The Undemocratic Goat

Scientists generally study animals to learn more about people. Goats, for example, live under a simple social system that may contain clues to the complexities of human society. In the current issue of Physiological Zoology, Dr. John Paul Scott of the Jackson Memorial Laboratory at Bar Harbor, Me. (looking for causes of human unpleasantness), reports, that the tranquillity of goat society can be destroyed by frustration.

A flock of goats (like a flock of chickens --TIME, May 31, 1937) usually has a "system of dominance." Every goat has butted every other goat until it is obvious which goat is boss. After an initial period of stress & strain, the flock acquires an established social order, with the biggest, buttingest billygoat at the top. Except during the breeding season ("an obviously frustrating situation"), there's not much fighting. Each goat knows and generally keeps his place.

Dr. Scott allowed his 14 goats to reach this state of social equilibrium. Then he frustrated them by delaying their feeding for a few hours. Fighting broke out almost immediately. But no undergoat attacked his social betters. "Dominant" goats attacked subordinate goats, which took it out on goats of a still lower social standing.

Dr. Scott also frustrated his goats by forcing pairs of them to compete for single helpings of grain.* There was lots of fighting, but the socially dominant goat was always the aggressor. The moral, according to Dr. Scott: "food frustration" does not encourage uppitiness, or foster goat revolution.

Can the findings be translated into human terms? Cautious Dr. Scott merely concludes that "feeding the hungry is a step in the promotion of peaceful living."

* Contrary to the widespread notion, goats cannot be fed on tin cans. But they can digest pure cellulose, and so might get nourishment from the labels.

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