I’ve found lots of information on these creatures, but I can’t seem to find the answers to these questions:
How long do fainting goats stay in their “faint?”
Do they stay startled or re-startle if a lot of frightening noise is going on around them?
Do they attack, and if so, how?
(This is for a book; I’m not thinking of getting one.)
Thanks for any information you can provide.
Sorry I can’t help with the answers, most of my knowledge comes from here.
I am fascinated by them, and would love to have one as a pet, had we the room.
Of course, I’d also like a ninja, so my endorsement of the fainting goat isn’t worth much.
Well, yeah, but who doesn’t?
Thanks for the link. I’ve emailed them, so I’ll see if they can get me a response.
This guy seems pretty knowledgeable too - he’s a law student at Michigan, and his step father raises them as pets. He goat-sits for them, and runs that page for fainting goat aficionados like ourselves.
Now if you’re looking for ninjas, on the other hand, there is only
one source that matters.
These are real? How in the world did something like this survive the evolutionary pitfalls?
I’d imagine they’d get pretty dusty around July the 4th and New Years.
I can’t speak for fainting goats, but there’s a number of mammals that have similar reactions. The opossum is one of the better-known examples (although opossums don’t always do this; sometimes they flee. I’ve no idea how universal the fainting goat’s reaction is).
It’s a survival trait, believe it or not, in a couple of ways. First, not moving makes prey harder to find and recognize. A natural inclination toward freezing when startled means that, if not already spotted, they’re less likely to be. Second, many predators’ll skip over apparantly dead-but-uninjured prey, to avoid disease (unless the predator is awfully hungry).
I wondered this. The more I found out the less sense they made to me. So I moved on. There is one argument that they are the final proof of the nonexistence of God.
Strange. I searched for fainting goats and didn’t find anything.
Duh! You gotta be more quiet! They were probably all passed out in the tall grass when you came around!
I love fainting goats. They’re just all kinds of entertaining, and would love to…
Have a NINJA FAINTING GOAT!!
What a cool idea… Except I guess if they were afraid of heights, they’d fall off a lot of roofs.
Got a response about fainting goats:
I forgot to ask if they bite, but I did see one website that mentioned having to give away one of theirs because it would walk up and bite people (out of the blue). I assume that some of them would be aggressive if cornered.