UK man takes break from being human to 'live as goat'

A jobless man from the U.K. decided to do something with his life and try to live life as one of the goats.

After the success of building a toaster "from scratch" and writing a book about it, Thomas Thwaites one day found himself out of a job and with a debt to pay. On top of all these, he was living with his father.

Feeling down about his circumstances, an idea occurred to him while he was walking a friend's dog. Looking at the generally happy, worry-free dog, Thwaites wondered how it would be like to live as a dog.

"It would be really great to be you for a day," he thought to himself as he watched the dog, Daily Mail reported.

However, he decided against the idea when he realized he doesn't like to eat meat. Then he wondered how it would be like to live as an elephant, but changed his mind again when he found out that elephants suffer from sadness and stress, the very things he wanted to stay away from.

A shaman advised him that he is spiritually closer to a goat than both animals, so he took the advice and learned more about goats.

"When I first had the idea a lot of people called me crazy, but I was fed up with my life anyway and I needed a break," he said. "I was jobless and I had a lot of personal problems, and I found everyday life so stressful."

He applied for and received a university grant to study goat psychology, and he contacted a goatherder in Switzerland who allowed him to live like one of the goats.

Thwaites stayed with the goats for three days, eating grass and wearing a specially designed helmet, a fake goat's stomach and prosthetic legs specially designed to mimic goats' legs. He said it was difficult to blend in at first, but after a while he was able to break into the group when a female goat befriended him. He spent another three days living on his own as a goat.

So what did he learn from living as a goat? Thwaites said he discovered that goats are "better people."

"They live much more in the moment than we do, and show us that we really do need to learn to be a bit more relaxed about life," he said. He wrote his experience in a book entitled, "GoatMan: How I Took a Holiday from Being Human."

At the end of the study, he decided it is better to live as a goatherder than as a goat, and he enjoyed eating human food again.