Why do goats eat almost everything?

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No: the goat does not eat “everything”. Its reputation comes from its very mobile and prehensile lips, which it uses to explore each object within its reach – cardboard, textiles, bark – without necessarily ingesting it. Nutritionally, it is a selective grazer, favoring leaves, buds and young shoots of woody trees rather than low grass.

An exploring mouth, not a universal stomach

The goat's thin and very mobile lips, combined with an agile tongue, serve as its main tactile organ: it feels, nibbles and tests the texture of an object before deciding whether it is edible. This oral investigation behavior, inherited from its wild ancestor living in steep rocky environments, explains why we see it “tasting” paper or fabric without digesting them.

Unlike the sheep, a grass grazer, the goat is classified among the species with a browsing tendency: it actively seeks out woody foliage, thorny shrubs and soft bark, even if it means standing up on its hind legs to reach the high branches. This dietary selectivity, documented by INRAE and FAO, allows it to choose the protein-rich parts of a plant rather than indiscriminately ingesting all available vegetation.

Goat overgrazing and degradation of arid zones

This preference for woody plants becomes problematic when the herds are too dense or poorly managed: the young shoots of shrubs and shrubs, essential for the regeneration of the vegetation, are grazed before they can develop. The FAO and forestry services document this phenomenon in arid and pre-desert areas, particularly in Tunisia where goat overgrazing is identified by the Directorate General of Forests as an aggravating factor in desertification and soil erosion, by compromising the natural regeneration of shrub cover.

Published on 14 August 2026 · Updated on 17 August 2026

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