Goat

The goat is a hoofed mammal kept by people on farms all over the world. Goats are close relatives of sheep. Both animals belong to a group of mammals called bovids, which also includes cows and antelope. A male goat is called a billy or buck. A female is a nanny or doe. A baby goat is a kid.

Goats were one of the first animals humans ever tamed. Scientists believe people in the mountains of what is now Iran and Turkey began keeping goats about 10,000 years ago. That was around the same time humans started farming. Today there are more than one billion goats on Earth, living on every continent except Antarctica.

Most goats stand two to three feet tall at the shoulder. They weigh between 45 and 300 pounds, depending on the breed. Both males and females can grow horns, though some breeds are hornless. Goats have short hair or long shaggy coats, and they come in white, black, brown, gray, and mixes of all four.

Goats eat plants, but they are not picky the way cows are. A cow eats mostly grass. A goat will eat grass, leaves, bark, weeds, small branches, and tough shrubs that other farm animals ignore. This is why goats do well in rocky, dry places where cattle would starve. Farmers sometimes rent out herds of goats to clear brush from hillsides. A goat's stomach has four parts, and it chews its food twice. Food comes back up from the first stomach as a soft lump called cud.

Goats are famous climbers. Their split hooves have a hard outer edge and a soft inner pad that grips rock like a rubber sole. Wild goats in the mountains of Morocco climb trees to reach fruit. Some have been photographed standing on branches 30 feet off the ground, higher than a three-story building.

People raise goats for milk, meat, and hair. Goat milk is easier for some people to digest than cow milk. It is also used to make cheeses like feta and chèvre. The soft undercoat of cashmere goats is combed out and spun into cashmere wool, one of the most expensive fabrics in the world. A single cashmere sweater may use hair from three or four goats.

Goats are also clever. They can learn their names, solve simple puzzles to get food, and remember the solutions for months. Farmers often say goats act more like dogs than like sheep.