Why did the goat climb the tree?

Goats- one of my personal favourites for no particular reason other than their absolute strangeness and unique nature. Anyone who knows me will be wondering why I haven’t written a blog on them, but as this is blog number 10, I thought why not! I’m sure everyone has seen the photos of goats in various strange positions; on the side of mountains and up trees – but why do they do this? Well, one particular case study I saw was in southwestern Morocco where these goats are famous for being up in trees. If you look at domestic goats, they can usually forage on the ground and get access to all the grass and plants they need, however, the terrain in this part of Morocco has a very arid climate [1]. This climate means that there is only 300mm of rainfall per year and thus no food on the ground [1], so the goats started looking up, to the trees!

When they started climbing up trees, they found treasure-fruit from argan trees, these trees are endemic to this particular region of Morocco. This led these goats to learn how to climb these trees to get the food, sometimes up to 8m high [1]- pretty neat! However, this habit isn’t just great for the goats, giving them a niche food source, but it also means they become a key part of the local ecosystem. When they eat the fruit from the argan tree, they cannot swallow the pits as they too big so they resort to spitting them out on the ground, dispersing the seeds along the floor and help more argan trees grow [1]. Seed dispersal is such an important part of nature to ensure healthy ecosystems. This relationship can also be seen as mutualistic whereby without the argan trees the goats might not survive and without the goats, the argan trees may not be able to disperse their seeds as effectively. This mutualistic relationship could be referred to as obligate mutualism if one could not survive without the other. However, I would guess their survival might be affected by each other’s presence but not entirely dependent- this would be called facultative mutualism whereby they can live independently but is beneficial to both if they are together/cohabit.

Argan trees in Morocco by Tigmii

However, it’s not just the goats who rely on the argan trees, the locals rely on these trees mainly for the production of argan oil and is a source of income for 2 million people in the local area [1]. In a way, these humans have a facultative mutualistic relationship with the goats. This means that without them their survival (if measured by income) would be significantly affected. The fact that humans rely on the goats so significantly for income meant that in 1999 the area was designated as a UNESCO biosphere reserve and these goats are protected because they are so important to the region [1]. The locals who are in charge of breeding these goats even help the little ones learn to climb the trees by pruning the branches to make it easier for them [1].

If more people relied on animals for economic reasons rather than just say, I don’t know, the fact bees pollinate 70% of the crop species we eat [2], then maybe more of them could be protected (like bees). We try to avoid relying on animal’s but I don’t know why, if we used them more for stuff that they do naturally anyway, like the goats in this study and the dogs from last week's blog, we would be able to do so much more so much quicker! We don’t need to force these animals to do anything, like these goats, they enjoy this stuff, do it to survive and it’s part of their nature so why can’t we just enjoy the benefits! We aren’t taking the fruit away from them, they still have enough to eat! If we put ourselves in the ecosystem then animals would rely on us too and we wouldn’t need to exploit the land so much if we could get something back from it without damaging it. I truly hope going forward we can work on our relationship with nature and animals and look to start utilising animal’s incredible skills (some we will never be able to technologize) to help ourselves too.