Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam Here. Goats are the most multipurpose livestock animal
Speaker 1: that I know of. They can be raised specifically as
Speaker 1: a food source for their rich, slightly funky meat or milk.
Speaker 1: When raised for their hair or hide, they produce some
Speaker 1: of the most luxurious fibers on the market. Angora and
Speaker 1: cashmere both come from goats. They're also happy to clear
Speaker 1: land of overgrowth. In lots of places, you can rent
Speaker 1: goats to essentially mow your lawn, and of course they
Speaker 1: can make adorable and entertaining companions. One particular breed of goat, however,
Speaker 1: is known for a rather different trait, suddenly stiffening up
Speaker 1: and appearing to faint. Footage of these fainting goats occasionally
Speaker 1: makes the rounds on social media. Yet despite all appearances,
Speaker 1: these goats aren't weak of home heart or abnormally prone
Speaker 1: to fright, and they're not actually fainting. They don't lose
Speaker 1: consciousness at all during these episodes. They just fall over.
Speaker 1: This is caused by what's basically a delay in the
Speaker 1: relaxation of muscles that tends up involuntarily during surprise or
Speaker 1: other excitement. Think of what happens when you startle, You
Speaker 1: tense up. Briefly, what's happening in these goats is that
Speaker 1: they lock into that tension for several seconds, and if
Speaker 1: they happened to be on uneven ground when they tens,
Speaker 1: they're likely to tip over. This happens due to a
Speaker 1: genetic medical condition known as myotonia congenita, a congenita meaning
Speaker 1: present at birth. The goats are more properly called myotonic,
Speaker 1: not fainting. The severity of the condition varies. Some myotonic
Speaker 1: goats will stiffen up every time they're startled, others less frequently.
Speaker 1: Symptoms often lessen over time, and some animals are better
Speaker 1: able to adapt to the condition. Younger goats are more
Speaker 1: prone to tumble when startled, but as they grow older,
Speaker 1: many eventually manage to avoid falling down at all during
Speaker 1: episodes and may simply trot away on stiffened legs. Older
Speaker 1: goats also tend to become more secure with their environment
Speaker 1: and startle less easily. Today, let's talk about this rare
Speaker 1: breed of goat and how my atonia affects their lives,
Speaker 1: including how they even came to be considered a breed,
Speaker 1: and why anyone would breed for my atonia in the
Speaker 1: first place. To understand what happens what a myotonic goat startles, first,
Speaker 1: let's look at what happens under normal conditions. When a
Speaker 1: goat is surprised by a sudden movement or sound, or
Speaker 1: maybe if it just saw a farmer friend and is
Speaker 1: really excited about feeding time or getting to play. The
Speaker 1: animal's eyes and ears relay that startling data to its brain,
Speaker 1: which then sends an electrical signal to these skeletal muscles,
Speaker 1: such as those in the leg and neck, involving voluntary movement,
Speaker 1: causing a momentary tensing. This is often referred to as
Speaker 1: the fight or flight response. Just think of how it
Speaker 1: feels to be startled or have a friend remind you.
Speaker 1: You'll find your voluntary muscles contract and tighten for a second.
Speaker 1: This is your brain telling your muscles that the time
Speaker 1: has come to possibly confront or run away from an
Speaker 1: immediate threat. Though of course we experience this in other
Speaker 1: situations too. You might feel a tense rush when you
Speaker 1: get up to give a presentation or see someone that
Speaker 1: you have a crush on. Normally, this tensing is followed
Speaker 1: by an immediate relaxation of the affected muscles, allowing the
Speaker 1: typical person or goat to turn and run away from
Speaker 1: a perceived threat or otherwise respond to the situation. But
Speaker 1: with my atonia, the muscles stay tensed for maybe five
Speaker 1: to twenty seconds before slowly relaxing. It's not painful, and
Speaker 1: the goats seem to recover just fine in the aftermath.
Speaker 1: What's happening here is that, due to differing functions at
Speaker 1: the cellular level, the voluntary muscles of my atonic animals
Speaker 1: receive the electric signal from the brain to tense and
Speaker 1: then keep tensing instead of releasing, sort of like a
Speaker 1: skipping record. This happens because my aotonia affects a particular
Speaker 1: gene called clcn one, or chloride channel one. This gene
Speaker 1: is involved in the production and regulation of proteins, which
Speaker 1: are vital to the flexing and relaxing of skeletal muscles. Basically,
Speaker 1: positively charged sodium ions relay the brain's message for the
Speaker 1: muscle cells to contract. Negatively charged chloride ions, which chloride
Speaker 1: channel one affects, tell the muscle cells two relax. Myotonia
Speaker 1: results in an abnormal channel of chloride ions, which throws
Speaker 1: this relationship out of balance. The muscle cells wind up
Speaker 1: with more than enough sodium but not enough chloride, which
Speaker 1: uses repetitive electrical signals from the brain, such as those
Speaker 1: associated with being startled, to result in stiffness. The condition
Speaker 1: does happen in other animals as well, including humans. In people,
Speaker 1: it's categorized into two types, named for researchers who broke
Speaker 1: ground in their study, Thompson type and Becker type. Becker
Speaker 1: type is more common and can be more severe, with
Speaker 1: symptoms often delayed until a patient is a few years old.
Speaker 1: Both are highly treatable with physical therapy, exercise, and or medication,
Speaker 1: though of course we have a greater capacity to be
Speaker 1: frustrated or embarrassed about it. The condition is hereditary and
Speaker 1: can be either a dominant trait, in which the gene
Speaker 1: only has to be inherited from one parent, or a
Speaker 1: recessive trait, in which the gene is carried by both parents.
Speaker 1: Aware fainting goats differ from other myotonic animals, however, is
Speaker 1: that they are sometimes bred to encourage myotonia in their offspring.
Speaker 1: Fainting goats only exist as a breed because humans want
Speaker 1: them around. It's hard to imagine an animal with myetonia
Speaker 1: congenita lasting long in the wild. If a predator was
Speaker 1: to approach, the animal would stiffen up, and natural selection
Speaker 1: would take its course. The strong survive and the weak parish.
Speaker 1: That is, unless human breeders are there to protect the
Speaker 1: weaker animals and encourage their traits. While my atonia likely
Speaker 1: predates recorded history, the encouragement of the trait and goats
Speaker 1: and the resulting emergence of fainting goats as a distinct
Speaker 1: breed can be dated back to the early eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: in Marshall County, Tennessee. Some accounts link the breed to
Speaker 1: a particular farm worker named John Tinsley, who reportedly brought
Speaker 1: a number of goats exhibiting symptoms of myetonia down from
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia, Canada. Over a century later, herds of fainting
Speaker 1: goats could be found throughout the United States. Humans have
Speaker 1: always selectively bred animals for two base reasons, to encourage
Speaker 1: certain behavioral traits and or to encourage certain physical features.
Speaker 1: For example, a working farm dog may be bred for
Speaker 1: herding instincts or stamina. Pet dogs may be bred for
Speaker 1: their trainability or their cute, little fuzzy faces. My Atonic
Speaker 1: goats are no different as pets or additions to a
Speaker 1: farm that welcomes visitors. My Atonic goats are uniquely entertaining
Speaker 1: and retain the temperament that makes most goats good companion animals.
Speaker 1: But a thing about goats is that they are natural
Speaker 1: climbers and jumpers, so they are also natural escape artists.
Speaker 1: When fenced in. Farmers often need to expend extra effort
Speaker 1: to keep the animals enclosed, but my atonia tends to
Speaker 1: curb that behavior. The excitement of climbing and jumping can
Speaker 1: triggerous spell, so the goats are more likely to stay put,
Speaker 1: and when they are raised for their meat, all of
Speaker 1: that excessive muscle tan can result in greater muscle mass,
Speaker 1: less body fat, a higher meat to bone ratio, and
Speaker 1: more tender meat than other breeds of goat. A whether
Speaker 1: food or friend, Fainting goats don't seem to be going
Speaker 1: away anytime soon, a numbering an estimated four to five
Speaker 1: thousand in total, the animals are recognized as an official
Speaker 1: breed and are raised throughout the US and beyond. Enthusiasts
Speaker 1: have even established breed standards and regularly show their prize
Speaker 1: animals at livestock festivals. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article how fainting Goats Work on how stuffworks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Robert Lamb. Brain Stuff is production of by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klain. For four more podcasts from
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