04/01/2026
**Thomas** Thwaites, who temporarily lived as a goat in the Swiss Alps to escape the anxieties of modern human life.
# # Why he did it
- Thwaites felt overwhelmed by work, money, and future worries and wondered if animals like goats, which seem relaxed and focused only on eating and surviving, might be “happier” than humans.
- He turned this idea into an art–science project and later a book titled *GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human*.
# # Preparing to become a goat
- He spent about a year talking to animal-behaviour experts, neurologists, and prosthetics specialists to understand how goats move and perceive the world.
- Using this research, he built a special exoskeleton with artificial “forelegs” and raised “hind legs” so he could walk on all fours and graze on steep slopes like a goat.
# # Living with the herd
- Thwaites joined a herd of goats in the Alps for several days, walking, resting, and moving with them across cold, rough mountain terrain.
- Because humans cannot digest raw grass, he tried to simulate a goat’s rumen by pre‑processing grass into a sort of grass stew so he could at least partly share their diet.
# # The near‑fatal headbutt
- Goat herds have a strict social hierarchy, enforced by dominant males through posturing and headbutts.
- At one point Thwaites unknowingly broke these social rules, and a dominant billy goat charged and nearly knocked him off the mountainside, an incident summarized in the caption as a rival male “trying to headbutt him off the mountain.”
# # What he learned
- He discovered that goat life was far from a carefree fantasy: it was physically painful, cold, and stressful in its own way, especially when trying to be accepted by the herd.[
- Still, he reported brief moments of genuine calm while grazing with the goats and used the project to question what “being human” means and whether escaping stress is about changing life completely or changing perspective.
