Your Daily Factoid
Nov. 14th, 2003 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oakenguySo, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shutupbetsy posted a pic of a Fainting Goat, which inspired me to do a little research. Because if it's a common condition, and occurs with other animals, I want to know about, say, Fainting Elephants before I go to Asia.
I visited the website of the International Fainting Goat Association, demonstrating a) the Web is a wonderful thing, and b) some logos are just plain sad:
First surprise: they're a new development, and were bred from three does and a buck that just showed up, basically out of the blue, in Tennessee in the early 1800s. They were sold to a local doctor who saw them faint and, either from sheer perversity or a desire to spit in the eye of the law of natural selection, bred them higgledy-piggledy. So Fainting Elephants, while theoretically possible, aren't a real danger.
Second, bigger surprise: Fainting Goats, it turns out, don't really faint: they've got a condition called Myotonia, which causes their muscles to lock up when they're startled. Which really, really, really sucks for them, because the reason they were bred was to be, basically, sacrificial victims: one would be kept with a sheep herd, and when coyotes and other predators attacked the goat would fall over and be lunch while the sheep got away. (Thus anticipating by 100 years the role of Assistant Vice Presidents in modern corporations).
Other names for Fainting Goats, and/or cool indie bands: Nervous, Stiff-Leg, Wooden-Leg, and my favorite, Tennessee Scare Goats.
So now you know.
shutupbetsy posted a pic of a Fainting Goat, which inspired me to do a little research. Because if it's a common condition, and occurs with other animals, I want to know about, say, Fainting Elephants before I go to Asia.I visited the website of the International Fainting Goat Association, demonstrating a) the Web is a wonderful thing, and b) some logos are just plain sad:
First surprise: they're a new development, and were bred from three does and a buck that just showed up, basically out of the blue, in Tennessee in the early 1800s. They were sold to a local doctor who saw them faint and, either from sheer perversity or a desire to spit in the eye of the law of natural selection, bred them higgledy-piggledy. So Fainting Elephants, while theoretically possible, aren't a real danger.
Second, bigger surprise: Fainting Goats, it turns out, don't really faint: they've got a condition called Myotonia, which causes their muscles to lock up when they're startled. Which really, really, really sucks for them, because the reason they were bred was to be, basically, sacrificial victims: one would be kept with a sheep herd, and when coyotes and other predators attacked the goat would fall over and be lunch while the sheep got away. (Thus anticipating by 100 years the role of Assistant Vice Presidents in modern corporations).
Other names for Fainting Goats, and/or cool indie bands: Nervous, Stiff-Leg, Wooden-Leg, and my favorite, Tennessee Scare Goats.
So now you know.
