Here's the science behind the man who turned himself into a goat
Tim Bowditch
As he chronicles in detail in his book, "GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human" (out May 17), the process wasn't easy and required a lot of body-hacking science. Along the way, he consulted everyone from neurologists, to animal muscle specialists.
Here's how he managed to pull it off.
Altering the mind
First, he had to understand the mind of goats. So he met with a goat behavioral expert, who told him what goes on in a goat's brain. Unfortunately for Thwaites, who wanted to become worry-free, goats do tend to get anxious, he learned. He also learned about the goat's social behavior, as well as how clever they can be (one goat faked a limp to get out of an activity).
After that, he went about figuring out if he could turn off certain aspects that make him human. Thwaites met with a neuroscientist at the University College London to try and hack a system for temporarily shutting those parts off, particularly the Broca's area, which is related to speech. To Thwaites' dismay, the technology to turn off a person's ability to understand language isn't there yet.
Going from two to four-legged
Photo courtesy Tim Bowditch
At the same time, Thwaites also needed prosthetics to give him goat-like limbs, which he had built by a prosthetics clinic at the University of Salford. Transitioning from two to four legs puts a lot of pressure on the front limbs that can be pretty painful, so the team tried to do everything they could to make the goat legs as pain-free as possible, while also protecting Thwaites neck and back from getting damaged along the way.
Digesting grass
Photo courtesy Tim Bowditch
Thwaites considered swallowing a microbial mixture that would mimic the rumen and help him digest the grass, but he was told that would be unsafe; who knew what kind of bugs live in a goat's rumen that could potentially be harmful to a human's gut? Thwaites also considered using a chemical enzyme that would break down the grass, though that also presented some safety problems.
In the end, he built himself a pouch to collect the grass he grazed on during the day. Then at night he used a pressure cooker to cook the grass and break it down into a kind of "grass-stewy soup."
As much as technological advancements aided Thwaites' adventure, the shortcomings along the way were fairly disappointing. Thwaites told Business Insider that he'd eventually like to work on building a "kind of artificial rumen," but that'll likely take some time.
"I just think I'd like to continue iterating this thing to get to the dream to actually gallop," he said.
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