Speaker 1: Hey there everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's
Speaker 1: s Y S Case select, I've chosen our episode on
Speaker 1: fainting Goats from two thousand eleven. It's about the funniest,
Speaker 1: saddest breed of goats around, plus sad kittens too, but
Speaker 1: it's also really cute in a weird way. At any rate,
Speaker 1: this one I will advise you to listen to, accompanyed
Speaker 1: by your laptop or phone. Ready to go on YouTube
Speaker 1: because there's gonna be a lot of stuff for you
Speaker 1: to check out, enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff you should
Speaker 1: know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's me fall over. But yes, not yet, Chuck.
Speaker 1: We're getting there, okay, okay, Um, how are you doing.
Speaker 1: You're feeling a little sick after Los Angeles? Yes, Josh,
Speaker 1: heavy workload and stress usually means Chuck crashes and gets
Speaker 1: sick afterward. Yeah. I came very close. That's what happened.
Speaker 1: As I was telling you, I'm a walking ad for
Speaker 1: emergency It works really well. It's good stuff, Um, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I hope you feel better. Soon, thank you. Um. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, let's talk about the Satanic symbol that is
Speaker 1: the goat. Yeah, the the inverted star is supposed to
Speaker 1: be a goat head, is that right? Yes? That is
Speaker 1: actually the bah fomat. It's a I think a seventeenth
Speaker 1: century French illustration. Um No, nineteenth century French magician uh
Speaker 1: eliphas Levi drew the bah fomat of Mendy's right. Okay,
Speaker 1: and Mendy's is like the key term here. This is
Speaker 1: where the idea that the goat was Satanic came from. Okay,
Speaker 1: so back in the day, back when the Greeks were
Speaker 1: running around Egypt, let's say the fourth sent free bc Um.
Speaker 1: One of them, Herodotus wrote of the Mendees, people who
Speaker 1: lived along the Nile and venerated and essentially worshiped goats,
Speaker 1: specifically male goats as symbols of fertility, and the Greeks,
Speaker 1: doing what they did, eventually ripped this idea off and
Speaker 1: labeled their god Pan the the King of the Satyrs,
Speaker 1: half god, half man god who like to woo the
Speaker 1: ladies and basically press his male goat sexuality onto them. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have the idea that a male goat a
Speaker 1: k a ram in a lot of cases, I'm pretty sure,
Speaker 1: became the symbol for powerful male sexuality. Right as the
Speaker 1: Christian Church came about sexuality kind of diverged from um reality.
Speaker 1: Uh that that I that concept became more and more taboo,
Speaker 1: increasingly taboo, until finally you get to the point where, um,
Speaker 1: we arrive at the Knights Templar who supposedly venerated Bafometse
Speaker 1: guys pop up a lot with us. They do, um
Speaker 1: that that that image of Bafo met not the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century one, but the image of a goat head, which
Speaker 1: they supposedly idolized. Um was used against them to persecute
Speaker 1: them as Satanists and kill them. And from that point forward,
Speaker 1: the goat went from pagan god of male fertility or
Speaker 1: sexuality to satanic from that moment on to the point
Speaker 1: now where you can look at a goat and you
Speaker 1: get a touch of evil from it, don't you know.
Speaker 1: I was just about to counter and say, that's funny,
Speaker 1: because goats are the sweetest, most adorable little creatures on
Speaker 1: the planet. It depends, first of all, it depends on
Speaker 1: their age, It depends on their size. It depends on
Speaker 1: how readily you can see those satanic eyes of theirs.
Speaker 1: It's satan walking their chuck. Let's just come out and
Speaker 1: say it. Okay, well we know we everyone knows the
Speaker 1: head pet goats, so you're not to get me to
Speaker 1: say anything like that. Plus, if you're anything, you're lackey
Speaker 1: for the goat lobby. I am. Yeah, what about fainting goats?
Speaker 1: Though I have to agree these are not satanic? They
Speaker 1: are they fall into the cute camp, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cute and sad and funny, it's all wrapped up
Speaker 1: into one. In fact, I have never experienced such a
Speaker 1: range of emotions as when I watched fainting goats and
Speaker 1: fainting kittens. Yeah, fainting kittens in particular got my goat.
Speaker 1: I just showed Lizzie. It's awesome, she laughed. I thought,
Speaker 1: it's a hilarious chuck. It's so sad looking though, I know,
Speaker 1: but then they kind of look around and look like
Speaker 1: a stupid kitten and like like a few times and
Speaker 1: they're fine. I I urge anyone who hasn't seen, first
Speaker 1: of all fainting goats to go onto YouTube dot com.
Speaker 1: That's why oh, you tube dot com. It's a kind
Speaker 1: of like a video repository of sorts. You can share video.
Speaker 1: Type in yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Um, you type in
Speaker 1: fainting goats and then watch the one with the greatest
Speaker 1: number of hits and you will see what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: I think it's ten million, eight hundred thousand hits right now.
Speaker 1: Watch that one. You'll see what we're talking about. The
Speaker 1: rest of the time. You can also, if you want
Speaker 1: to treat yourself, type in fainting goat kittens hyphen original
Speaker 1: video and you'll see what makes me laugh and makes
Speaker 1: Chuck cry. And if you want to really treat yourself,
Speaker 1: type in war's be Oh that one's adorable. That little lamb,
Speaker 1: Yeah that's the Is that a lamb or a goat?
Speaker 1: It's a lamb, but a lamb is a female goat, right,
Speaker 1: or it's a baby goat. Isn't a goat? A mail
Speaker 1: lamb a baby goat as a kid, a lamb is
Speaker 1: a lamb. Huh oh yeah, lamb is a baby sheep. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're all set. No need for emails, everybody my autonic goats. Okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's other names for these things. Now that
Speaker 1: hopefully you've gone and watched this, you're up to speed,
Speaker 1: and you don't know we're about to be talking about,
Speaker 1: because we are going to explain this weird phenomenon that
Speaker 1: is feigning goats a k a. As you just said,
Speaker 1: my autonic goats. What else, Chuck where is some other
Speaker 1: awesome names for these things? The Tennessee stiff legs just
Speaker 1: good name for a band, as is my atonic Goats,
Speaker 1: Tennessee wooden legs, nervous goats, and fall down goats. Imagine
Speaker 1: fall down goats was pretty early in the game. So
Speaker 1: that's what Bam Bam from Flintstem calls exactly. Uh, they
Speaker 1: go by several different names, Josh, but they are not
Speaker 1: fading at all. Actually, no, no, And we should say
Speaker 1: if you are too lazy to go look up this
Speaker 1: YouTube video and you don't know what we're talking about. Basically, um,
Speaker 1: these goats videos of goats who are being chased by
Speaker 1: like a farmer or something with an umbrella, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, they'll just stiffen up and fall over
Speaker 1: and it looks like they fainted dead away or possibly
Speaker 1: died and instantly gone into rigor mortis It looks like
Speaker 1: they've been shot and killed by a sniper exactly. And
Speaker 1: then after a second, they just kind of get up
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, run away some more um
Speaker 1: and yeah, they're called feigning goats, but it's not at
Speaker 1: all what's going on instead, chuck, it's like an altered
Speaker 1: startle response. Right. Yeah, it's congen little condition. Means they
Speaker 1: get it since you know their little baby kid goats,
Speaker 1: they were born with it. It's called myotonia congenita. And
Speaker 1: there's another couple of names, the Becker type disease or
Speaker 1: Thompson's disease, and you know they basically we'll get into
Speaker 1: the specifics. But what happens is they tense up like
Speaker 1: the fight or flight. Like if an explosion went off
Speaker 1: right behind you right now, you tense up and then
Speaker 1: go Maybe what happens here is they tins up and
Speaker 1: they don't untense. They stay stiff long enough to fall
Speaker 1: over on their side as if they were dead. Appropriately.
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, who wrote this article, points out it's like that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you tense up from a from a
Speaker 1: fight or a startle or danger, flight or fight, fight,
Speaker 1: fight or flight. It's been a while, clearly Um, that
Speaker 1: tension that's relieved almost immediately. That basically your brain like
Speaker 1: getting your body like zapped into preparedness, like like get
Speaker 1: ready to run. Stop thinking about tutsie, roll pops, jerk,
Speaker 1: It's time for you to to kick some bottom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or in the goats case, quit thinking about that big
Speaker 1: patch of grass. Right, there's a wolf behind you running
Speaker 1: get out of here exactly. But instead of running, they
Speaker 1: tense up, they fall over because their muscles take about
Speaker 1: ten or twenty seconds to relax. Right. Yes, so you
Speaker 1: talked about um myotonic, they're myotonic goats. Myotonia exists in
Speaker 1: more than just um goats. It exists in humans as well,
Speaker 1: kittens we said, yeah, um satis video however, so awesome.
Speaker 1: And mayotonia is basically this, Uh, it's a nervous it's
Speaker 1: a disorder of the central nervous system, a congenital one
Speaker 1: like you said, chuck, Um, that's characterized by stiff muscles
Speaker 1: that they're they're rigid and they take time to relax. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the voluntary or voluntary muscles we should say,
Speaker 1: not like your cardiac muscle or you're voluntary muscles. Um.
Speaker 1: The stat I found was that it affects about one
Speaker 1: and one hundred thousand people and in northern ind an
Speaker 1: Avia one in ten. Huh, who knew? Well, I guess
Speaker 1: they they have a bottleneck up there some sort, because
Speaker 1: not that many people want to move up to cannon Ava.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any kind of explanation for why there
Speaker 1: would be more abundant there. But that's how many it
Speaker 1: effects in people. If it's uh, if you have it,
Speaker 1: there's some medication. It's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: Stay exercise, stay loose, don't walk around big piles of glass,
Speaker 1: I would say, are beds of nails. You don't want
Speaker 1: to fall on anything like that. Maybe you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: driving a car. But I don't think humans actually stiffen
Speaker 1: and fall over like the goats. I think it's more
Speaker 1: of a you know, temporary stiffening and or again, as
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb put it, a full body Charlie horse, but
Speaker 1: without the pain. Yeah, yeah, they say they don't feel pain.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Yeah, we'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a second, all right. But there's a there's a
Speaker 1: similar condition to called um myo clonus and um it's
Speaker 1: actually the basis of my favorite, probably my favorite um
Speaker 1: physiological trade of humans, the myoclonic jerk. You know, when
Speaker 1: you're falling asleep and then all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: go and awake. Yeah, yeah, that happens to me. And
Speaker 1: if you'll notice, most of the time you're dozing and
Speaker 1: you're you're dreaming of maybe falling down a stare or
Speaker 1: something like that. So apparently your brain is either confused
Speaker 1: that you are in fact falling, or it does it
Speaker 1: doesn't understand why you're why your muscles are relaxing in
Speaker 1: some weird way, and it's jolting you awake. Um, or
Speaker 1: it thinks you're dying and it's railing against dying, trying
Speaker 1: to get your heart going again. Of her. Either way,
Speaker 1: thank you, body, yes, and mind. But another another name
Speaker 1: for is the hypnic jerk. The hypnic jerk, it's just great.
Speaker 1: Do you like it when it happens to you or
Speaker 1: you just it's so it's just funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: That it's a weird feeling. It's sort of like when
Speaker 1: you when you almost fall back in a chair and
Speaker 1: you catch yourself. There's nothing more like, you know, thrilling
Speaker 1: to the body than that. That. Oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 1: going to die here in one second exactly, so you're
Speaker 1: you're it's thrilling because your muscles tense up. You have
Speaker 1: to wonder, if you're just sitting there for ten or
Speaker 1: twenty seconds, does your brain your brain apparently would know
Speaker 1: that there's no longer any danger, but you can't move,
Speaker 1: which I imagine would kind of be kind of stressful.
Speaker 1: In dings Joan, stop in dings, jo. We know that
Speaker 1: the brain knows that there's no longer any danger because
Speaker 1: the actual UM disorder is on the cellular level in
Speaker 1: the muscles. Right. Yeah, there's a gene Josh called the
Speaker 1: c l c in one, the chloride channel one gene,
Speaker 1: of course, and it's involved in the production of proteins,
Speaker 1: which are you know proteins are good for muscle relaxing
Speaker 1: and contracting and stuff like that. Well, yeah, and chloride
Speaker 1: uh ion specifically, right, yeah, what's the deal? Too much chloride? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You will? You want remember check the point of being
Speaker 1: alive as a functioning body is homeostasis, right, right, So
Speaker 1: you want um an equal amount or a relatively comparable
Speaker 1: amount of positively charged sodium ions which tell your muscles
Speaker 1: to contract and negatively charged chloride ions, which say go
Speaker 1: ahead and relax muscles. Right, Oh, there's not enough chloride
Speaker 1: in this case. Yes, so there's an abundance of sodium
Speaker 1: and not enough chloride, which means that when you when
Speaker 1: the cells are innervated, the muscle cells are innervated with
Speaker 1: an electrical impulse from the brain turns up. It takes
Speaker 1: them longer to relax because they're out of whack because
Speaker 1: this gene is not expressing those will ride ions like
Speaker 1: it should be. But so it's not the brain any
Speaker 1: longer thinking that we're afraid or that there's a danger.
Speaker 1: It's the muscles. It's all in the muscles, that's right.
Speaker 1: And it is hereditary. It can be dominant or ascessive,
Speaker 1: meaning either one of your parents can have the gene
Speaker 1: or both. Not too picky there. And uh, the difference
Speaker 1: is with the goats is they're actually bread to encourage this, right,
Speaker 1: And here you mentioned something a second ago um that
Speaker 1: kind of smacked of the ethics of it, right, I
Speaker 1: don't remember what it would be, kind of like let's
Speaker 1: go to well just people laughing. Every time I see
Speaker 1: those videos, I think the goats, you know, they're all
Speaker 1: they're they're roaming around their pin and then I get
Speaker 1: the feeling they see people coming, They're like, oh God,
Speaker 1: here we go again. Some i'm jerk is gonna shoot
Speaker 1: a gun in the air or something and we're all
Speaker 1: gonna fallow and they're gonna laugh at us. Very funny.
Speaker 1: Ha ha, right exactly, So here we go, agare we
Speaker 1: go again? And every time they see a human without fail,
Speaker 1: I'm sure human does that to that and that humans
Speaker 1: laugh and think it's the funniest thing they've ever seen.
Speaker 1: The goats are just like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: actually there's two reasons that fainting goats are bred these days.
Speaker 1: One is for novelty because they do that, and another
Speaker 1: is for meat. Basically, yeah, that made me sad. I
Speaker 1: thought it would just be strictly novelty and having them
Speaker 1: as a pet. No. And initially, I mean, that's what's
Speaker 1: what most livestock goats are used for as meat, and frankly,
Speaker 1: they're delicious, but um, I wouldn't know they're so delicious. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you think of them as satanic, you can
Speaker 1: eat them all day long. It's like you're eradicating evil
Speaker 1: by eating the goat. You know what? I'm saying, give
Speaker 1: me one of those evil satanic goat tacos. I want
Speaker 1: to do my part. Can I give you like a
Speaker 1: tad of history? Yeah? Do you want to talk about
Speaker 1: the history of it? Okay, I know we're hopping around here,
Speaker 1: go on fire like b But the the reason that
Speaker 1: Tennessee stiff legs are fall down goats, as some people
Speaker 1: call them, are called Tennessee stiff legs or Tennessee wooden legs,
Speaker 1: is because they were brought down from Nova Scotia allegedly
Speaker 1: by a farmhand named John Tinsley. That's what they think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from what I saw, that was the likeliest explanation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to Marshall County, Tennessee in the late eighteen hundreds eighteen eighties, yep,
Speaker 1: and he started breeding them, which uh is called unnatural selection.
Speaker 1: Will get to that in a second, But um, this,
Speaker 1: these the goats whore originally not bred for novelty, right.
Speaker 1: It took a hundred years for them to really start
Speaker 1: to be bread for novelty. They were bred because Chuck,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, their muscles don't atrophy, right, they
Speaker 1: do the opposite, right. Well, yeah, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think there's muscle waste going on, think again, because it
Speaker 1: actually makes the animal much leaner for slaughter. Right, it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to even say that, right. So there's
Speaker 1: because of all the tensing and untensing that they do
Speaker 1: more than the average animal. They're kind of bulk, they're ripped,
Speaker 1: they're but so they have a loaf their lean meat.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of meat to um to muscle
Speaker 1: as well. So they're prized for their meat and apparently
Speaker 1: they're they're propensity toward um myotonism to tensing up. Painting
Speaker 1: prevents them from keep from climbing fences, which is a
Speaker 1: big problem when you're keeping goats as livestock. They like
Speaker 1: to just hop right over a fence to erect forum. Minded. No,
Speaker 1: my goats loved being pet goats, I'm sure. Well. No,
Speaker 1: we had a big pen and they were actually in
Speaker 1: there with the dogs. We had two dogs and two
Speaker 1: goats and they were I mean the goats I think
Speaker 1: took their cues from the dogs because they were very,
Speaker 1: very playful. And uh, I used to play games with
Speaker 1: my goat, Nestor all the time. Whatever happened uh Nestor, Well,
Speaker 1: Billy died, which is very sad. And then of course,
Speaker 1: and then Nestor. We eventually were like, you know, we
Speaker 1: we need to move Nestor out a farm. So this
Speaker 1: lady took him and Nestor wrote it back to the
Speaker 1: truck with me with his head on my lap the
Speaker 1: whole way. And what the lady dude to Nestor? Do
Speaker 1: you think? I think she kept Nestor as a goat.
Speaker 1: And that's the story I'm sticking to that Nestor was
Speaker 1: a pet until he died of old age. Has a
Speaker 1: beautiful story each other. Y Um, okay, so good. So
Speaker 1: your your goats fared very well. I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: I remember the goats at my birthday party. They one
Speaker 1: of them was a housecoat. Remember, Oh yeah, house goat. Wow. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was an actual reason that feigning goats were
Speaker 1: bred initially, and it wasn't for kicks. The Tennessee farmers
Speaker 1: of the eighteen eighties. Actually we're a little more soulful
Speaker 1: than the ones today. And it wasn't funny back then.
Speaker 1: Nothing was somebody right, right, Yeah, don't laugh at that.
Speaker 1: I can't say it. I just had like eighty great
Speaker 1: jokes in through my hand sor are you talking about
Speaker 1: the protection of the herd, not yet. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: goats become an established breed of their own by the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, and about that time they started to leave Tennessee.
Speaker 1: I think for Texas was the next place that they
Speaker 1: really spread out. But it wasn't until the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: that the the goats were really diverged into two not
Speaker 1: necessarily two different breeds because they haven't separated yet. But
Speaker 1: there's one line that's generally bred for meat, like the
Speaker 1: original version, and the other line is bred as a novelty,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be smaller and just faint like that. Cuter, yes, faint, longer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you just kind of leave it alone, Um,
Speaker 1: the the myotonia is worse as a younger worse early
Speaker 1: in life. Yeah, they get kind of used to it
Speaker 1: sometimes more they adapt to it. They're not as scared
Speaker 1: later in life. So yeah, younger goat is more prone
Speaker 1: to fall over, exactly so. But I think if you
Speaker 1: compare an adult um fainting goat bread in that line
Speaker 1: to be a novelty to a goat it was spread
Speaker 1: for its meat of the same age, the novelty goats
Speaker 1: can probably fall over at the drop of a hat.
Speaker 1: Stough right, right, because farmer thinks that's funny. Well, the
Speaker 1: other reason that that Robert says, they can't find much
Speaker 1: evidence of this anymore, but I guess back in the
Speaker 1: day they would, and this sort of makes sense, they
Speaker 1: would they would add some of these fainting goats to
Speaker 1: their herd of regular goats in case there were predators around.
Speaker 1: A pack of wolves come up, scares the little pebbly
Speaker 1: dodo out of these goats, and then the stiff goats
Speaker 1: fall over and get eaten while the other ones take
Speaker 1: off and run. So it essentially it's almost like they're
Speaker 1: not bait. But uh, you know, a much easier kill
Speaker 1: keep the wolves occupied so the rest of them can escape.
Speaker 1: You know what they are? What sacrificial lamb? Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they are. But there's no evidence that
Speaker 1: that's really the reason that they're breeding them now. No,
Speaker 1: and there's apparently not much evidence that or how how
Speaker 1: much that was used, as I think it could have
Speaker 1: just been a good idea, right yeah, in things like
Speaker 1: job in jo in things like job in jo, So Chuck,
Speaker 1: the idea of like make no no no mistake. Mayotonia
Speaker 1: is a um it's a deficiency, it's a disorder. It's
Speaker 1: not a desirable trait. So the idea of taking because
Speaker 1: it's an undesirable trait under natural selection, it shouldn't exist, right,
Speaker 1: because if you take a fainting goat out in nature,
Speaker 1: like you said, a long with a herd of sheep
Speaker 1: or other goats or whatever, h No, they'll they'll be
Speaker 1: the first eating and then they won't have a chance
Speaker 1: to reproduce eventually, and he'll that trade to die out.
Speaker 1: But then being um bred for that for an undesirable trait,
Speaker 1: and then protected by humans, whether by a fence or
Speaker 1: you know, like it, he'll be with he'll a billy
Speaker 1: with the shotgun or whatever. That's called unnatural selection, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing natural about it, no, or artificial selection is another
Speaker 1: way to put it. Yeah, And anytime something like that happens,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some people, probably at an organization called Peter,
Speaker 1: that might stand up and say, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is such a cool thing for humans to do.
Speaker 1: And Peter, as expected, isn't the biggest fan of raising
Speaker 1: feigning goats. Humane society isn't so worried about it, and
Speaker 1: they say there's a lot uh more breeding issues in
Speaker 1: the world that we should be more concerned about. And
Speaker 1: neither one of them have an official stance. But no,
Speaker 1: the woman from Peter that Robert interviewed in this article
Speaker 1: sounded like she hadn't heard of feigning goats until he
Speaker 1: called her. Oh really, yeah, that's the impression that got.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the quote is a little vague, isn't it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she just like the standard pea quote, just plug in
Speaker 1: the animal. Well, who knows. There is no official stance though,
Speaker 1: so maybe maybe Robert alerted her to this whole phenomena.
Speaker 1: But they have an official stance now and it stopped
Speaker 1: breeding feinting goats. It's a little late for that though.
Speaker 1: It's a recognized and um prized as a separate American
Speaker 1: breed of goat. There's about three thousand to five thousand
Speaker 1: of them running around and then falling over right, um,
Speaker 1: and they don't look like they're going anywhere. Um. The
Speaker 1: Livestock Conservancy, I think is what it's called, UM suggests
Speaker 1: that this uh, this breed of goat be very much
Speaker 1: um protected and taking care of and conserved, is I
Speaker 1: guess the best word to use. Did I tell you
Speaker 1: about Emily and the little baby goat at the winery
Speaker 1: at the winery in Athens. No, we went to uh
Speaker 1: right before this l a trip, you know, we went
Speaker 1: over to Santa Barbara, one country, and we went in
Speaker 1: this one winery and as we were going in, there
Speaker 1: was a guy with a dog outside, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course we attacked this dog and repetting it. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't let it in because they got a goat,
Speaker 1: a baby goat in there. So Emily, here's this, of course,
Speaker 1: and it's just like in this inside and saying where's
Speaker 1: the goat? Where's the goat? This lady has a probably
Speaker 1: about a six week old kid in her arms, wrapped
Speaker 1: in a blanket. That's um has some sort of physical ailment,
Speaker 1: not feigning a goat syndrome. It was part human, part human.
Speaker 1: It had human hands. Um. No, but she had this
Speaker 1: little baby kid and uh, you know, Emily goes over
Speaker 1: and starts drooling, and the lady says, do you want
Speaker 1: to hold it? And in less than a second the
Speaker 1: goat swap had been made, and you know, for the
Speaker 1: next twenty minutes, this goat is literally like nuzzling Emily
Speaker 1: in the neck, and I took about twenty pictures of
Speaker 1: the range of emotions on Emily's face. There wasn't crying,
Speaker 1: It was just it was a type of ecstasy that
Speaker 1: you rarely see in an adult human female. Very cute.
Speaker 1: You're like a long story short. We own that goat now? Yes? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: not true. My aunt used to have a pigmy goat
Speaker 1: in California along the Russian River. Did they not get big?
Speaker 1: I guess hence the I would say a pigmy fainting
Speaker 1: goat would be about the cutest combination, especially one that
Speaker 1: like asked to shine your shoes with like big Those kittens, so, man,
Speaker 1: I can't watch that. Yeah, it looks it just doesn't
Speaker 1: look right. It's awesome, I think because they don't look
Speaker 1: like they're hurt. They don't look injured. They just look
Speaker 1: surprised every time. And then fine, well, kittens look surprised
Speaker 1: with everything. They just they have that constant look at surprise.
Speaker 1: Anything else. No, we've touched on the satanic nature of goats,
Speaker 1: meat goats, fainting goats, fainting kittens, unnatural selection Tennessee, uh
Speaker 1: Texas the nineteenth century and that's about it, right, Emily's
Speaker 1: a natural love of animals. Yeah, my iconic jerks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything's right on. Uh. And now you know when you
Speaker 1: these videos and you show your buddies, you can now
Speaker 1: tell people something exactly what's going on. Say they're not
Speaker 1: fainting at all. Actually, yeah, stupid. So if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about feigning goats, remember go to YouTube
Speaker 1: why o you tube dot com and type in fainting
Speaker 1: goats and then fainting goat kittens. It doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 1: It could just be feigning kittens, but still um and
Speaker 1: you'll see some hilarity. You can also learn more about
Speaker 1: feigning goats in a very well written and wild research
Speaker 1: article by Robert Lamb of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: How fainting goats work. Type that into the handy search
Speaker 1: bar and how stuff works dot com and that we'll
Speaker 1: bring that up. And that means I just brought up
Speaker 1: listener melt. That's right, Josh, I'm gonna call this a
Speaker 1: real c S I dude, this is from ed in Chico, California. Hey,
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I'm a crime scene investigator
Speaker 1: for a municipal police department. In rural northern California. Being
Speaker 1: a c s I is just one of my collateral asignments.
Speaker 1: I'm also an evidence technician and have a couple of
Speaker 1: other titles depending on who has given me orders that day.
Speaker 1: Nearly every agency in my area has trained cops for
Speaker 1: civilians to be a c s I when needed, not
Speaker 1: as a standalone assignment, so that kind of answers one
Speaker 1: of the questions we had. I showed interest in being
Speaker 1: a c s I when I started my evidence assignment
Speaker 1: four years ago and was sent to Basic c s
Speaker 1: I school and later Advanced c s I Crime Scene
Speaker 1: Reconstruction School. He's skipped right over intermediate Yeah, I guess so,
Speaker 1: and finally blood spatter analysis. We also do monthly in
Speaker 1: house training on topics like photography, trajectories, DNA collection, buried
Speaker 1: body excavation, et cetera, our c s I or jacks
Speaker 1: of all trades since our agencies are too small to
Speaker 1: be able to afford specialized positions. Your show was very
Speaker 1: well researched and had all the highlights of blood spatter
Speaker 1: and forensic photography. Uh and, as a sidebar, while we
Speaker 1: do have two big expensive U two thou and dollar
Speaker 1: sl our cameras. We really only use them for the
Speaker 1: most specialized photos, like nighttime crime scenes of the time
Speaker 1: they use a point and shoot from Walmart. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that though. I mean like that. The
Speaker 1: technology has gotten good enough so that I'm sure I know,
Speaker 1: but it would just seem weird if you saw Dexter
Speaker 1: like walk up with a little point and shoot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And plus I think if you were the family of
Speaker 1: like a murder victim, and you saw some guy walk
Speaker 1: on the point, you would be like, are you even
Speaker 1: supposed to be here? How about a real camera? Yeah,
Speaker 1: not about a little respect. You mentioned blood avoids at
Speaker 1: a crime scene. We call them blood shadows. Oh, I
Speaker 1: like that one too. That enjoy being a c S I.
Speaker 1: But like Josh said, Ages Ago, television ain't nothing like reality.
Speaker 1: I can't stand watching those shows. They're drive me crazy,
Speaker 1: But they're not based in reality. Writing in reality. DNA
Speaker 1: evidence takes one to two months, and latent princes can
Speaker 1: take four or five months, not four to six minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is is like everybody is just
Speaker 1: this jack of all trades, Like, oh, I got these
Speaker 1: prints off of this scene, and I'm going to go
Speaker 1: analyze them, and I'm going to go like shake down
Speaker 1: the bad guys. You know, it's like spend more money
Speaker 1: on an ensemble. Will you? Thank you? Ed from Chico.
Speaker 1: Oh that was it. Yeah, sorry to end your letter
Speaker 1: with a rant from me. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: your illuminating letter. We appreciate it. Um, we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. First of all, you can go um
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Speaker 1: you should Know. You can follow us on Twitter, s
Speaker 1: y s K podcast, and you can join our QB
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Speaker 1: stuff you should Know. You can also always email us,
Speaker 1: and specifically, if you have ever tampered with natural selection
Speaker 1: through artificial selection, we want to hear about it. Send
Speaker 1: us an email about this, right, Chuck, that's right. That's
Speaker 1: a stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
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