Apparently, being retired allows me to think more profoundly about the more intangible aspects of things. Watching the little cottontails around our lot gave me pause to consider: we never see one fully-grown, yet they are proliferating, most adults look about 3/4 grown, at most. Something is consuming the little guys almost certainly. What means of defense have they, I considered. Only alertness, speed, and color blending in with the Desert surroundings. They cannot "fight back" in self-defense. The "walking-stick" insect I posted: safe due to appearance. Brown color, nothing to attract even a hungry goat, or perhaps insect-eating predators. Birds, flight. Large carnivores, ability to stave off all except human-inspired bullets. Plants? Entire 'nother story. Hold up some sprig of greenery to a goat. It will rush forward greedily, sniff quickly, then consume the morsel immediately. But, if that greenery is Oleander, which contains toxic substances even though it is prettily green, the goat eagerly sniffs, only once, then reacts as though it received a violent electric shock by quickly recoiling away from the plant. How does it know? Supposedly, instinct, a rather imponderable subject by itself. It is generally said (whether true, I dunno) that goats are fairly immune to snake venom; horses are not. Apparently, Nature has provided the means by which living things "control", as best they can, their natural predators. Human beings? Imponderable to the point of intangible: our natural predators likely are microbes, parasites bent on using us as hosts, but then, too, their are people who prey upon people....... Frank
That is an interesting topic, Frank. One I've spent a lot of time "pondering." We had rabbits all over the place in the country here until the coyotes moved in. I saw one rabbit last year, around the barn. I wish coyotes could control the squirrel population instead. As to goats, I once read a long literature review about how goats know what plants they can eat and which are poisonous. It was mostly above my head, but there were many different theories and it seemed to be a combination of things. I've watched our goats going through a new area with many unfamiliar plants, and they would nibble little bits of all the new things, even poison stuff. That theory is they learn gradually by the reaction to it, before it gets at a toxic level. I remember when our goats were first exposed to kudzu. They acted like they were afraid of it and barely touched it. Gradually it became their favorite plant. One exception is wilted wild cherry tree leaves. They never seem to learn not to eat those. It has a sweet taste they say, cyanide maybe. Is that sweet? I've never tried it. lol
@Nancy Hart We got a goat when we first moved to Phoenix, an acre of irrigated ground, grasses, weeds, etc. In the back yard was a giant bush: Pyrancantha, aka "Firethorn". It produced thousands of tiny orange fruits, intermingled with the leaves, all parts of the plant heavily thorned with very sharp spikes. That bush was one of our goat's favorites! I thought he would injure his mouth, but it didn't happen! I looked and looked, but found only a sheep eating the stuff; will that do?
That picture is just fine @Frank Sanoica. A lot of ornamental plants are not good for goats---azaleas, rhododendrons. A bad weed is black nightshade. It comes in hay bales here sometimes, and the seed are then dispersed. On a confined pasture goats eat everything that's *not* poison, and that allows the poison stuff to thrive and take over. Pretty soon all that's left is poison stuff. Goats in the wild, not confined to a pasture, would graze over a large range, and keep moving around, so that doesn't happen.
Alder is one of the plants here that the goats would normally not touch. Same goes for moose. In the spring hoever, after a long, hard winter the goats would eat alder. It was one of the first plants to green up in the spring. We coudl alwasy tell when the goats were eating alder, as the red underbark would stain their lips. It made it look like all the goats were wearing red lipstick.
Our goats looked like that after eating pokeweed when the berries were ripe. Some say poke is poisonous to livestock. It never seemed to hurt ours. What about Poke Salad Annie?
@Nancy Hart I believe is was "Poke Sallet Annie"........by Tony Joe White, 1968. You knew that........ Frank
No, Frank, I didn't. I learned something. According to the lyrics it was something like turnip greens and Annie cooked a mess of it for supper. So what was it?
@Nancy Hart On Tony Joe White: "His roots lie in the swamplands of Oak Grove, Louisiana, where he was born in 1943. Situated just west of the Mississippi River, it's a land of cottonfields, where pokeweed, or "poke” grows wild, and alligators lurk in moss-covered swamps. "I spent the first 18 years of my life down there", said White. "My folks raised cotton and corn. There were lotsa times when there weren't too much to eat, and I ain't ashamed to admit that we've often whipped up a mess of poke sallet. Tastes alright too — a bit like spinach."[3] "Sallet" is an old English word that means "cooked greens",[4] not to be mistaken for "salad"; in fact, a great many cases of pokeweed poisoning result from this linguistic mistake.[citation needed] While it may be that record companies labeled the song "salad", the dish in question was a "sallet" made of pokeweed." From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polk_Salad_Annie