Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Brant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's me now Paul 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 afterwards. Yeah. I came very close. That's what happened
Speaker 1: because I was telling you I am a walking ad
Speaker 1: for 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 that 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 Mendi's right and
Speaker 1: Mendy's is like the key term here. This is where
Speaker 1: 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 century BC. Um
Speaker 1: one of them, Herodotus, wrote of the Mendies, 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 arrived at the Knights Templar, who supposedly venerated Bafomet.
Speaker 1: You guys pop up a lot with us. They do.
Speaker 1: Um that that that image of Bafo met, not the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century one, but the image of a goat head,
Speaker 1: which they supposedly idolized. Um was used against them to
Speaker 1: persecute them as Satanists and kill them. And from that
Speaker 1: point forward, the goat went from pagan god of male
Speaker 1: fertility or sexuality to satanic from that moment on to
Speaker 1: the point now where you can look at a goat
Speaker 1: and you get a touch of evil from it, don't
Speaker 1: you know. I was just about to counter and say
Speaker 1: that's funny, because goats are the sweetest, most adorable little
Speaker 1: creatures on the planet. It depends, first of all, it
Speaker 1: depends on their age, It depends on their size, it
Speaker 1: depends on how readily you can see those satanic eyes
Speaker 1: of their Disagree, it's Satan walking their chuck. Let's just
Speaker 1: come out and say it. Okay, well, we know everyone
Speaker 1: knows the head pet goats, so you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: me to see anything like that. Plus, if you're anything,
Speaker 1: you're lackey for the goat lobby. I am. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: about fainting goats? Though? I have to agree these are
Speaker 1: not satanic they are, they fall into the cute camp, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cute and sad and funny. It's all wrapped
Speaker 1: up into one. In fact, I have never experienced such
Speaker 1: a range of emotions as when I watched fainting goats
Speaker 1: and fainting kittens. Fainting kittens in particular got my goat.
Speaker 1: It's awesome because it's hilarious. Chuck. It's so sad looking though,
Speaker 1: I know, but then they kind of look around and
Speaker 1: look like a stupid kitten and like like a few
Speaker 1: times and they're fine. I I urge anyone who hasn't seen,
Speaker 1: first 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.
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. Oh, that one's adorable. That little lamb, it's like,
Speaker 1: is that a lamb or a goat? It's a lamb,
Speaker 1: but a lamb is a female goat, right, or it's
Speaker 1: a baby goat. Isn't a goat? To mail? Lamb a
Speaker 1: baby goat? As a kid? A lamb is a lamb?
Speaker 1: 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 are some other
Speaker 1: awesome names for these things? The Tennessee stiff legs just
Speaker 1: good name for a band as his My Autonic 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 flintst Uh. They go by
Speaker 1: several different names, Josh, but they are not fading at all. Actually, no, no,
Speaker 1: And we should say, if you are too lazy to
Speaker 1: go look up this YouTube video and you know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Basically, um these goats videos of goats
Speaker 1: who are being chased by like a farmer or something
Speaker 1: with an umbrella, and all of a sudden, they'll just
Speaker 1: stiffen up and fall over, and it looks like they
Speaker 1: feigned dead away or possibly died and instantly gone into
Speaker 1: rigor mortis. It looks like they've been shot and killed
Speaker 1: by a sniper exactly. And then after a second they
Speaker 1: just kind of get up and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: run away some more. Um and yeah, they're called feigning goats,
Speaker 1: but it's not at all. What's going on instead, Chuck,
Speaker 1: it's like a an altered startle response. Right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a congenital condition. Means they get it since you know
Speaker 1: their little baby kid goats, they were born with it.
Speaker 1: It's called myotonia congenita. And there's another couple of names,
Speaker 1: the Becker type disease or Thompson's disease, and you know
Speaker 1: they basically we'll get into the specifics, but what happens
Speaker 1: is they tense up like the fight or flight. Like
Speaker 1: if an explosion went off right behind you right now,
Speaker 1: you tense up and then go Maybe what happens here
Speaker 1: is they tense up and they don't untensed. They stay
Speaker 1: stiff long enough to fall over on their side as
Speaker 1: if they were dead. Appropriately. Robert Lamb, who wrote this article,
Speaker 1: points out, it's like that, you know, when you tense
Speaker 1: up from a from a fight or a startle or danger,
Speaker 1: flight or fight, fight, fight or flight, it's been a while, clearly, um,
Speaker 1: and that tension that's relieved almost immediately, that basically your
Speaker 1: brain like getting your body like zapped into preparedness, like
Speaker 1: ready to run. Stop thinking about tittsie, roll, pops, jerk,
Speaker 1: it's time for you to to kick some bottom or
Speaker 1: in the goats case, quit thinking about that big patch
Speaker 1: of grass. There's a wolf behind you running get out
Speaker 1: of here, exactly. But instead of running, they tense up,
Speaker 1: they fall over because their muscles take about ten or
Speaker 1: twenty seconds to relax. Right. Yes, so you talked about
Speaker 1: um myotonic their myotonic goats miyotoni. Yeah, existed more than
Speaker 1: just um goats. It exists in humans as well, kittens
Speaker 1: we said, yeah, um satisfyde however, so awesome. And my
Speaker 1: antonia is basically this, uh, it's a nervous it's a
Speaker 1: disorder of the central nervous system, a congenital one. Like
Speaker 1: you said, chuck, um, that's characterized by stiff muscles that
Speaker 1: 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 Scandinavia one
Speaker 1: in ten thousand. Huh, who knew? Well, I guess they
Speaker 1: they have a bottleneck up there of some sort because
Speaker 1: not that many people want to move up this cannona.
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. But there's a there's a similar condition
Speaker 1: to called um myo clonus and um it's actually the
Speaker 1: basis of my favorite, probably my favorite um physiological trait
Speaker 1: of humans, the myoclonic jerk. You know, when you're falling
Speaker 1: asleep and then all of a sudden you go and awake. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that happens to me. And if you'll notice, most of
Speaker 1: the time you're dozing and you're you're dreaming of maybe
Speaker 1: falling down a stair or something like that. So apparently
Speaker 1: your brain is either confused that you are in fact falling,
Speaker 1: or it does it doesn't understand why you're why your
Speaker 1: muscles are relaxing and some weird way, and it's jolting
Speaker 1: you awake. Um or it thinks you're dying and it's
Speaker 1: railing against dying, trying to get your heart going again.
Speaker 1: Either way, thank you, body and mind. But another another
Speaker 1: name for his, the hypnic jerk. The hypnic jerk. It's
Speaker 1: just great. Do you like it when it happens to
Speaker 1: you or 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: And we know that the brain knows that there's no
Speaker 1: longer any danger because the actual um disorder is on
Speaker 1: the cellular level in the muscles, right Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: gene Josh called the c l c N one, the
Speaker 1: chloride channel one gene, and it's involved in the production
Speaker 1: of proteins, which are you know, proteins are good for
Speaker 1: muscle relaxing and contracting and stuff like that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and chloride uh ion specifically, right, Yeah, what's the deal?
Speaker 1: Too much chloride? Yeah, you will you want remember check
Speaker 1: the point of being alive as a functioning body, as homeostasis, right, right,
Speaker 1: So you want um an equal amount or a relatively
Speaker 1: comparable amount of positively charged sodium ions which tell your
Speaker 1: muscle to contract and negatively charge chloride ions which they
Speaker 1: go ahead and relax muscles. Right, Oh, there's not enough
Speaker 1: chloride in this case. Yes, so there's an abundance of
Speaker 1: sodium and not enough chloride, which means that when you
Speaker 1: when the cells are innervated, the muscle cells are innervated
Speaker 1: with an electrical impulse from the brain turns up. It
Speaker 1: takes them longer to relax because there are to whack
Speaker 1: because this gene is not expressing those chloride ions like
Speaker 1: that 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 differences
Speaker 1: 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 jerk is gonna shoot a
Speaker 1: gun in the air or something. We're all gonna fallow
Speaker 1: and they're gonna laugh at us. Very funny, ha ha,
Speaker 1: right exactly, So here we go again, we go again,
Speaker 1: And every time they see a human without fail, I'm
Speaker 1: sure human does that to that, and the humans laugh
Speaker 1: and think it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. The
Speaker 1: goats are just like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually
Speaker 1: 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 his meat. And
Speaker 1: frankly 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? Do you want to talk about the
Speaker 1: history of it? Okay, I know we're hopping around here right,
Speaker 1: go on fire like b But the um, the reason
Speaker 1: that Tennessee stiff legs or fall down goats and some
Speaker 1: people call them are called Tennessee stiff legs or Tennessee
Speaker 1: wooden legs is because they were brought down from Nova
Speaker 1: Scotia allegedly by a farmhand named John Tinsley. That's what
Speaker 1: they think. Yeah, from what I saw that was the
Speaker 1: likeliest explanation. Yeah, to Marshall County, Tennessee in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds eighties. Yep, and he started breeding them, which
Speaker 1: uh is called unnatural selection. Will get to that in
Speaker 1: a second, but um, this, these the goats were originally
Speaker 1: not bred for novelty, right. It took a hundred years
Speaker 1: for them to really start to be bred for novelty.
Speaker 1: They were bred because Chuck, as you pointed out, their
Speaker 1: muscles don't atrophy, they do the opposite, right. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if you think there's muscle waste going on,
Speaker 1: think again, because it actually makes the animal much leaner
Speaker 1: for slaughter. Right. It's hard for me even say that, right.
Speaker 1: So there's because of all the tensing and untensing that
Speaker 1: they do more than the average animal. They're kind of bulk.
Speaker 1: They're ripped there, 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. His livestock. They like
Speaker 1: to just hop right over a fence. Who erect for him? 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 to a farm. So
Speaker 1: we this lady took him and Nestor wrote it back
Speaker 1: to the truck with me with his head on my
Speaker 1: lap the whole way. And what the lady dude to Nestor?
Speaker 1: Do 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. Yeah, um, okay, so good. So
Speaker 1: your your goats fared very well. I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: I remember the ghasts at my birthday party. They one
Speaker 1: of them was a housecoat remember, oh yeah, house goat. 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: Somebody right, right, yeah, I don't laugh at that. I
Speaker 1: can't say it. I just had like eighty great jokes.
Speaker 1: S are you talking about the protection of the herd?
Speaker 1: Not yet? Okay. So the goats become an established breed
Speaker 1: of their own by the nineteen fifties, and about that
Speaker 1: time they started to leave Tennessee. I think for Texas
Speaker 1: was the next place that they really spread out. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the nineteen eighties that the the goats
Speaker 1: were really diverged into two not necessarily two different breeds
Speaker 1: because they haven't separated yet. But there's one line that's
Speaker 1: generally bred for meat, like the original version, and the
Speaker 1: other line is bred as a novelty, and they tend
Speaker 1: to be smaller and just faint like that, yes, 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 that was bred
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: still 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. No, and
Speaker 1: there's apparently not much evidence that or how how much
Speaker 1: that was used, as I think it could have just
Speaker 1: been a good idea, right, Yeah, so Chuck, the idea
Speaker 1: of like make no, no, no mistake. My antonia is
Speaker 1: a um it's a deficiency, a disorder, not a desirable trait.
Speaker 1: So the idea of taking because it's an undesirable trait
Speaker 1: under natural selection, it shouldn't exist, right, because if you
Speaker 1: take a fainting goat out in nature, like you said,
Speaker 1: along with the herd of sheep or other goats or whatever,
Speaker 1: now they'll they'll be the first eaten and then they
Speaker 1: won't have a chance to reproduce eventually, and it'll that
Speaker 1: trade to die out. But then being um bred for
Speaker 1: that for an undesirable trait and then protected by humans,
Speaker 1: whether by a fence or you know, like it, he'll
Speaker 1: be with he'll a billy with the shotgun or whatever.
Speaker 1: That's called unnatural selection, right, nothing natural about it? No,
Speaker 1: or artificial selection is another way to put it. And
Speaker 1: anytime something like that happens, there's gonna be some people,
Speaker 1: probably in an organization called Peter, that might stand up
Speaker 1: and say, I don't know if this is such a
Speaker 1: cool thing for humans to do. And Peter, as expected,
Speaker 1: isn't the biggest fan of raising feigning goats. Humane society
Speaker 1: isn't so worried about it. Um they say there's a
Speaker 1: lot more breeding issues in the world that we should
Speaker 1: be more concerned about. And neither one of them have
Speaker 1: an official stance. But no, the woman from Peter that
Speaker 1: Robert interviewed in this article sounded like she hadn't heard
Speaker 1: of feigning goats until he called her. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: impression I got. Oh yeah, the quote is a little vague,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, yeah, she just like the standard Peter quote,
Speaker 1: just plug in the animal. Well, who knows. There is
Speaker 1: no official stance though, so maybe maybe Robert alerted her
Speaker 1: to this whole phenomena. But they have an official stance
Speaker 1: now and it stopped breeding feigning goats. It's a little
Speaker 1: late for that, though. It's a recognized and um prized
Speaker 1: as a separate American breed of goat. There's about three
Speaker 1: thousand to five thousand of them running around and then
Speaker 1: falling over right, um, and they don't look like they're
Speaker 1: going anywhere. UM. The Livestock Conservancy, I think is what
Speaker 1: it's called. UM suggests that this uh, this breed of
Speaker 1: goat be very much UM protected and taken care of
Speaker 1: and conserved. Is I guess the best word to use.
Speaker 1: Did I tell you about Emily and the little baby
Speaker 1: goat at the winery at the winery and Athens. No,
Speaker 1: we went to uh right before this l a trip.
Speaker 1: You know, we went over to Santa Barbara for one
Speaker 1: country and we went in this one winery and as
Speaker 1: we were going in, there was a guy with a
Speaker 1: dog outside, and you know, of course we attacked this
Speaker 1: dog and repetting it. He said, yeah, they wouldn't let
Speaker 1: it in because they got a goat, a baby goat
Speaker 1: in there. So Emily here's this, of course, and it's
Speaker 1: just like in the inside saying where's the goat? Where's
Speaker 1: the goat? This lady has a probably about a six
Speaker 1: week old kid in her arms, wrapped in a blanket.
Speaker 1: That's um has some sort of physical ailment, not feigning
Speaker 1: goats in Rome. It was part human, part human. It
Speaker 1: had human hands. Um no, but she had this little
Speaker 1: baby kid and uh, you know, Emily goes over and
Speaker 1: starts drooling, and the lady says, do you want to
Speaker 1: hold it? And in less than a second the goat
Speaker 1: swap had been made, and you know, for the next
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, this goat is literally like nuzzling Emily in
Speaker 1: the neck. And I took about twenty pictures of the
Speaker 1: range of emotions on Emily's face at all. 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 kids,
Speaker 1: so man, I can't watch that. Yeah, it looks it
Speaker 1: just doesn't look right. It's awesome. I think kids they
Speaker 1: don't look like they're hurt. They don't look injured. They
Speaker 1: just look surprised every time. And then fine, well, kittens
Speaker 1: look surprised with everything. They just they have that constant
Speaker 1: look at surprise. Anything else. No, we've touched on the
Speaker 1: satanic nature of goats, meat goats, fainting goats, fainting kittens,
Speaker 1: unnatural selection tennessee, uh, Texas the nineteenth century. And that's
Speaker 1: about it, right, Emily's a natural love of animals, my
Speaker 1: iconic jerks. Yeah, everything's right on. Uh. And now you know,
Speaker 1: when you see these videos and you show your buddies,
Speaker 1: you can now tell people exactly what's going on. Say,
Speaker 1: they're not fainting at all. Actually, yeah, stupid. So if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about fainting goats, remember go
Speaker 1: to YouTube why are you tube dot com and type
Speaker 1: in fainting goats and then fainting goat kittens. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really make sense. It could just be fainting kittens, but
Speaker 1: still um and you'll see some hilarity. You can also
Speaker 1: learn more about feigning goats in a very well written
Speaker 1: and well research article by Robert Lamb with stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your mind How fainting goats work. Type that into
Speaker 1: the handy search bar and how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: And now we'll bring that up, and that means I
Speaker 1: just brought up listener, Matt. That's right, Josh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this a real c s I. Dude. This is
Speaker 1: from ED in Chico, California. Hey, Josh and Chuck and Jerry.
Speaker 1: I'm a crime scene investigator for a municipal police department
Speaker 1: in rural northern California. Being a c s I is
Speaker 1: just one of my collateral assignments. I'm also an evidence
Speaker 1: technician and have a couple of other titles depending on
Speaker 1: who has given me orders that day. Nearly every agency
Speaker 1: in my area has trained cops or civilians to be
Speaker 1: a c s I when needed, not as a standalone assignment,
Speaker 1: so that kind of answers one of the questions we had.
Speaker 1: I showed interest in being a c s I when
Speaker 1: I started my evidence assignment four years ago and was
Speaker 1: sent to Basic c s High School and later Advanced
Speaker 1: c s I Crime Scene Reconstruction School. He's skipped right
Speaker 1: over intermediate yeah, I guess. And finally, blood spatter analysis.
Speaker 1: We also do monthly in house training on topics like photography, trajectories,
Speaker 1: DNA collection, buried body excavation, et cetera. Our c s
Speaker 1: I or jacks of all trades since our agencies are
Speaker 1: too small to be able to afford specialized positions. Your
Speaker 1: show was very well researched and had all the highlights
Speaker 1: of blood spatter and forensic photography. And as a sidebar,
Speaker 1: while we do have two big, expensive two thou do
Speaker 1: sl our cameras, we really only use them for the
Speaker 1: most specialized photos like nighttime crime scenes. Of time they
Speaker 1: use a point and shoot from Walmart. Really, yeah, I
Speaker 1: could see that though, I mean like that. The technology
Speaker 1: 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 a little point and shoot. Yea. And
Speaker 1: plus I think if you were the family of like
Speaker 1: a murder victim and you saw some guy walk and
Speaker 1: point to be like, are you even supposed to be?
Speaker 1: How about a real camera? Yeah about a little respect.
Speaker 1: You mentioned blood voids at a crime scene. We call
Speaker 1: them blood shadows. Oh, I like them one to enjoy
Speaker 1: being a c s I. But like Josh said, ages Ago,
Speaker 1: television ain't nothing like reality. I can't stand watching those shows.
Speaker 1: They're drive me crazy, but they're not based in reality.
Speaker 1: Writing in reality, DNA evidence takes one to two months
Speaker 1: and latent prints can take four or five months, not
Speaker 1: four to six minutes. Yeah. And the other thing is
Speaker 1: is like everybody is just this jack of all trades, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I got these prints off of this scene, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to go analyze them, and I'm going to go
Speaker 1: like shake down the bad guys. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: spend more money on an ensemble. Will you? Thank you?
Speaker 1: Ed from Chico. Oh that was it. Yeah, sorry to
Speaker 1: end your letter with a rant from me. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for your illuminating letter. We appreciate it. We
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. First of all, you can
Speaker 1: go um check us out on Facebook, Facebook, dot com,
Speaker 1: slash stuff you should know. You can follow us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast, and you can join our
Speaker 1: QB team k I v A dot org slash Team
Speaker 1: slash 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, all right, Chuck, that's right.
Speaker 1: That's stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you