 1: there was no documented evidence of anything like this in
Speaker 1: other mammals, but could it be the case that in
Speaker 1: other mammals, especially other mammals that are highly social and
Speaker 1: highly vocal, that they could develop something similar to different
Speaker 1: accents by social grouping. Well. A good example of a
Speaker 1: non human mammal that is both highly vocal and highly
Speaker 1: social is, in fact, the goat, a shrieking, owning, social
Speaker 1: herd animal. So the authors proposed to test this out
Speaker 1: on kids, meaning young goats. Could the social surroundings of
Speaker 1: goats affect the sounds they make and the answer is
Speaker 1: to some extent yes, uh. The authors found a strong
Speaker 1: genetic component to voice similarity, so full sibling goats had
Speaker 1: more similar voices than half siblings, but also half siblings
Speaker 1: that were raised in the same social group had more
Speaker 1: similar calls to each other than those that were raised
Speaker 1: in different groups. Quote the group specific indicators in kid
Speaker 1: vocalizations show that goat call ontogeny is affected by their
Speaker 1: social environment. This suggests that vocal plasticity could be more
Speaker 1: widespread in mammals than previously believed, showing a possible early
Speaker 1: pathway in the evolution of vocal learning leading to human language.
Speaker 1: So factors determining the sounds produced by young goats are
Speaker 1: strongly influenced by genetics, but surprisingly also influenced by the
Speaker 1: social environment, what other goats there around, And so you
Speaker 1: could view this as analogous in a way to goats
Speaker 1: developing different accents based on their their their groups. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to be a hundred percent clear. There is
Speaker 1: no evidence I've read whatsoever that this vocal plasticity would
Speaker 1: extend to domestic goats adapting their voices to sound like humans,
Speaker 1: like they're human farmers and herders. But I guess it's
Speaker 1: an interesting possibility to wonder about goat experts right in
Speaker 1: Is this crazy idea possible that I don't know? If
Speaker 1: goats spend around enough time around humans, is it possible
Speaker 1: that they could slightly adapt in a human vocal direction
Speaker 1: or is that absurdity? I don't know. Even without getting
Speaker 1: into that though, just the mere idea that you're in
Speaker 1: close proximity with these social mammals that communicated to some
Speaker 1: degree through vocalizations and and and have different vocal positions
Speaker 1: that they're utilizing. That's enough to sort of bridge that
Speaker 1: uncanny gap between us and them and to allow room
Speaker 1: for folklore to emerge between the two. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes goats interesting. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of the things that makes sea lions interesting
Speaker 1: as well, like because there you watch these animals and
Speaker 1: they're engaging in social behaviors that are different, very different
Speaker 1: from human behaviors, but also not so different that we
Speaker 1: can't anthropomorphize them. And then they're using their voices to
Speaker 1: some degree. So even even if ancient people especially we're
Speaker 1: not privy to all the you know, the bullet points
Speaker 1: that we've laid out in these studies here, they would
Speaker 1: have picked up on the fact that that something is occurring,
Speaker 1: that there's some sort of communicative relationship going on, and
Speaker 1: that there's the goats are raising a goaty mirror to
Speaker 1: our own way of life. Well said, I think we
Speaker 1: have to cut go it's part one right there, so
Speaker 1: we'll we'll come back in the next episode to talk
Speaker 1: about goats in the Hebrew Bible and in Christian traditions,
Speaker 1: goats and other myths and traditions from all around the world.
Speaker 1: Some more fascinating goat science. It's going to be a blast, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so join us for the next goat episode. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a lot of fun. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: some more creepy stuff in there, but also some uh
Speaker 1: some some some of the ideas are gonna be looking at,
Speaker 1: are gonna be go less demonic and more divine. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a little something in there for everybody. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: of course, you can find all the episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind in the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed. We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: Mondays we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 1: short form artifact or monster fact. And on Fridays do
Speaker 1: we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film,
Speaker 1: huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback in this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
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