Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And Rob and I are
Speaker 2: out this week, but we are bringing you some episodes
Speaker 2: from the vault, from the Halloween Vault, to be specific.
Speaker 2: This was originally aired on October eighteenth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and it's part one of our series on the Goat.
Speaker 1: That's right, let's jump right in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, it's still October here
Speaker 2: on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. And you
Speaker 2: may have noticed that we've been talking a good bit
Speaker 2: about farm animals this month. That was not by design,
Speaker 2: It just sort of happened that way. But you know,
Speaker 2: it started with discussing elf shot, which was this folk
Speaker 2: belief about wounds inflicted often on cattle and horses by
Speaker 2: supernatural fairy weapons. And then we talked about the cattle
Speaker 2: mutilation panic of the nineteen seventies, and all this talk
Speaker 2: about livestock actually brought me back to a question I've
Speaker 2: wondered about in recent years and I'm glad we're finally
Speaker 2: getting around to devoting some episodes to it. What is
Speaker 2: the deal with goats and evil incarnate? Modern audiences will
Speaker 2: probably think of a particularly awesome bit of goatish devilry
Speaker 2: from the twenty fifteen historical horror film The Witch, directed
Speaker 2: by Robert Eggers. I don't want to spoil too much
Speaker 2: for those of you who still haven't seen it. If
Speaker 2: you haven't, it's great, But let's just say the movie
Speaker 2: overfloweth with megacreepy goat stuff, a link between goats and
Speaker 2: demons and Satan himself. And of course this link between
Speaker 2: goats and demons and occult magic is not original to
Speaker 2: that film. There appears to be a long running association
Speaker 2: between goats and beliefs about witchcraft and devil worship, not
Speaker 2: so much in New England, where that movie is set,
Speaker 2: but especially in continental Europe, where the goat form was
Speaker 2: an important part of, for one thing, the imagery of Baphomet,
Speaker 2: a figure that will definitely come back to in more
Speaker 2: detail later in this series. But I figured that I
Speaker 2: think Christians associated with evil because it was allegedly worshiped
Speaker 2: by the Knights Templar and later by other occultists, I
Speaker 2: think emphasis on allegedly with that square with your understanding, rob.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, yes, definitely, and we'll touch on that later then.
Speaker 1: And then also you can when you start talking about
Speaker 1: occultists and some of the occult usages of Baphomet and
Speaker 1: Baha mein iconology, like that breaks down a bit as well,
Speaker 1: because you get into like, well, what is worship and
Speaker 1: what is the occult? And you can certainly go down
Speaker 1: some rabbit holes there as well.
Speaker 2: But apart from Baphamet, even the goat pops up in
Speaker 2: all other kinds of continental witchcraft imagery. Some of the
Speaker 2: greatest examples that come to mind for me are two
Speaker 2: similar paintings by the Spanish romantic artist Francisco Goya. The
Speaker 2: first one is a painting from seventeen ninety eight called
Speaker 2: Witch's Sabbath, which depicts a coven of women gathered in
Speaker 2: a circle around an upright he goat in the moonlight.
Speaker 2: And the goat's horns are magnificently curled, as if curled
Speaker 2: by the physical substance of evil, and they're decorated with
Speaker 2: branches of oak leaf, and his four hoofs are outstretched
Speaker 2: like the arms of a man kind of like you
Speaker 2: might see depictions of sleepwalkers with their arms stretched out
Speaker 2: in front of them, but also almost like a king
Speaker 2: holding out his hand so that you can kiss his ring.
Speaker 2: And the women worshiping the goat are offering up children
Speaker 2: for human sacrifice, and you can see bats circling the
Speaker 2: moon above. It is an absolutely splendid depiction of malignant
Speaker 2: magic and terror, and I love this painting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is an interesting painting because, on one hand, yes,
Speaker 1: it is invoking the very fictional idea of witchcraft and
Speaker 1: sacrifice that was, as we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 1: is very much a part of the like the campaign
Speaker 1: against imagined witches and played a huge part in witchcraft
Speaker 1: persecution of very real human beings. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: this particular image is a lot more chill compared to
Speaker 1: some of the various woodcuts you see that were used
Speaker 1: during the periods of witchcraft persecution and drumming up, you know,
Speaker 1: fantastic ideas of satanic worship like this one. Aside from
Speaker 1: the offering of the children, and even then the offering
Speaker 1: of the children, it could be you're just holding the
Speaker 1: child up to better see the great he goes otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, folks are just kind of hanging about and
Speaker 1: here's the goat, and the goat looks not particularly evil
Speaker 1: but kind of regal.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think some of that ambiguity might come
Speaker 2: down to what this painting was intended for, because I'll
Speaker 2: get back to that in just a second after I
Speaker 2: mentioned there's another painting. Strangely, this one is often known
Speaker 2: by the same title The Witch's Sabbath, but with the
Speaker 2: subtitle The Great he Goat or El Grande Cabron. This
Speaker 2: one was finished sometime in the early eighteen twenties, but
Speaker 2: I think it was not actually intended for public display.
Speaker 2: I think Koya just did this one like on a
Speaker 2: wall in his house. But in this one, once again
Speaker 2: you've got a congregation of witches gazing up at their
Speaker 2: goat lord in terror and awe. But now the goat
Speaker 2: is just a dark silhouette in the foreground with horns
Speaker 2: and a little billy beard and his body draped in
Speaker 2: robes like a priest. As brimming with menace as these
Speaker 2: paintings are, I think scholars of Goya do not typically
Speaker 2: understand these artworks as depictions of a literal belief in witchcraft,
Speaker 2: but more kind of the exact opposite, as satirical works
Speaker 2: about superstition, human brutality, and about religious persecution. Because Goya
Speaker 2: was apparently a devotee of the Enlightenment, and I've seen
Speaker 2: his occult paintings described as a sort of mockery of
Speaker 2: the witchcraft trial mentality and of the Spanish Inquisition and
Speaker 2: the darker side of human nature in general. Because Rob,
Speaker 2: as you just reminded us, of course, a belief in
Speaker 2: witchcraft and occult magic did lead to terror, oppression, brutality,
Speaker 2: and human sacrifice, but not so much at the hands
Speaker 2: of witches, almost exclusively at the hands of people who
Speaker 2: thought they were opposing witchcraft and heresy rather than practicing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and perhaps reaching for some faint evidence of
Speaker 1: the divine themselves. Yeah. This reminds me of another piece
Speaker 1: by Goya that I actually they talked about in a
Speaker 1: Monster Fact episode at some point in the last year
Speaker 1: or so, a seventeen ninety nine piece titled the translation
Speaker 1: is here comes the Boogeyman or Koko, and it has
Speaker 1: a robed figure and children. There are these two children
Speaker 1: held by a mother, and the children are screaming in
Speaker 1: terror and trying to look away from it, and the
Speaker 1: mother's gazing up at the Boogeyman almost with admiration. And
Speaker 1: it's a lovely 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 what parents have done by engaging in this
Speaker 1: kind of supernatural nonsense, this kind of supernatural terror to
Speaker 1: control their children. Look at the world there helping to
Speaker 1: make through this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And yet I think it's funny that despite the clearly
Speaker 2: ironic intention of these paintings, Goya was a master at
Speaker 2: creating deliciously frightening monsters and including these these great he goats,
Speaker 2: including the Elgrand Cabron. So the question for the series
Speaker 2: of episodes is why what is the deal with this
Speaker 2: cultural association primarily stemming from Christian continental Europe, between goats
Speaker 2: and devils or goats and wickedness? And does the thematic
Speaker 2: harmony of goat and evil at all relate to the
Speaker 2: biological features of the goat as an organism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question, because really, if your main
Speaker 1: relationship with goats is via like goat satanic imagery and
Speaker 1: baphomets and you know, you know, heavy metal iconography and
Speaker 1: so forth. You might say, oh, yeah, yeah, goats are scary.
Speaker 1: But if you've been around goats, either goat farms or
Speaker 1: various petting zoos, you know it did zoos where children
Speaker 1: are encouraged to meet the goats and the sheep and
Speaker 1: to pet them and groom them, you'll quickly realize that
Speaker 1: 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: revved up, one might button me a little bit, or
Speaker 1: might nibble like if I have a map hanging out
Speaker 1: of my pocket or something. They might try and eat
Speaker 1: something they're not supposed to do. But for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 1: the goat is more comical and weird and at least
Speaker 1: to my eyes, as opposed to anything that is nefarious
Speaker 1: when you're actually experiencing them firsthand.
Speaker 2: I actually had a face to face with some goats
Speaker 2: just a few weeks ago at a farm that was
Speaker 2: attached to a restaurant I went to, and the goats
Speaker 2: were just hanging out by the side of the fence.
Speaker 2: So I went and communed with them a little bit,
Speaker 2: and I walked away from that thinking, yeah, goats are
Speaker 2: kind of cool. They just seemed like chill like, kind friendly,
Speaker 2: maybe more more of a sense of awareness from the
Speaker 2: goats than I've gotten when I've been around like cows,
Speaker 2: So there's a kind of curiosity or implied intelligence, but
Speaker 2: also that they were just cool. It's like they wanted
Speaker 2: to hang out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have a lot of personality I've found. I mean,
Speaker 1: you also find some that are totally zoned out in
Speaker 1: petting Zero's I've been touched 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 a lot of times, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of love of character, and the
Speaker 1: babies are quite cute. So so yeah, in real life
Speaker 1: I find goats to be rather harmless.
Speaker 2: So I think it's probably good to put some very
Speaker 2: basic goat biology up front, and then maybe we can
Speaker 2: come back to more specific goat science questions after we
Speaker 2: explore more of the goat lore.
Speaker 1: So the goat for starters here, the goat is one
Speaker 1: of humanity's oldest domesticated animals. Tracing back at least to
Speaker 1: the fifth millennium BCE, perhaps to the region of Turkestan.
Speaker 1: Goats have spread around the globe with their humans since then,
Speaker 1: thriving everywhere except Antarctica. We domesticated the goat. We take
Speaker 1: the goat with us, and the goat tends to do
Speaker 1: really well in various environments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the goat is kind of rough and ready, the
Speaker 2: goat is hardy. So the scientific name of the domestic
Speaker 2: goat species is Capra Hercus hircus, with the genus Capra
Speaker 2: belonging to the bovid subfamily Caproni, also known as the
Speaker 2: goat antelopes. So the taxonomy from top down goes like this.
Speaker 2: You got the bovids, and the bovids are all cloven,
Speaker 2: hoofed ruminant mammals. This includes antelopes, cows, bison, buffalo, things
Speaker 2: like that. And then the bovid subfamily Caprini includes an
Speaker 2: assortment of genera such as muskox and sheep, various kinds
Speaker 2: of four legged mountain critters that you would probably look
Speaker 2: at and say that's some type of goat. And then
Speaker 2: of course the genus Capra, which contains the true goats,
Speaker 2: with Capra Hercus the domestic goat. There are hundreds of
Speaker 2: breeds selected for different traits, but broadly, most domestic goats
Speaker 2: are raised for one of three things, either milk or meat,
Speaker 2: or skins and fiber for the coat. So when it
Speaker 2: comes to fiber, you can think about cashmere. Cashmere wool
Speaker 2: that comes from goat breeds such as the Kashmere goat,
Speaker 2: and mohair as in electric boots and mohair suits, is
Speaker 2: made from the wool of the angora goat. Confusingly, the
Speaker 2: wool known as angora does not come from the angora goat,
Speaker 2: but from rabbits.
Speaker 1: Goat milk, especially when made into goat cheese, can be
Speaker 1: quite amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it tends to have a friskier flavor than cow milk.
Speaker 2: You get more that grass tanng in there, I think.
Speaker 2: But so okay. Humans have been hurting domestic goats for
Speaker 2: thousands of years, probably going back ten thousand years or so,
Speaker 2: longer than most other domestic animal species. So how did
Speaker 2: that happen? Well, domestic goats are mostly from an original
Speaker 2: wild species known as the beezor goat or capra igagras,
Speaker 2: though there are a few breeds that are descended from
Speaker 2: another wild species known as the markre or Capra falconeri.
Speaker 2: The markre is awesome, by the way, and worth returning
Speaker 2: to later. But I was reading one highly cited paper
Speaker 2: investigating the evolutionary history of the goat how we got
Speaker 2: from these wild ancestors to the domestic goat, And this
Speaker 2: was a paper by Sayed naderi at All published in
Speaker 2: Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, called the goat domestication process inferred from large
Speaker 2: scale mitochondrial DNA analysis of wild and domestic individuals. So
Speaker 2: as we know, one of the most important turning points
Speaker 2: in the history of the human species, probably the single
Speaker 2: most important, was the emergence of farming, which includes both
Speaker 2: plant agriculture and domestication of livestock, and goats were one
Speaker 2: of these early domestics. Hated farm animals, likely through a
Speaker 2: process where the wild ancestor of the goat was a
Speaker 2: prey species tracked and hunted by humans, and then at
Speaker 2: some point that hunting relationship transitioned into a herding relationship, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, fascinating to try to imagine the step
Speaker 2: by step process of how exactly that happens. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: these wild goats, the ancestors of domestic goats, were typically
Speaker 2: a mountain dwelling species that lived in relatively harsh and
Speaker 2: rocky environments and in the woods rather than in just flat,
Speaker 2: fertile plains full of delicious grass. And this raises an
Speaker 2: important distinction for goat biology, which is the grazing versus
Speaker 2: browsing distinction. So you can think of ruminant mammals like
Speaker 2: sheep and cattle as grazers. They usually prefer to eat
Speaker 2: low lying vegetations such as grass, whereas goats typically prefer
Speaker 2: to browse. So goats don't just put their heads down
Speaker 2: eat nice grass. They browse on trees and shrubs, so
Speaker 2: they prefer to keep their heads raised up instead of
Speaker 2: down to the earth, and they'll pick it leaves and
Speaker 2: fruits and buds and twigs from higher up food sources.
Speaker 1: Though at the same time, you have a particular environment
Speaker 1: invites them to graze more or to to to eat
Speaker 1: more from lower down, they will do that too. They're
Speaker 1: very versatile and that's one of the reasons they've been
Speaker 1: so successful.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they will definitely eat whatever they can get.
Speaker 2: It's but I think the distinction is that you're not
Speaker 2: gonna typically find like cows and sheep trying to browse
Speaker 2: up on variegated, higher, higher up food sources, and goats
Speaker 2: absolutely will. That's part of their natural repertoire.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's also always amusing, you know, given their
Speaker 1: their their mountainous ancestry that anywhere you find goats, you'll
Speaker 1: often find them a top whatever they can get a
Speaker 1: top off, be it a rock or a shed, occasionally
Speaker 1: the roof of a building, whatever they have access to.
Speaker 1: Its goats like to get a little height so they
Speaker 1: can see what's going on around them exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you often see the goats up on top of
Speaker 2: the chicken coop there go. But anyway, in the study
Speaker 2: I mentioned by comparing DNA from modern domestic goats with
Speaker 2: the modern relatives of their wild ancestors, this study zeroed
Speaker 2: in on the idea that the earliest version of this
Speaker 2: herding and domestication relationship and the emergence of the domestic
Speaker 2: goat probably took place in eastern Anatolia and possibly the
Speaker 2: northern and central Zagros Mountains, which are a mountain range
Speaker 2: extending from eastern Turkey down through Iraq and Iran. And
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting that some of the traits still
Speaker 2: visible in domestic goats today can be traced to this
Speaker 2: evolutionary history. Talking about especially if you think about you know,
Speaker 2: goat bodies, goat brains, and goat behavior as adapted to
Speaker 2: more difficult environments like woods and mountains as opposed to
Speaker 2: plains full of green grass. And you can see this
Speaker 2: represented in some misconceptions about goats that contain a grain
Speaker 2: of truth. For example, if you watch old cartoons and stuff,
Speaker 2: and you see a goat in the old cartoon, what's
Speaker 2: it going to do. It's gonna eat a tin can, right, right,
Speaker 2: No problem, goats just eat tin cans. Well, that's not true.
Speaker 2: Obviously this is not real, and you should not feed
Speaker 2: metal or any other kind of potentially dangerous garbage to
Speaker 2: a goat. But there is a grain of truth there.
Speaker 2: It is reflective of the fact that humans have long
Speaker 2: noticed goat feeding behavior is more curious and adventurous and
Speaker 2: promiscuous than the typical feeding behavior of some other familiar
Speaker 2: domestic ungulates like sheep and cows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's why many of the places you'll find
Speaker 1: goats in the world, you'll you'll find them often living
Speaker 1: in otherwise very urban environments in not concrete jungles, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but places where, yeah, there's vegetation around there in between
Speaker 1: this building and that, and the goats can get to
Speaker 1: it in ways where you probably wouldn't have a cow
Speaker 1: grazing there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, being natural browsers who eat leaves of plants
Speaker 2: that would be poisonous to other animals, we eat fruits
Speaker 2: and buds and twigs and shoots and sometimes even tree bark.
Speaker 2: Goats will search high up in their environment for potential
Speaker 2: food sources and will try out all kinds of things.
Speaker 2: Like other ruminant mammals, goats break down their high fiber
Speaker 2: diet with the help of a multi chamber digestive system
Speaker 2: where the foregut actually uses bacterial fermentation to break down
Speaker 2: the rough vegetation and extract the maximum usable energy. So
Speaker 2: the goats in their foregut, they got a chamber in
Speaker 2: there where they're making sauer kraut out of the leaves
Speaker 2: and the grass and the twigs. Now we can come
Speaker 2: back to more discussion of goat biology later, but I
Speaker 2: was thinking, if we're looking for cultural links between goats
Speaker 2: and the devil, it might be good to look at
Speaker 2: the sort of mythic processing of other biological features of
Speaker 2: the goat and see what other products those features get
Speaker 2: baked into. So one thing that that screams for attention
Speaker 2: to me, if you're certainly to anyone who's familiar with
Speaker 2: Greek and Roman mythology, is going to be the creature
Speaker 2: known as the satyr or the fawn.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and this is this is tremendously important to the
Speaker 1: discussion of goat iconography and Western traditions and the classical
Speaker 1: use of course, the idea of these these goat men
Speaker 1: that are generally human from from the waist up with
Speaker 1: some goatish features of the head and then goat like
Speaker 1: from the waist down. And yeah, there are a number
Speaker 1: of wonderful works of art that have depicted these beings,
Speaker 1: and they kind of run the gamut, like sometimes a
Speaker 1: satyr seems kind of serene, you know, playing music in
Speaker 1: the woods or frolicking in the woods. Other times they
Speaker 1: have a very 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 artwork in question.
Speaker 2: There are numerous specific myths and tales about satyrs where
Speaker 2: in the end the sator suffers a humiliation or punishment
Speaker 2: or defeat of some kind. They often just like that
Speaker 2: it doesn't turn out great for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the flaying in particular, that's the reference to
Speaker 1: the flaying of Marsias, in which the god Apollo flays
Speaker 1: this particular satar. And yeah, it's a grotesque sequence that
Speaker 1: you'll often see depicted in statues and paintings. So at
Speaker 1: any rate, yes, when we're talking about the classical Greek
Speaker 1: goat man, we're talking about the satar. And this carries
Speaker 1: over as well into Roman traditions of the fawn. Carol Rose,
Speaker 1: the folklorus that I often refer to, points out that
Speaker 1: the original satyrs were depicted as human males with goat
Speaker 1: legs and horns that represented quote, the fruitfulness of the land.
Speaker 1: So I guess it's one of those things where if
Speaker 1: you have satyrs frolicking about, if your environment can support satyrs,
Speaker 1: then everything's going all right. Clearly this is an indicator
Speaker 1: of a very robust environment. But the form shifts over time,
Speaker 1: as mythic bodies tend to do. And at one point
Speaker 1: she writes, there's a type of satyr that is described
Speaker 1: as having no nose, on its face and breathing instead
Speaker 1: through a big hole in its chest. Later satyrs take
Speaker 1: on the form we're more familiar with human faces, pointed ears, horns,
Speaker 1: and the lower body of a shaggy goat the upper
Speaker 1: body of a human male. They attend their drunken leader
Speaker 1: s and serve the god of wine, Dionysus or Bacchus.
Speaker 1: They live in the woods, They chase nymphs around, and
Speaker 1: they 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 Satar. There's possibly a danger
Speaker 1: to the Satar. They and in this they're also the
Speaker 1: origin of the word satire. But also in all of this,
Speaker 1: I think they nicely sum up a lot of attitudes
Speaker 1: towards the wild. Like, the wilderness can be fun, the
Speaker 1: wilderness can be amusing and serene. But the wilderness can
Speaker 1: be dangerous and it may care nothing for you at all.
Speaker 1: It may take interest in you, the interest that you
Speaker 1: do not want. Yeah. Now, by the medieval period, Rose
Speaker 1: writes that they become more of a grotesque hybrid and
Speaker 1: are often used to represent just pure debauchery and lust,
Speaker 1: often depicted with erect fallacies to drive home this point.
Speaker 1: But at the same time it was also said that,
Speaker 1: and of course we'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.
Speaker 2: The travel guides of the ancient world were so bad,
Speaker 2: zero stars. But anyway, so yeah, I was reading about
Speaker 2: satyrs and one thing I noticed is that they were
Speaker 2: being described in conflicting ways, like it seemed. Sometimes they're
Speaker 2: described as having these goat like features and other times
Speaker 2: I read them as having horse like features. So I
Speaker 2: was trying to make sense of that, and I found
Speaker 2: a good reference an Oxford University Press book called Classical Mythology,
Speaker 2: A Guide to the mythical world the Greeks and Romans,
Speaker 2: by a scholar named William Hanson. This was published in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, and according to Hanson, the overriding
Speaker 2: feature of satyrs is that they're associated with the countryside,
Speaker 2: of course, so you know, the wilderness as opposed to settlements,
Speaker 2: and that they are hybrid beasts. They are exclusively male,
Speaker 2: they tend to be hairy, they walk upright on two legs,
Speaker 2: they've got, as you said, off an exaggeratedly large genitalia,
Speaker 2: and they incorporate some type of bestial features, though early
Speaker 2: on these features are the legs and tail of a
Speaker 2: horse rather than a goat. That's kind of interesting. So
Speaker 2: some depictions lean more on the bestial elements and others
Speaker 2: make them more just kind of like ugly wild humans.
Speaker 2: But what's the deal with the horse features versus goat
Speaker 2: so Hanson says that satyrs were originally horsemen who again
Speaker 2: had the legs and tails of horses, but over time
Speaker 2: they blend together with depictions of the god Pan who
Speaker 2: was explicitly and always a goat man. So by the
Speaker 2: Hellenistic periods that's about the fourth century to the first
Speaker 2: century BCE, after the conquest of Alexander the Great, at
Speaker 2: this point, satyrs are being depicted pretty regularly as goat
Speaker 2: men instead of horsemen.
Speaker 1: This horse goat split is interesting because we'll come back
Speaker 1: to this again regarding not only the goat horse split,
Speaker 1: but the idea that some hybrid entities that are described
Speaker 1: into different folk traditions. The goat aspect may shift. Other
Speaker 1: times it may be another creature, but sometimes it leans
Speaker 1: more goat.
Speaker 2: And I think you can learn things about what these
Speaker 2: animals mean in people's minds by seeing what kind of
Speaker 2: animals get swapped out for what yea But anyway, so
Speaker 2: these later pan blended goat satyrs are usually shown hanging
Speaker 2: out in the countryside, playing the flute, chasing nymphs, dancing,
Speaker 2: associating with Dionysus, the god of the gray harvest of
Speaker 2: fruitfulness and fertility, actually the god of a lot of things,
Speaker 2: of festivity and drunkenness and all kinds of stuff in
Speaker 2: literary traditions. Hanson digs up interesting references to satyrs as
Speaker 2: being quote worthless and unsuited to work. But another thing
Speaker 2: that really caught my attention is that satyrs, since they
Speaker 2: are exclusively male, cannot reproduce to create their own kind,
Speaker 2: and are only said to be created by the union
Speaker 2: of two other worldly beings, such as a god and
Speaker 2: a nymph, or by the union of a god and
Speaker 2: a human. And there's an interesting comparison here, I think,
Speaker 2: to other figures that are considered demonic in some way.
Speaker 2: For example, in ancient Near Eastern literature, I think of
Speaker 2: stories from early Judaism about the creation of demonic beings
Speaker 2: when the sons of God come down from heaven and
Speaker 2: father children with human women. The offspring are often said
Speaker 2: to be giants or some kind of evil beings. Want
Speaker 2: to read more about that, you can look up the
Speaker 2: tradition of the Nephilim or the story in the Book
Speaker 2: of First Enoch. Now I know there's more about satyrs
Speaker 2: we need to come back and talk about. But since
Speaker 2: satyrs were originally horsemen who became goat men by merging
Speaker 2: in tradition with depictions of the god Pan, what was
Speaker 2: the deal with Pan? Who were these? What were these
Speaker 2: Panned illustrations all about? Well, once again to reference that
Speaker 2: Oup handbook by Hanson, Hanson writes that Pan was the
Speaker 2: god of shepherds and flocks, and he makes his home
Speaker 2: in the wilds of Arcadia. And while you'll find a
Speaker 2: lot of satyrs with horse forms in earlier sources, it
Speaker 2: seems like pans grounding in the goat form is rock solid.
Speaker 2: So to read from the Homeric hymns. The Homeric hymns,
Speaker 2: by the way, are an anonymous collection of hymns to
Speaker 2: various Greek gods, dating back to probably the seventh century BCE,
Speaker 2: sometime around then. This one I found is number nineteen,
Speaker 2: and when I started reading it it was so good
Speaker 2: I just I have to do an actual chunk of
Speaker 2: the text. So this is a hymn too, the great
Speaker 2: God Pan. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn White. The first
Speaker 2: part of the hymn goes like this, Muse tell me
Speaker 2: about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, with his goat's
Speaker 2: feet and two horns, a lover of merry noise, through
Speaker 2: wooded glades. He wanders with dancing nymphs who footed on
Speaker 2: some sheer cliff's edge, calling upon Pan. The shepherd god,
Speaker 2: long haired, unkempt, He has every snowy crest and the
Speaker 2: mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain. Hither and
Speaker 2: thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by
Speaker 2: soft streams. And now he presses on amongst towering crags
Speaker 2: and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks.
Speaker 2: Often he courses through the glistening high mounts, mountains, and
Speaker 2: often on the shouldered hills, he speeds along, slaying wild beasts,
Speaker 2: this keen eyed god. Only at evening, as he returns
Speaker 2: from the chase, he sounds his note, playing sweet and
Speaker 2: low on his pipes of reed. Not even she could
Speaker 2: excel him in melody. That bird who in flower laden spring,
Speaker 2: pouring forth her lament utters honey voiced song amid the leaves.
Speaker 2: At that hour, the clear voiced nymphs are with him
Speaker 2: and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of
Speaker 2: dark water, while Echo wails about the mountaintop and the
Speaker 2: God on this side or on that of the choirs,
Speaker 2: or at times sliding into the midst plies it nimbly
Speaker 2: with his feet on his back. He wears a spotted
Speaker 2: lynx pelt, and he delights in high pitched songs in
Speaker 2: a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet smelling hyacinths bloom
Speaker 2: at random in the grass.
Speaker 1: Oh that's beautiful. And I think one thing that instantly
Speaker 1: hits me up about multiple passages in this is it
Speaker 1: it almost seems like it's ruminating on the nature of
Speaker 1: the herdsman, because the hunter, of course goes out into
Speaker 1: the wild and acts as a predator essentially. And then
Speaker 1: when we have modern situations of say, highly industrialized farming
Speaker 1: and the rearing of animals, generally not with goats but
Speaker 1: more of cattle. There is the taking of the animal
Speaker 1: out of the natural world, placing it in an unnatural situation,
Speaker 1: and treating it more or less like a thing. But
Speaker 1: with this ideal, this older vision of the herdsman, the
Speaker 1: herdsman goes out and kind of lives like the goat,
Speaker 1: at least for periods of time, Like he has to
Speaker 1: go out with the goats to the places the goats
Speaker 1: want to be. And you can imagine this sort of
Speaker 1: merging of the two, like the herdsman and the goat
Speaker 1: as one.
Speaker 2: He is aunt critter. Yeah, and I like the delicate
Speaker 2: balance in this hymn, depicting Pan on one sense as
Speaker 2: a kind of dangerous outsider and earth rim roamer, and
Speaker 2: on the other hand as a as a soft and
Speaker 2: delicate and a friendly representative of the of the Dewey
Speaker 2: Glades and the and the song of the brook.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I wonder too about the detail about the
Speaker 1: wearing of the spotted lynx pelt. You know, the wears
Speaker 1: the pelt of the hunter that would otherwise endanger the
Speaker 1: flock that's that's so many wonderful details in this So.
Speaker 2: The part I read was just the first half of
Speaker 2: the hymn. The second half of the hymn tells the
Speaker 2: story of how Pan was born, and it says that
Speaker 2: he's the offspring of the god Hermes, who in this
Speaker 2: telling is a is a rustic god, a god of again,
Speaker 2: of the countryside, and of a human woman. And the
Speaker 2: hymn says that when Pan was born, he emerged with
Speaker 2: a goat's feet and with two horns, and he was
Speaker 2: noisy and loved to make mary. And then it says quote,
Speaker 2: but when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard,
Speaker 2: she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left
Speaker 2: the child. But despite the terror he strikes in human hearts,
Speaker 2: Pan is loved by Hermes and the gods. Hermi is
Speaker 2: a big fan of this goat child, and he takes
Speaker 2: him up to Mount Olympus and shows him off to
Speaker 2: the other gods. And the other gods love him too,
Speaker 2: especially Dionysus, and they name him Pan, which literally means all,
Speaker 2: because he delighted all of their hearts. So a list
Speaker 2: of things we have now learned about the god Pan
Speaker 2: as we already established, he's a hairy wild man who
Speaker 2: has goat feed and horns and a beard like a
Speaker 2: billy goat, and he's the god of shepherds and flocks.
Speaker 2: He rules over the wilderness. Pan is known as a
Speaker 2: very lusty god, known for exaggerated and constant sexual arousal,
Speaker 2: and in keeping with this, he has power over the
Speaker 2: fertility of livestocks such as sheep and goats. But here's
Speaker 2: another aspect that's really interesting for our purposes. Did you
Speaker 2: know that our English word panic actually derives from the
Speaker 2: Greek word panicon and the cognate there with the god
Speaker 2: Pan's name is not a coincidence. Panicon is said in
Speaker 2: ancient sources to mean relating to Pan. Originally, panic was
Speaker 2: not a noun. There wasn't a panic. Panic was an
Speaker 2: adjective describing a type of fear, often the type of
Speaker 2: fear that suddenly comes over people with no apparent rhyme
Speaker 2: or reason. And this seems to work on the logic that,
Speaker 2: since Pan was the lord of the wilderness, when a
Speaker 2: person walks alone in the woods or on the mountain
Speaker 2: side and out of nowhere, they become infected with an
Speaker 2: irrational anxiety and a dread. Maybe they just heard a
Speaker 2: twigs snap where they felt a breeze and they get
Speaker 2: that chill. It's like there's something watching me. There's something
Speaker 2: dangerous out here. That was pancon dema or the fright
Speaker 2: of Pan.
Speaker 1: 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. Modern humans
Speaker 1: get to pour their irrational anxiety into so many other
Speaker 1: things in places. Yeah, but for in particularly for non
Speaker 1: seafaring folk, this would be the place. This would be
Speaker 1: where that fear would overcome you totally.
Speaker 2: Now, But that is one type of panic fear. There's
Speaker 2: another type of panic fear described in other sources that
Speaker 2: seems to be more like the fear that suddenly comes
Speaker 2: over soldiers on mass, draining them of courage and causing
Speaker 2: them to flee the battlefield. And this is related to
Speaker 2: stories that the Greek god Pan also had such a
Speaker 2: booming voice that if he shouted over the battlefield it
Speaker 2: would cause his enemies to freeze in terror and give
Speaker 2: way to a route. But anyway, putting all this together,
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting how well Pan, the god
Speaker 2: Pan and the satyrs and fawns that were later stamped
Speaker 2: in his image match elements of the demons that would
Speaker 2: preoccupy some in the Christian world. So you've got a
Speaker 2: goat human hybrid with hair and horns, who is the
Speaker 2: unholy offspring of the union of God and human, who's
Speaker 2: got an association with sinful activity, with lust or lasciviousness,
Speaker 2: and who strikes panic into the hearts of fragile mortals
Speaker 2: like us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this seemed to be a direct line there.
Speaker 2: But the interesting stuff about satyrs doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, one thing about these these depictions of satyrs,
Speaker 1: it sounds like, you know, so many of these stories
Speaker 1: are again it's like encountering something something in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: It might be of danger to you, it might be
Speaker 1: of mild interest. And then we also have this mention
Speaker 1: of this like the pan origin story of a child
Speaker 1: born as satyr being found frightful 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 Luis 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 Slah,
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 Sullah's legions and taken to the general. It
Speaker 1: made inarticulate sounds and was so repulsive that Sullah immediately
Speaker 1: ordered it be returned to its mountain layer. And that
Speaker 1: is from the Book of Imaginary Beings. So, oh, that's
Speaker 1: just so fascinating the idea here. Selah's troops are out,
Speaker 1: they find a sadar or something like a sator, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, we got to bring this. We've got
Speaker 1: to pass this up the chain. Let's bring this to
Speaker 1: the commander. And he brings it to him and he's like, oh, this,
Speaker 1: this is horrifying, Please take it away. Or at least
Speaker 1: that sounds like what occurs in my reading of this
Speaker 1: one passage from the Book of Imaginary Beings Ah. But
Speaker 1: it gets more fascinating than that. I was reading into
Speaker 1: this a bit more so. First of all, if forreyone,
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 Jean 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 satyar was caught asleep such an
Speaker 1: one as sculptors and painters represent, and brought to Sullah,
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 hoarse cry that was something between the nahing
Speaker 1: of a horse and the bleeding of a goat, Solah
Speaker 1: was horrified and ordered him out of his sight.
Speaker 2: Interesting that the nature of the cry could be read
Speaker 2: as either a horseman or a goat man, given that
Speaker 2: these are the two different traditions of the satyr.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Sorebella writes that the tale in question here
Speaker 1: inserts mythic happenings into a straightforward biography, and this may
Speaker 1: stem from Solah's own memoirs, where it was known that
Speaker 1: he put an emphasis on dreams and portents. It may
Speaker 1: also refer to traditions of King Midas and the finding
Speaker 1: of a goat man here is apparently meant to be
Speaker 1: a portent of victory, as Sullah returns to Italy, defeating
Speaker 1: his enemies ultimately and becoming dictator of Rome. The finding
Speaker 1: of a sleeping satyar 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, and despite the fact that
Speaker 1: one of the most famous stories of finding a satyr,
Speaker 1: that involving King Midas, has a dark twist to it.
Speaker 1: So I found that fascinating. It's like, here is this
Speaker 1: strange creature we found in the wild that may be this,
Speaker 1: you know, half divine entity, and it's horrifying to look at.
Speaker 1: It's horrifying to listen to. But it also is a pausitive.
Speaker 1: It's not a dire omen it's not all well or
Speaker 1: screwed now because look what nature turned up. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: look at this strange marvel. It's horrifying. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a good day tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Even though he has to order it out of his sight.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, the myth of King Midas. Of course, that
Speaker 1: kicks off with the finding of the satar Silinus, and
Speaker 1: upon returning the creature to the god Dionysus, Midas is
Speaker 1: rule warded with the granting of his famous wish right,
Speaker 1: the result being that everything he touches turns to gold,
Speaker 1: which does not work out well for him.
Speaker 2: No, that's also a bad portent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now.
Speaker 2: The later version of the Greek satyr with goat like
Speaker 2: characteristics is often conflated with a Roman mythological creature known
Speaker 2: as the fawn. These are regarded as basically the same
Speaker 2: creature in most ways, and it does seem like there
Speaker 2: is major overlap between the two. The fawns get their
Speaker 2: name from an ancient Italian deity called Faunas, which in
Speaker 2: turn is similar to Pan, a god of the countryside
Speaker 2: who was half man half goat. In the Italian tradition,
Speaker 2: he's associated with the wilderness and the sounds echoing through
Speaker 2: the woods, where you know the voice of Fawnus, and
Speaker 2: like Pan, he is also associated with the dionysia inside
Speaker 2: of life, or I guess in the Roman the bacchic,
Speaker 2: or you might also just think of it as kind
Speaker 2: of the id in a way like the drive toward
Speaker 2: hedonistic pleasure and merrymaking. Now understanding that a lot of
Speaker 2: these mythological goat flavored beast men were known for representing
Speaker 2: a kind of inhuman pleasure seeking behavior, or specifically inhuman
Speaker 2: sex drive, it's worth asking is that actually reflective of
Speaker 2: anything about goats as animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a question that I had because again,
Speaker 1: I've never raised goats, i haven't lived among goats, but
Speaker 1: I've been around them plenty of times, and I honestly
Speaker 1: don't remember being in the presence of goat copulation. Certainly,
Speaker 1: there are other animals that I've seen in various places
Speaker 1: where that have engaged in such behavior. But with the goat,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, where does this come from? Is the
Speaker 1: goat actually randier than other domesticated species? So and see,
Speaker 1: So I was looking at a few different sources on this,
Speaker 1: because obviously this becomes part of like we've discussed the
Speaker 1: sator myth, the idea of pan and ultimately these ideas
Speaker 1: of Satanic goat men and the horned one. 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 mammals, are going to be rodents, various species
Speaker 1: of rodents. Some are famous for like essentially rutting the
Speaker 1: males anyway, rutting themselves to death. But of course we
Speaker 1: have to remind ourselves that humans have been living in
Speaker 1: close proximity to goats for a very long time and
Speaker 1: simply get to observe more of the day to day
Speaker 1: goat life. And then of course we tend to personify
Speaker 1: anything animals do as well.
Speaker 2: Right, I was thinking that, I mean, you've got goat herds,
Speaker 2: not rat herds, so you don't you know, people are
Speaker 2: probably watching the goats more than they're watching the rats.
Speaker 1: Right, And of course we have a very long association
Speaker 1: with the rats and mice, but they stick to the
Speaker 1: shadows the goats do not. The goats have a privileged
Speaker 1: status within our environment. So I decided to look into
Speaker 1: goat reproduction more. And so this led me to a
Speaker 1: few different ag science materials, including one very helpful article
Speaker 1: from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff by livestock
Speaker 1: specialist David Fernandez. And there's actually quite a bit of
Speaker 1: variety in the reproductive cycles of goats. Again, they've been
Speaker 1: domestigated a very long time. You have different lineages of goats,
Speaker 1: different varieties of goats, and many of them are doing
Speaker 1: their breeding indefinite seasons such as fall, while others are
Speaker 1: going to be active sexually active year round. Latitude, Fernandez says,
Speaker 1: plays a key role in seasonality. But I think this
Speaker 1: bit from Fernandez does give us a bit more to
Speaker 1: go on regarding the randy nature of the he goat,
Speaker 1: especially in Greek and Roman tradition. Quote. Copulation in goats
Speaker 1: usually lasts less than two minutes, but they will often
Speaker 1: mate several times while the dough is an estrus. Bucks
Speaker 1: must be carefully monitored during the breeding season, especially young bucks,
Speaker 1: because they spend so much of their time mating that
Speaker 1: they fail to eat. Bucks can lose up to twenty
Speaker 1: five pounds over the course of the breeding season.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, this is starting to make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think we can well imagine how and
Speaker 1: why the randy image of the he goat might stick
Speaker 1: in people's minds. And they also have a vested interest
Speaker 1: in it all right, because you want your goats reproducing,
Speaker 1: and you are also invested in the health of your
Speaker 1: he goats. So I noticed some other animal science papers
Speaker 1: also referring to goats as a quote unquote promiscuous species
Speaker 1: in which male goats are trying to mate with as
Speaker 1: many females as possible. So again, take all of that,
Speaker 1: combining with the fact that people are living in close
Speaker 1: proximity to goats. They're seeing this, you know, generally like
Speaker 1: day to day if you were out there as a shepherd,
Speaker 1: I mean, as your job to keep track of what
Speaker 1: the goats are doing. And then again we cannot help
Speaker 1: but personify the goat. We can't help but do this
Speaker 1: with any kind of species, especially when we look at
Speaker 1: their reproduction, you know, many of which are engaging in
Speaker 1: reproductive styles and cycles and relationships that do not translate
Speaker 1: well or favorably into the human realm. But we can't
Speaker 1: help but look at them as behaving is 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.
Speaker 2: One of the profound absurdities of the human condition is
Speaker 2: we're just going to be making moral judgments about the
Speaker 2: sex lives of goats.
Speaker 1: I'd say another factor that might be involved in ideas
Speaker 1: concerning satyrs and faunds. Is that goats can assume a
Speaker 1: bipedal posture either to reach higher vegetation, to aid in climbing,
Speaker 1: or to aid and butting other goats. This is frequently
Speaker 1: if you've ever spent some time watching goats in there,
Speaker 1: especially the younger goats, like bucking each other, you know,
Speaker 1: head butting. They'll often do this thing where they'll sort
Speaker 1: of rise up on their rear legs and then kind
Speaker 1: of use gravity to butt at something. But on top
Speaker 1: of this, they can also balance on their back two
Speaker 1: legs and move around, which even today makes its way
Speaker 1: into viral goat videos. There's one I think from somewhere
Speaker 1: in India that I sent you, Joe, because it's just
Speaker 1: a very short video of what appears to be just
Speaker 1: a goat walking down the street briefly on its hind legs.
Speaker 2: Yep, just a straight two leg walking habit like it's
Speaker 2: a you know, evil possessed somnambulist basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you only have to see that once. Yeah,
Speaker 1: given any given community, only one person would have to
Speaker 1: see that once to really sort of get the momentum going.
Speaker 1: I think for various other ideas well.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's part of that Canny Valley
Speaker 2: principle that like when you see an animal that's acting
Speaker 2: kind of human in a surprising way, that gets the
Speaker 2: mind churning about evil magic and so yeah, seeing a
Speaker 2: goat walk on two legs, you can easily imagine somebody
Speaker 2: getting freaked out about that. But it's also interesting to
Speaker 2: think about the underlying biological reasoning there. And I haven't
Speaker 2: confirmed this is the reason, but just supposing on my part,
Speaker 2: I think it's reasonable to assume that as browsers rather
Speaker 2: than exclusive grazers, goats may well be adapted to get
Speaker 2: back up on those two legs, not just so they
Speaker 2: can head bud each other, but just so they can
Speaker 2: reach higher branches. Like if they're browsing on trees and shrubs,
Speaker 2: you know they want to pop up in forage from
Speaker 2: something that's a little higher up. It would be useful
Speaker 2: for them to be able to balance on back legs
Speaker 2: for a moment.
Speaker 1: Right, because a lot of tasty bites you might be
Speaker 1: able to achieve by by climbing up with your front
Speaker 1: legs a little bit, but sometimes you got to just
Speaker 1: you gotta just balance you got to just go into
Speaker 1: a bipedal posture and get up there.
Speaker 2: Okay, I got an another goat biology uncanny valley thing
Speaker 2: I want to explore, because this is a biological characteristic
Speaker 2: of goats that I could easily see causing people to
Speaker 2: look at goats in a sinister light. And it is
Speaker 2: that some goats sometimes bleat in a way that sounds
Speaker 2: remarkably similar to a human voice, moaning, wailing, or even
Speaker 2: just screaming. This is not an observation original to me.
Speaker 2: It is actually the subject of a number of once
Speaker 2: again Internet memes and viral video compilations going back nearly
Speaker 2: a decade.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, goats do sound a little bit human sometimes,
Speaker 1: and of course they're not the only ones. I just
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time around sea lions in the
Speaker 1: Galapago Silence, which we'll come back to later. But I
Speaker 1: have to mention these creatures briefly because especially the females
Speaker 1: and the pups sound very human at times as well.
Speaker 1: That can be distracting and even maybe a little uncanny,
Speaker 1: where it either sounds like a human is coughing or
Speaker 1: that they're warbling trying to speak like they just don't
Speaker 1: know English or whatever your Spanish or whatever your native
Speaker 1: language happens to be. But they're trying to say something,
Speaker 1: perhaps to you. Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it is clearly an unsettling experience to have a
Speaker 2: non human animal address you in tones that sound too
Speaker 2: close to human. Let's hear a few of those goats screams. Now,
Speaker 2: A big qualifier is that not all goats sound the same,
Speaker 2: as one could tell just by listening to the diversity
Speaker 2: of humanoid groans and yelps heard even within these goat
Speaker 2: voice supercuts. Goats produce a wide range of vocalizations, and
Speaker 2: it is only some goats some of the time that
Speaker 2: can willhelm scream. And I tried to find a good
Speaker 2: source with a zoologist explaining the similar sounds in the
Speaker 2: cries of anguish and torment that you hear from you know,
Speaker 2: a goat just standing there versus a human and you know,
Speaker 2: in like the pivotal dramatic scene in the movie. I
Speaker 2: didn't find anything super compelling. One thing I came across
Speaker 2: was a twenty thirteen article in Slate by Forrest Wickman
Speaker 2: which addressed this question by interviewing a few goat experts.
Speaker 2: And here are some of the main takeaways there. First
Speaker 2: of all, for some reason, several of the goat wizards
Speaker 2: interviewed here did not seem to find this subject especially amusing.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Another is that some of the animals producing humanoid screams
Speaker 2: in these viral videos are not actually goats. A few are,
Speaker 2: you know. A few sheeps snuck in there too, so
Speaker 2: again not exclusive to goats. So maybe we should be
Speaker 2: saying that while some sheep and some goats and maybe
Speaker 2: some sea lions too make these humanoid noises. One thing
Speaker 2: that did seem useful to know is that goats yell
Speaker 2: for a number of different reasons. So goat handlers will
Speaker 2: tell you that sometimes they yell when they want to
Speaker 2: be fed. You know, if they're lining up at the
Speaker 2: fence for a meal, they might scream at their caregiver.
Speaker 2: Mother goats and young goats both yell when they become separated.
Speaker 2: And then there is a quote in this article from
Speaker 2: doctor Jean Marie Louganbule of North Carolina State University, who
Speaker 2: specializes in goats, and this researcher says, quote, in my
Speaker 2: experience with goats, it does not take much for them
Speaker 2: to scream bloody murder, as if you are torturing them
Speaker 2: when simply handling them. So sometimes goats are kind of dramatic.
Speaker 1: Now what you mentioned about mother goats and young goats
Speaker 1: yelling when they become separated. That also reminds me of
Speaker 1: sea lions a bit, in that some of the vocalizations
Speaker 1: that occur with the females and with the young ones
Speaker 1: are communicative in nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, as yes, I can tell the primary explanation
Speaker 2: for the similarity and the sounds would just be that
Speaker 2: there are some coincidental structural similarities in the vocal production
Speaker 2: organs of humans and goats and apparently some other animals,
Speaker 2: some sheep and some sea lions and stuff. However, I
Speaker 2: did turn up one very interesting goat behavior study that
Speaker 2: again does not directly answer this question, but kind of
Speaker 2: grazes it. And the study is by LDF. Briefer and
Speaker 2: Alan gmcgeliot, published in Animal Behavior in twenty twelve, called
Speaker 2: Social Effects on vocal Ontogeny in an ungulate, the goat
Speaker 2: Capra Hercus. Now, you might notice a stark difference in
Speaker 2: the range of vocalizations that are available to humans compared
Speaker 2: to those that are available to most other animals. Humans
Speaker 2: have a large degree of what the authors here call
Speaker 2: vocal plasticity, meaning quote, the ability of an individual to
Speaker 2: modify its vocalizations according to its environment. So we've got
Speaker 2: good vocal plasticity. But most animals that are capable of
Speaker 2: producing sounds with their voices actually produce a relatively constrained
Speaker 2: repertoire of sounds. But there are a few exceptions found
Speaker 2: among mammals and birds. You can probably easily think of
Speaker 2: the birds that have a big range of vocal modulation
Speaker 2: and control. Interestingly, some of the mammals with high vocal
Speaker 2: plasticity include bats and whales. But one kind of unique
Speaker 2: feature of human vocal plasticity is that it is affected
Speaker 2: by our social environment. We modify our voices and speech
Speaker 2: to sound like the people around us, especially the people
Speaker 2: around us when we're growing up, and this, of course
Speaker 2: is why people who speak the same language but grow
Speaker 2: up in different regions will end up with different accents.
Speaker 2: The authors argue that prior to their study, there was
Speaker 2: no documented evidence of anything like this in other mammals,
Speaker 2: But could it be the case that in other mammals,
Speaker 2: especially other mammals that are highly social and highly vocal,
Speaker 2: that they could develop something similar to different accents by
Speaker 2: social grouping. Well. A good example of a non human
Speaker 2: mammal that is both highly vocal and highly social is,
Speaker 2: in fact, the goat, a shrieking, moaning, social herd animal.
Speaker 2: So the authors proposed to test this out on kids,
Speaker 2: meaning young goats. Could the social surroundings of goats affect
Speaker 2: the sounds they make? And the answer is to some
Speaker 2: extent yes. The authors found a strong genetic component to
Speaker 2: voice similarity, so full sibling goats had more similar voices
Speaker 2: than half siblings, but also half siblings that were raised
Speaker 2: in the same social group had more similar calls to
Speaker 2: each other than those that were raised in different groups.
Speaker 2: Quote the group specific indicators in kid vocalizations show that
Speaker 2: goat call ontogeny is affected by their social environment. This
Speaker 2: suggests that vocal plasticity could be more widespread in mammals
Speaker 2: than previously believed, showing a possible early pathway in the
Speaker 2: evolution of vocal learning leading to human language. So factors
Speaker 2: determining the sounds produced by young goats are strongly influenced
Speaker 2: by genetics, but surprisingly also influenced by the social environment.
Speaker 2: What are their goats they're around, and so you could
Speaker 2: view this as analogous in a way to goats developing
Speaker 2: different accents based on their groups. Now, I want to
Speaker 2: be one hundred percent clear, there is no evidence I've
Speaker 2: read whatsoever that this vocal plasticity would extend to domestic
Speaker 2: goats adapting their voices to sound like humans, like their
Speaker 2: human farmers and herders. But I guess it's an interesting
Speaker 2: possibility to wonder about goat experts right in Is this
Speaker 2: crazy idea possible that I don't know, goats spend enough
Speaker 2: time around humans, Is it possible that they could slightly
Speaker 2: adapt in a human vocal direction or is that absurdity?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Even without getting into that though, just the mere idea
Speaker 1: that you're in close proximity with these social mammals that
Speaker 1: communicate to some degree through vocalizations and have different vocalizations
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 not.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of the things that makes sea
Speaker 1: lions interesting as well, Like, because you watch these animals
Speaker 1: and they're engaging in social behaviors that are 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 voice 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 is the goats are raising a goaty mirror
Speaker 1: to our own way of life.
Speaker 2: Well said, uh, I think we have to cut Goats
Speaker 2: part one right there, So we'll we'll come back in
Speaker 2: the next episode to talk about goats in the Hebrew
Speaker 2: Bible and in Christian traditions, goats and other myths and
Speaker 2: traditions from all around the world, some more fascinating goat science.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a blast, absolutely, So join us
Speaker 1: for the next goat episode. Uh yeah, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. There's gonna be some more creepy
Speaker 1: stuff in there, but also some uh some some some
Speaker 1: of the ideas are going to be looking at are
Speaker 1: going to be 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 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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