A man has described how intense everyday stress led him to try living as a goat.
Known as “goat man”, Thomas Thwaites has told the story in a book, GoatMan: How I Took A Holiday From Being a Human.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, the 34-year-old said the idea came after dog-sitting his niece’s “happy, joyous” dog.
He said he found himself thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice to just have a break from all of this stress”.
He remembered that as a child he had thought if he were a cat he could avoid school.
“But rather than just letting my childish wishes go, I wrote to the Wellcome Trust, and they gave me a small arts award,” he said.
“It became an investigation into how close we can come to fulfilling this ancient human dream. I did a bit of research and you can easily find all the cave paintings [depicting] half-human and half-beast.”
After securing the funding, he developed several prototypes, including a wooden structure, before using prosthetic limbs and walking among goats.
“I went to a goat farm in the Alps and had some prosthetics made by a doctor at the University of Salford prosthetics clinic, including prosthetic hooves and prosthetic back legs,” he said.
He even attempted to give his stomach goat-like digestive qualities by eating grass.
Mr Thwaites said he would recommend the experience, calling it a “special kind of time”.
He lasted three days on the goat farm before leaving and crossing the Alps, and has since returned to normal human life.
Thomas Thwaites working on his toaster project
This was not his first unusual experiment.
In 2009, inspired by Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which Arthur Dent is unable to build a toaster on a primitive world, he set out to recreate a toaster from scratch.
The project took nine months and cost £1,200 to complete.