146 Fun Facts About Goats

Which French word for goat is also the usual name for cheese made from goat's milk?

Chèvre means goat in French. Its tang comes from fatty acids so tied to the animal that chemists named them caproic, caprylic and capric, after capra, the Latin for goat.

Which of these fibers is primarily harvested from Angora goats?

Mohair is the Angora goat's long, lustrous fleece, usually shorn twice a year; confusingly, the fibre sold as angora comes from Angora rabbits instead.

What shape is a goat's pupil?

Horizontal slit pupils give a goat a panoramic view of approaching predators, and when it lowers its head to graze, its eyes rotate in their sockets to keep the slits level with the ground.

What is a group of goats typically called?

Herd is the usual word for a group of goats; older collective nouns such as 'trip' and 'tribe' also survive in word lists, while a pride is lions, a gaggle geese and a pod whales.

Goats were among the first animals humans domesticated, mainly in which region?

The Middle East: villagers at Ganj Dareh in Iran's Zagros Mountains were herding wild goats about 10,000 years ago, swapping the hunt for a ready supply of milk and meat.

Which goat breed is well-known for its exceptionally long, pendulous ears?

Nubian, or Anglo-Nubian, goats are a British creation despite the name: 19th-century breeders crossed native prick-eared goats with large lop-eared imports from Asia and North Africa.

In temperate climates, most goats come into heat during which season?

Autumn: shortening days set off the breeding season, and with a pregnancy of about 150 days the kids arrive in spring.

Which wild animal of the Zagros Mountains is the likely ancestor of nearly all domestic goats?

The bezoar ibex, a wild goat that still lives in the Zagros, was first herded there about 10,000 years ago; genetic analysis later confirmed what the bones suggested, that nearly all domestic goats descend from it.

What is the common term for a castrated male goat?

A castrated male goat is a wether, a word it shares with sheep; a wether with a bell round its neck led the flock, which is where 'bellwether' comes from.

Which goat breed is famous for 'fainting' when startled?

Myotonic goats inherit myotonia congenita, which delays their muscles relaxing after a sudden movement, so a startled goat stiffens and may keel over; the breed traces to a few goats in 1880s Tennessee.

Which dairy goat breed is known for typically producing the highest volume of milk?

Saanen goats, named for their home valley in the Alps, are the classic heavy milkers and have been exported to more than eighty countries; being pale-skinned, they cope badly with strong sun.

By their eating habits, goats are classed as which type of feeder?

Browsers pick leaves, twigs and shrubs rather than cropping grass; the goat's eat-anything reputation comes from curiosity, since it will nibble cardboard or clothing just to test whether it is food.

What are the fleshy appendages that dangle from each side of the neck on many dairy goats called?

Wattles, also called tassels, are fur-covered tags of skin, one hanging from each side of the neck; keepers call them goat jewelry, since some goats have them, some do not, and they serve no purpose but adornment.

What is an adult female goat commonly called?

An adult female goat is commonly referred to as a 'doe' or 'nanny goat'. 'Ewe' is a female sheep, 'sow' is a female pig, and 'hen' is a female chicken.

Mr. Tumnus, the goat-legged creature Lucy meets in Narnia, is what kind of mythical being?

Faun: C. S. Lewis said the whole Narnia story grew from a single picture in his head of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood.

How many chambers does a goat's stomach have?

Four chambers, the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum, make a goat a ruminant; a suckling kid's milk bypasses the rumen through a groove, so at first it digests like a single-stomached animal.

Dairy farmers say a goat has done what when she gives birth and comes into milk?

Freshened is the dairy word for giving birth and starting to milk; the birth usually passes without trouble, and the mother often eats the placenta, removing a scent that would draw predators.

Which president, himself a president's grandson, chased runaway White House goat Old Whiskers down Pennsylvania Avenue?

Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison, was seen holding on to his top hat as he ran after Old Whiskers, who had bolted through the gates pulling a cart full of his grandchildren.

Which of these goat breeds originated in West Africa?

Pygmy goats descend from West African Dwarf stock; they reached America between 1930 and 1960 as zoo exhibits and research animals, and only later caught on as pets.

What is the average lifespan of a domestic goat?

A domestic goat's life expectancy is 15-18 years; difficult births can cut a doe's to 10 or 11, and the stress of going into rut each year can cut a buck's to eight to ten.

Like cattle, goats lack which teeth?

Upper front teeth are missing: the eight lower front teeth bite against a tough gum pad instead, and because the adult ones come in a pair at a time over the first years, keepers read a goat's age from them.

A shortage of which trace mineral causes white muscle disease in young goats?

Selenium shortage, alone or with too little vitamin E, causes white muscle disease, named for the bleached look of the damaged muscle; where soils are poor in selenium, goats' feed is fortified with it.

The Oberhasli dairy goat breed originated in which country?

Switzerland's Oberhasli district, in the Bernese Oberland, gave the breed its name, but in America these goats were simply called Swiss Alpine and bred with other Alpines until breeders split them off in the 1970s.

What is the scientific subfamily to which both sheep and goats belong?

Both sheep (Ovis aries) and goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) belong to the subfamily Caprinae within the Bovidae family, indicating their close biological relationship.

What characteristic lets goat's milk go without homogenizing?

Smaller fat globules stay suspended, so the cream takes days to rise; cheesemakers go further and avoid homogenizing goat's milk at all, because it harms the curd.

Which fast-growing meat goat breed typically has a white body and a red-brown head?

The Boer goat, white-bodied with a red-brown head, was selectively bred in South Africa's Eastern Cape in the early 1900s to thrive on thorn veldt, and is used worldwide to improve meat goats.

What is the common name for the fine, downy undercoat fibre combed from certain goat breeds and sold as luxury knitwear?

Cashmere is an old spelling of Kashmir, whose shawls made the fibre the height of fashion in 19th-century Europe; the down still has to be separated from the coarse outer coat before it can be spun.

A healthy goat can run at 103°F, a fever in a person; which animal normally runs hotter still?

Chicken body temperature normally sits at about 105°F or higher, against a goat's 101.3 to 103.5°F; having no sweat glands, a hen sheds the surplus heat by panting.

How does the lactose level of goat's milk compare with that of cow's milk?

About the same: goat's milk has only slightly less lactose than cow's, so despite its reputation it is no fix for lactose intolerance.

What is the distinctive sound a goat makes?

A goat's cry is a bleat, a word it shares with sheep; goats moved into a new social group shift their calls to sound more like their companions, a hint that they pick up accents.

In ancient Greek mythology, which goat-nymph was said to have nursed the infant Zeus?

In Greek mythology, Amalthea was a goat (or a nymph who owned a goat) who nursed the infant Zeus on her milk in a cave on Crete. Her horn became the cornucopia, a symbol of abundance.

Goats in Morocco famously climb which tree to eat its fruit?

Argan fruit does draw Moroccan goats up into the branches, and they later spit out the nuts that yield argan oil, but along tourist roads the famous tree-top herds are often put there by farmers who charge for photos.

Which word for goat meat, promoted by the USDA from the 1920s, never caught on?

Chevon was coined in 1922 by a trade association and adopted by the USDA in 1928, yet shoppers never took to it; across South Asia and the English-speaking Caribbean, goat is simply sold as mutton.

A goat's udder normally has two teats, half as many as which animal's?

Cow udders carry two pairs of teats to the usual goat's one, but one meat-goat breed breaks the rule: its does commonly have two pairs, which breeders favour for nursing several kids at once.

What is the term for a female goat under one year of age?

A female goat under a year old is a doeling; young dairy-breed doelings sometimes come into milk before they have ever been bred. Heifer, gilt and filly are young cattle, pigs and horses.

Besides milk and meat, Neolithic farmers valued goat dung for what use?

Dried goat dung was burned as fuel, while the animals' bones and sinew went into tools, buildings and clothing, so almost nothing was wasted.

Which goat breed has very small or absent external ears, called 'gopher' or 'elf' ears?

LaMancha goats, despite the Spanish name, were developed in the United States; to be registered a buck's ears may be no longer than an inch and a doe's no more than two.

What kind of terrain are wild goats and their domestic descendants best adapted to?

Steep rocky outcrops are home: goats have been photographed grazing on near-vertical dam walls, and their wild ancestor, the bezoar ibex, lives on rocky slopes from Turkey to Pakistan.

Which Swedish city's giant straw Yule goat has been burned by arsonists dozens of times?

Gävle has raised the straw goat in its Castle Square every Advent since 1966, when it burned on New Year's Eve; in 2005 two arsonists dressed as Santa and a gingerbread man shot flaming arrows into it.

The word 'scapegoat' comes from a ritual practised by which ancient people?

The Israelites' Day of Atonement rite in Leviticus sent a goat bearing the people's sins into the wilderness 'for Azazel'; William Tyndale read that name as 'the goat that escapes' and coined 'scapegoat' in 1530.

Vets warn against castrating male goats too early because it raises the risk of which later problem?

Urinary calculi: early-castrated males have the highest rate of blockage, because the stones lodge in the male's narrow urethra, and a blocked bladder can rupture.

The scent glands at the base of a male goat's horns exist mainly to do what?

The glands exist to attract does: some does refuse to mate with a buck whose scent glands have been removed, so the smell that farmers dread is doing exactly its job.

Goats give about 2% of the world's milk, ranking third behind cattle and which other animal?

Buffalo give about 15% of the world's milk to cattle's 81%, a distant second, yet theirs is the richer, carrying roughly twice the fat.

Which country had the world's largest goat population in 2022?

India led the 2022 count of the world's 1.1 billion goats; goats can live off land too poor for cattle or sheep, which is why they matter most where pasture is thin.

A 2016 study found goats gaze at humans for help, like which animal?

Dogs: the 2016 Queen Mary University of London study found goats, like dogs and horses, look to a nearby human when a reward box cannot be opened, a sign of social problem-solving.

The constellation Capricornus shows a goat with the tail of which creature?

Fish: the goat-fish goes back to Bronze Age Babylon, where it was the emblem of the water god Ea, which makes Capricornus one of the oldest constellation figures still in use.

Sheep keep their lambs clumped together while they feed, so how do nursing goats leave their young?

Lying out separately is the goat's way: the young are left apart from one another while their mothers feed, and the herd itself spreads across a field instead of feeding side by side as sheep do.

In Norse mythology, which god's chariot was pulled by two goats named Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr?

Thor cooks and eats the pair at night, then resurrects them with Mjölnir the next morning; when a farm boy cracked a bone for the marrow, one goat came back lame.

In Hindu legend, which god had Daksha beheaded for a snub and later revived him with a goat's head?

Shiva and his wife Sati were left off the guest list for her father Daksha's great sacrifice; when Sati died in its fire, Shiva's fearsome form Virabhadra beheaded Daksha, who was later revived with a goat's head.

What is the most common outcome when a goat gives birth?

Twins are the usual result, and dairy farmers feed for them, because a doe that bears twins gives more milk than one with a single kid; litters of five and even six are on record.

Which unusual phenomenon sometimes occurs in male goats?

Lactation: male goats are known to give milk on occasion, and unbred young females of dairy breeds come into milk fairly often too, so a goat's udder does not strictly wait for a pregnancy.

The US military has used live goats mainly to train which personnel?

Combat medics practised treating battlefield wounds on anaesthetised goats; goats took the role after a 1983 uproar over plans to shoot anaesthetised dogs forced the Pentagon to drop them.

Chattanooga and Spartanburg hired goats to control which invasive plant?

Kudzu, the vine that smothers the southeastern US, is good goat forage: southern farmers once grew it to feed goats on poor land, and Chattanooga's 2010 trial sent goats and llamas in to graze it down.

The 'Tomb of the Lord of the Goats' lies at Ebla, an ancient city near Aleppo in which country?

Syria's Ebla, modern Tell Mardikh, holds a tomb named for the bronze goat heads on a throne buried in it; the city is better known for a palace archive of thousands of cuneiform tablets and fragments.

In which country do goat-masked 'Nuuttipukki' go door to door each January demanding leftover Christmas food and drink?

Finland's Nuuttipukki were young men in inside-out fur jackets, masks and horns who called on St. Knut's Day, 13 January, demanding leftover food and drink; today the visitors are usually children and the encounter a happy one.

Which country had an estimated 2.6 million feral goats in the mid-1990s?

Australia's feral goat population was estimated at 2.6 million in the mid-1990s; goats revert to the wild readily, and with water and few predators they strip native scrub and trees from whole landscapes.

Project Isabela, finished in 2006, eradicated feral goats from islands in which archipelago?

Galápagos rangers cleared Santiago and northern Isabela to save the giant tortoises' habitat, hunting from helicopters and releasing sterilised, radio-collared 'Judas goats' that led them to the last herds.

Exodus says the curtains of the tabernacle tent were made from which goat material?

Hair: Exodus 26:7 orders eleven curtains of goat hair as the tent over the tabernacle, and a later chapter adds that the skilled women of the camp spun the hair for them.

During the rut, a male goat sprays his own urine onto which part of his body?

Forelegs and face take the spray; a male in rut also curls his upper lip in the flehmen response and goes off his food, his attention fixed on the females.

What is a goat's horn made of beneath its outer sheath?

Beneath the keratin sheath the horn is a core of living bone laced with blood vessels, which helps with thermoregulation as well as fighting; rare polycerate goats have been recorded with as many as eight horns.

Breeding two naturally hornless goats together produces a high number of what?

Intersex kids: the polled gene in goats sits next to a sex-determining region, so polled-to-polled matings yield many sterile intersex offspring, which is why breeders pair a polled goat only with a horned one.

The name of the markhor, a corkscrew-horned wild goat, literally means eater of what?

Snakes: markhor is Persian for 'snake-eater', after a folk belief that the animal killed and ate them, perhaps inspired by horns that coil like serpents; it is Pakistan's national animal.

By the 19th century, about 100 Alpine ibex survived, in and around what is now which national park?

Gran Paradiso was the royal hunting reserve of Victor Emmanuel II, which kept poachers off the last hundred or so animals; every Alpine ibex alive today descends from that remnant.

Which wild goat was cloned back from extinction in 2003, only to die minutes after birth?

The Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo: its last wild member, a female called Celia, died in January 2000, and the 2003 clone grown from her frozen cells lived only minutes, making it the first animal to go extinct twice.

The Walia ibex survives only in the Simien Mountains of which country?

The Walia ibex lives only in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the animals often stand on their hind legs to reach shoots of giant heath.

Protecting the kri-kri goat helped turn which Cretan ravine into a national park in 1962?

Samaria Gorge in western Crete became a national park in 1962 partly as a refuge for the kri-kri, which is not a truly wild species at all but a feral goat descended from early domestic stock brought over in Minoan times.

Which wild goat relative was released for sport around New Zealand's Mount Cook in 1904?

The Himalayan tahr, a shaggy goat-antelope, was released near Mount Cook in 1904 for sport hunting; it spread through the Southern Alps, where the Department of Conservation culled about 12,000 in the 2019-20 season alone.

Which species is by far the most widely distributed member of the goat genus Capra, and also the heaviest and longest?

The Siberian ibex of Central Asia is the heaviest and longest of the ten Capra species, though the markhor stands taller at the shoulder.

Which Arctic animal is more closely related to goats and sheep than to cattle?

Muskox, despite the name, sits with the sheep and goats: its genus, Ovibos, is Latin for 'sheep-ox', while the yak and the bison belong with cattle.

The Angora goat breed originated in which modern country?

Turkey: Angora is the old name of Ankara, the city that also gave its name to Angora cats and rabbits; the goats appeared on the Turkish 50-lira note from 1938 to 1952.

As of 2024, which country supplied more than half of the world's Angora goat fleece?

South Africa first imported Angora goats in 1838 and has long since outgrown their homeland: it produced about 56% of the world clip in 2024, with neighbouring Lesotho second.

Pashmina is combed from the Changthangi goat of which high-plateau Himalayan region?

Ladakh's Changthang plateau is so cold that the goats grow a thick undercoat, which the nomadic Changpa herders comb out each year as pashmina.

Regimental goat William Windsor was demoted for trying to do what?

Headbutt a drummer he tried, after marching out of step at the Queen's birthday parade in Cyprus in 2006; demoted to fusilier, he won his stripe back within months and retired to Whipsnade Zoo in 2009.

Britain's royal goats descend from an 1837 gift to Queen Victoria from which country's ruler?

Persia's Shah gave Queen Victoria the herd on her accession in 1837, and since 1844 the monarch has presented an unbroken line of its goats to the Royal Welch Fusiliers, each one a ranking soldier, not a mascot.

Wild goats from the Great Orme roamed which Welsh town's empty streets in 2020?

Llandudno's wild herd came down off the Great Orme in March 2020 to eat hedges and garden flowers while lockdown emptied the streets; numbers then grew fast because wardens could not give the usual sterilisation injections.

WWI Canadian army goat Sergeant Bill was once court-martialled for eating what?

The personnel roll made a meal for Bill, who was court-martialled for it; picked up from a farm girl on a Saskatchewan station platform in 1914, he later pushed three soldiers into a trench seconds before a shell landed.

Bill the Goat is the live mascot of which US military school?

The Naval Academy's goat tradition comes from sailing ships, which carried goats to eat scraps and give milk; the mascot has been called Bill since the early 1900s, and a bronze Bill stands outside Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

The Navy's first goat mascot, at the 1893 Army-Navy Game, was named after which hero?

A gift from the officers of USS New York, he watched Navy win 6-3 and was kept on; the 'Bill' name only arrived in the early 1900s.

A goat was the first creature to circle the globe twice, sailing with Wallis and then whom?

She sailed round the world on the Dolphin with Wallis, then went straight back to sea in 1768 with Captain Cook on the Endeavour, since ships of the day carried goats to give fresh milk.

The 1945 'Curse of the Billy Goat' was placed on which baseball team?

Chicago Cubs fans blamed 71 years without a pennant on tavern owner William Sianis, who was asked to leave Wrigley Field with his pet goat during the 1945 World Series and is said to have declared the team would win no more.

What was the name of the pet goat ejected from Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series?

The curse was finally lifted in 2016, on the 46th anniversary of Sianis's death, when the team beat the Dodgers for the pennant.

Goat Simulator (2014) was developed by which Swedish studio?

Coffee Stain Studios built it from a joke prototype made in an internal game jam, and fixed only the bugs that crashed the game, leaving the rest in because they were funnier.

What is the name of the goat the player controls in Goat Simulator?

The goat is Pilgor; licking an object sticks her tongue to it so you can drag it around, and a ragdoll button hands the whole animal over to the physics engine.

In Norse myth, the goat Heiðrún feeds the einherjar in Valhalla with what from her udders?

Mead flows from Heiðrún's udders, filling a vat each day for the einherjar; she grazes on the tree Læraðr, and in the Hyndluljóð her name is hurled at Freyja as an insult.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a fairy tale collected in which country?

Norway's Asbjørnsen and Moe published it in the 1840s as 'De tre bukkene Bruse'; 'Gruff' was simply the first English translator's stand-in for the goats' name, and it stuck.

Peter the goatherd and his blind grandmother appear in which classic children's novel?

Heidi spends her days on the alp with Peter and his goats; when he jealously pushes her friend Klara's empty wheelchair down the mountain, Klara has no choice but to learn to walk.

In Albee's Tony-winning play, architect Martin Gray falls in love with a goat named what?

The goat is Sylvia: the full title, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, borrows the song 'Who Is Silvia?' from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona; the play was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2003.

The 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats was based on a book by which journalist?

Jon Ronson's 2004 book investigated real US Army attempts at psychic warfare, including Jim Channon's 'First Earth Battalion' manual, which the film renamed the New Earth Army.

Goats Head Soup (1973) is an album by which band?

The Rolling Stones recorded it at Dynamic Sound in Kingston, Jamaica, while living as tax exiles from Britain; its single 'Angie' hit number one in the US.

Which singer-songwriter founded the indie folk band the Mountain Goats?

John Darnielle was for years the band's only member, recording straight onto a boombox cassette deck; the name comes from a lyric in a Screamin' Jay Hawkins song.

Which animal follows the Goat in the Chinese zodiac?

Monkey follows the Goat, the eighth sign of the twelve; because the Chinese word yáng covers both goats and sheep, the same sign is also known as the Sheep or the Ram.

Capella, whose name means 'little goat', is the brightest star in which constellation?

Auriga is the Charioteer: to the Greeks Capella was the goat that suckled the infant Zeus, and Bedouin astronomers went further, making each star of the constellation one animal in a herd of goats.

The Sun is directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn during which event?

December solstice it is: the tropic was named when the Sun then stood in Capricornus, the zodiac's horned goat, but precession has since moved it into Sagittarius, and the line itself creeps north about 15 metres a year.

Which French occultist drew the goat-headed 'Sabbatic Goat' image of Baphomet in 1856?

Éliphas Lévi published the Sabbatic Goat in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie; the name Baphomet is far older, appearing in the 1307 Inquisition transcripts against the Knights Templar and, earlier still, in a 1098 crusader's letter.

The word 'tragedy' comes from Greek roots that literally mean what?

'Goat song' joins tragos, he-goat, and oide, song; nobody is sure why, though scholars suspect a goat was either the prize for the best chorus or the sacrifice the chorus danced around.

The goat-legged god Pan was first worshipped in which region of Greece?

Arcadia, a mountain district culturally apart from the rest of Greece, stayed the chief seat of Pan's worship; the sudden terror he was said to send through flocks and herds gave English the word 'panic'.

Super-strong BioSteel fibre came from goats genetically engineered to produce what in their milk?

Spider silk protein was purified from the milk of Nexia Biotechnologies' goats, nicknamed spider goats. When the Montreal firm went bankrupt in 2009, a pair of the animals was sold to a Canadian farm museum.

Which nickname for New York City shares its name with an English village that means 'goat home' in Old English?

Gotham was pinned on New York by Washington Irving in 1807, borrowing from old tales of English villagers by turns wise and foolish. Batman's Gotham City followed.

Wild goats called Alpine ibex climb the towering wall of Italy's Cingino Dam to lick what from the masonry?

Salt is the lure: the ibex are such sure-footed climbers that they have been seen crossing the dam's 57-degree slope in Piedmont just to lick it.

Which cryptid, first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995, has a Spanish name meaning 'goat-sucker'?

Chupacabra joins the Spanish for 'sucks' and 'goats', and a Puerto Rican radio comedian, Silverio Pérez, is credited with coining it during the 1995 livestock scare.

Goat Island, named for a settler's animals that died in the winter of 1780, splits which famous waterfall?

Niagara Falls surrounds the island where a miller named Stedman kept his goats, and when he came back after that winter all but one of them were dead.

Alexander Selkirk, a castaway who survived by hunting feral goats on a Pacific island, inspired which novel?

Robinson Crusoe echoes Selkirk's ordeal in the Juan Fernández islands, where he ran down goats for meat and milk and sewed their skins into clothes with a nail.

Which tech giant said in 2009 that it had rented about 200 goats to mow its headquarters fields?

Google called it mowing with goats: a border collie named Jen kept the animals in line, and the company said the job cost about the same as using lawnmowers.

Which US president gave his son Tad a pair of White House goats named Nanny and Nanko?

Abraham Lincoln called them the best and kindest goats in the world, and after his assassination Mary Todd Lincoln gave the pair to a friend.

Which horned companion of Saint Nicholas, drawn with one cloven goat's foot, punishes naughty children?

Krampus takes to the streets on Krampusnacht, the eve of the saint's feast, carrying birch rods for children who have misbehaved.

In Greek myth, which fire-breathing monster had a lion's body, a goat's head on its back and a serpent for a tail?

Chimera comes from the Greek for 'she-goat', and the monster was finally killed by the hero Bellerophon, riding the winged horse Pegasus.

In C. S. Lewis's first Narnia story, which goat-legged faun does Lucy meet beside a lamp-post?

Mr. Tumnus began as a picture in the author's head, a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood, and the whole story grew from that image.

Which 1965 film musical stages the yodelling song The Lonely Goatherd as a marionette show?

The Sound of Music moved the number so that Maria and the children could perform it with puppets for their father, in a sequence staged by puppeteers Bil and Cora Baird.

Which Greek cheese must, under EU rules, be mostly sheep's milk with no more than 30% goat's milk?

Feta may legally carry the name only when it is made the traditional way in mainland Greece or on Lesbos, so similar white cheeses made elsewhere from cow's milk cannot use it.

In Genesis, Jacob wears goatskins on his arms and neck to impersonate which older brother and win a blessing?

Esau was so shaggy that their blind father Isaac, feeling the skins, took the smooth-skinned Jacob for his firstborn.

Which Jewish festival's ritual meal traditionally ends with Chad Gadya, a cumulative song about a little goat?

Passover seders close with the playful song, sung in Aramaic and Hebrew, and its chain of verses has made it a favourite with children.

Which country's Puck Fair crowns a wild mountain goat as King Puck to reign over three days each August?

Ireland's fair, in Killorglin, County Kerry, has a schoolgirl 'Queen of Puck' do the crowning, and afterwards the goat is led back to the mountains.

In one Greek myth, which Thanksgiving table symbol began as a horn baby Zeus snapped off his goat nurse?

Cornucopia is Latin for 'horn of plenty', and in this telling the broken horn gained the power to pour out food without end, just as its owner had nourished the god.

Roughly how many goats were living in the world in 2022, about one for every seven people?

About 1 billion: the count passed 1.1 billion in 2022, some 10,000 years after people first began keeping goats.

Since 1990, hired goats have been set loose on dry California hillsides mainly to reduce the risk of what?

Wildfires feed on dry brush, so the animals are sent in to eat it first, reviving a land-clearing job that goats have done for people for centuries.

Which rapper's 2000 album G.O.A.T. helped turn 'greatest of all time' into an everyday acronym?

LL Cool J said he took the term from Muhammad Ali and from Earl Manigault, a basketball player whose nickname was The Goat.

Which spicy meat stew from the Mexican state of Jalisco is mainly made with goat, beef or lamb?

Birria began as the Jalisco name for meat cooked in a pit or earth oven, and an 1898 definition gave it simply as roasted goat.

The markhor, a wild goat known for its corkscrew horns, is the national animal of which country?

Pakistan also calls it the screw-horned goat, and selling a few costly trophy-hunting licences there has helped the species make a remarkable rebound.

In Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which dancer owns Djali, a goat that performs tricks with a tambourine?

Esmeralda is rarely seen without the clever Djali, and the goat's trick of spelling out a name is later used in court as evidence of sorcery.

In which horseback sport, the national game of Afghanistan, do riders fight to drop a goat carcass into a goal?

Buzkashi literally means 'goat-pulling', and its matches, often played on Fridays, can draw thousands of fans.

Which strong German lager, often sold with a goat on the label, has a name that also means 'billy goat'?

Bock began in the town of Einbeck, and the Bavarian accent of Munich drinkers turned 'Einbeck' into 'ein Bock', a billy goat.

Mountain goats that craved hikers' sweat were captured and moved out of which US national park?

Olympic had no natural mineral licks, so goats brought in during the 1920s pestered visitors instead, and hundreds were caught and relocated to the Cascade Mountains.

Which insect-eating birds were long nicknamed 'goatsuckers', from an old myth that they stole milk from goats?

Nightjars still carry the slur in science: the genus name Caprimulgus joins the Latin words for 'nanny goat' and 'to milk'.

A goat trained to lead trusting sheep to slaughter, while it is spared, is named after which biblical figure?

Judas goats later found conservation work: released where feral goats are being eradicated, they seek out the others and so lead hunters to them.

Which everyday word for a hired car is short for a carriage whose name comes from the Italian for a young goat?

Cab is clipped from cabriolet, a light carriage that swayed so much at speed that it was named after the skipping of a young goat.

Lajitas, a small town whose mayor for years was a beer-drinking goat named Clay Henry, is in which US state?

Texas locals started the joke in the 1980s, and the goat's rivals in one election included the human incumbent and a wooden trading-post figure.

In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels, which satyr hides his goat legs to pose as Percy's human classmate?

Grover Underwood is Percy's best friend, and by the end of The Last Olympian he has been named a Lord of the Wild with a seat on the satyrs' ruling council.

In Disney's 1997 film Hercules, which grumpy satyr, half man and half goat, trains the young hero?

Phil, short for Philoctetes, was written with Danny DeVito in mind, and the character is said to have coached Achilles before taking on Hercules.

At which ancient Roman festival did runners strike bystanders with thongs cut from the skins of sacrificed goats?

Lupercalia was a fertility rite: the thongs were called februa, and women who hoped to conceive stepped forward to be struck.

Black Phillip, a sinister billy goat, torments a Puritan farming family in which Robert Eggers horror film?

The Witch has the family's youngest children insist that the goat talks to them, and in the final scenes their sister Thomasin urges him to speak to her too.

Which Spanish painter's Black Paintings include Witches' Sabbath, in which Satan looms as a huge goat over a coven?

Francisco Goya painted it straight onto the plaster walls of his house when he was about 75, and the mural is also known as The Great He-Goat.

Which widely prescribed diabetes drug traces back to galegine, a compound found in the herb goat's-rue?

Metformin is the survivor of a drug family built on the plant's chemistry: its relatives phenformin and buformin were widely withdrawn over a dangerous side effect.

Designer Thomas Thwaites won which tongue-in-cheek award after living among goats in the Alps on prosthetic legs?

Ig Nobel Prize judges honoured an experiment in which he also ate grass with the help of an artificial rumen, later written up in his book GoatMan.

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, which goat is one of the few animals besides the pigs who can read?

Muriel reads rather better than the dogs, and it is she who reads the quietly altered commandments out to Clover from the barn wall.

Which German football club, nicknamed the Billy Goats, keeps a live goat called Hennes as its mascot?

1. FC Köln got the first Hennes from a circus owner as a carnival joke, and named him after the player and manager Hennes Weisweiler.

Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant, famous for the goats that graze on its sod roof each summer, is in which US state?

Wisconsin's rooftop goats began as a prank, when a friend put a birthday goat named Oscar on the roof, and the family later trademarked the idea.

In Mexico, which name is given to dulce de leche made with goat's milk, a speciality of the city of Celaya?

Cajeta is the name used in Mexico and parts of Central America for the goat's-milk version, and Celaya is known for producing it by artisanal methods.

Which Bible translator, later executed for heresy, coined the English word 'scapegoat' in 1530?

William Tyndale coined '(e)scape goat' for the goat sent off into the wilderness, in the first English Scriptures drawn directly from the original languages rather than Latin.

Goat water, a hearty goat-meat stew served with crusty bread, is the national dish of which Caribbean island?

Montserrat's tourism authority says the authentic recipe needs the meat of a male goat, and the stew is popularly traced back to Irish stew.

Goat racing, with barefoot jockeys sprinting behind the animals each Easter, began on which Caribbean island?

Tobago's races are run in the village of Buccoo on the Tuesday after Easter, a slot chosen because Easter Monday already belonged to horse racing.

Which Mexican football club is best known by the nickname Chivas, a Spanish word for goats?

Guadalajara signs only players who are Mexican or of Mexican descent, and the nickname goes back to 'Chivas Locas', the crazy goats, a name the team was given during a match against Tampico.

Which hand-held frame drum, struck with a small stick called a tipper, traditionally has a goatskin head?

Bodhrán makers tack the goatskin to one side of the frame only, leaving the back open so that a hand pressed against the skin can change the pitch.

What name is given to the lip-curling grimace that a male goat displays during the rut?

Flehmen response comes from a German word meaning to bare the upper teeth, and the same curled lip is seen in lions, giraffes and tigers.

In the Grimm tale The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats, where does the youngest hide and so escape being eaten?

In the clock case was the one place the wolf failed to look, so the survivor could fetch scissors, needle and thread for the mother goat's rescue of the others.

Robert Rauschenberg's famous 1950s artwork Monogram shows a stuffed Angora goat with what around its middle?

A car tyre rings the goat, which the artist spotted in the window of a New York second-hand furniture shop, and the pairing reminded him of the interlaced letters of a monogram.

Legend says Napoleon sliced the top off which pyramid-shaped French goat's cheese after his failed Egyptian campaign?

Valençay keeps its flat-topped shape to this day, and the tale has him stop at the town's castle, where the little pyramids stirred memories he would rather have forgotten.