`Scooby doo, I wanna be like you...I wanna walk like you, talk like you...'
It's everyone's dream isn't it to become a goat? Maybe not. But for conceptual designer Thomas Thwaites, it was a passion. So much so that he enlisted the help of Salford University to transform him into a goat, `hooves' and all.
Thwaites won an arts award from the Wellcome Trust, so that he could live with goats in the Swiss Alps, study their behaviour and even try to communicate with them. But to get really close up he wanted to become a goat.
He approached Dr Glyn Heath from the University of Salford's School of Health Sciences, and asked him to make a set of special goat-like artificial limbs, enabling him to roam around on all fours and closely mimic the animals' movements.
Dr Heath, a former zoologist, had previously created prosthetic limbs for cats, dogs and birds of prey and had once been invited to design a prosthetic for a giant panda but he admits, the goat request was a first.
"Thomas told me he was trying to replicate the behaviour of a goat as far as he could and as part of the project he asked me to try to make him walk in as much of a goat-like way as possible, so we looked at making prosthetic additions to his limbs" he explains
"I actually told him that if he wanted to move like any animal, I would recommend he tried to mimic a bear, because they are much closer to humans and put their entire feet on the ground but unfortunately his grant specified that it had to be a goat" Dr Heath adds "He was actually a very good practical engineer, and had also done a lot of research into how goats move, so he had a very clear idea about what he wanted."
On his website, Thomas Thwaites tries to explain why he needed to become a goat...
"I tried to become a goat to escape the angst inherent in being a human" he writes "The project became an exploration of how close modern technology can take us to fulfilling an ancient human dream: to take on characteristics from other animals. But instead of the ferocity of a bear, or the perspective of a bird, the characteristic most useful in modern life is something else; being present in the moment perhaps.
"Anyway I ended up in the Alps, on four legs, at a goat farm, with a prosthetic rumen strapped to my chest, eating grass, and becoming a goat" he adds.
The limbs were specially designed so Thwaites was able to walk putting his entire weight on artificial 'hooves', while they also had to be extra tough to withstand the harsh mountainous terrain.
"He later told me he got on fairly well" Dr Heath recalls "The only problem was keeping up with the goats as he couldn't walk as fast or as far as them and so had to limit it to a few hours every day."
Thomas Thwaites book about his experience of becoming a goat is out now, titled GoatMan: How I Took A Holiday From Being Human (Princeton Architectural Press),
Photographs by Tim Bowditch.
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