4 Questions for Thomas Thwaites, author of GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human
Where did the idea for your project come from?Â
It was a time when I was getting a bit depressed about being a human beingâsort of existential crisis meets very practical stressors, so I thought I would try and take a holiday from being a human. And I think itâs a fairly common wish, at least amongst children. If I only I could be a cat so I wouldnât have to go to work/school⌠And then I managed to convince someone (The Wellcome Trust) to fund this attempt at wish fulfillment.Â
Why did you choose a goat as your target animal?Â
Well, at the beginning of the project I was going to become an elephant. This was for practical reasons, in that as a quadruped, one has to be able to get oneâs food to oneâs mouth easilyâŚor vice versa. So all grazing quadrupeds have a neck in proportion to the length of their legs, so they can eat from the ground. I could imagine how I could adjust my limbs with prosthetics so I could become a quadruped, but I couldnât imagine how to adjust the length of my neck. So I thought whatâs a grazing animal which has a short neck, and the only one is an elephant. Of course, it has a trunk instead of a long neck.Â
However, I had the opportunity to see elephants in the wild, and came back, troubled by what I saw. Theyâre quite violent, and sort of sad. They have complex social arrangements. They mourn their dead. I came back, not wanting to be an elephant because I thought it might be depressing.Â
So I went to see a Shaman and she took one look at me and said: âYouâre an idiot. Of course you shouldnât be trying to be an elephant. What have you got to do with Elephants? You should be a goat.â And she was right. Being a goat is so much better. So short answer: a Shaman told me to do it.Â
What was the hardest thing about trying to become a goat?Â
Bodies are really heavy, in general I mean. So making prosthetic machines that would let me walk on four legs, when imagining and designing them, you imagine bounding along in them, but when you actually try to do that you realise how heavy your body is. The NHS prostheticist who made me my front leg prototypes said that often thatâs the first thing an amputee will say about their new prosthetic leg: âitâs so heavyâ, when actually with modern materials a prosthetic will weigh less than the part itâs replacing. But of course you donât consider how heavy your hand is when you move your arm, or how heavy your foot is when you move your leg. But when you take the weight of your body on your front legs and youâre not used to it, itâs a struggle. Especially when youâre heading down hill, head first. Basically, I could be a goat for as long as I wanted if I only had to go uphill. Going down the steep rocky slopes of the Alps was terrifying.Â
What did you learn by becoming a goat?Â
 In practical terms, I learnt that being a goat, you quite quickly learn to judge whether a particular patch of grass is worth eating or not. You get a feel for the colour, density, and thickness of the blades, and from that whether itâs going to be good to eat. I also learnt that eating grass gives you worms.⨠In a deeper spiritual sense, in trying to adopt the perspective of another creature, it made me very aware of my own perspective: In that my own perspective, as a secular liberal, is just one of many. And that it might even not be the ârightâ one. What I am trying to say is that in attempting to adopt another perspective on life, you learn both how rigid, and flexible, your own perspective is.
GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human by Thomas Thwaites is on sale now.
Listen to Thomas Thwaites on NPR
Watch Thomas Thwaites on BBC Breakfast
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