I gave up my life in London to become a goat in the mountains of Switzerland (6 photos + 1 video)
Tired of stress and city noise, Thomas Thwaites decided to live among the goats in Switzerland. He wanted to see where the grass was greener. The 35-year-old Londoner was so passionate about his original idea that he spent a year making prosthetics for moving on all fours, as well as an artificial stomach for "digesting" grass. And no matter how strange this idea may seem, Thomas' main goal was to get out of his comfort zone and look at the world from a different perspective. 
"A lot of people think I'm crazy. But I was fed up with my life and needed a break. I was unemployed, my relationships were not going well, and everyday life seemed like a real challenge. One day, I was walking my friend's dog and noticed that she seemed very happy and carefree. And I wanted to experience the same thing, at least for a day," Thomas shares.
He thought about becoming a dog, but he didn't want to eat meat. 
The adventurer wanted to become an elephant, but then he realized that they have the same problems as us: they get sad and can even suffer from post-traumatic stress.
With goats, it was much easier. After receiving a university grant to study goat psychology, Thomas contacted a goat farmer in the village of Wolfenschiessen in Switzerland. The man agreed to house the Briton for a few days while the animals were on a summer pasture.
He had to live like a goat, which meant walking on all fours and digesting grass. The researcher went to a prosthetics clinic in Manchester to create “goat legs.” And specialists from Aberystwyth University developed a goat “stomach” for him, which he could attach to his waist.
“I would strap this bag to my torso and spit out the chewed grass through one hole and drink probiotics and volatile fatty acids through the other, like a milkshake, so I could live on the grass in the Alps like a goat,” Thwaites explained. 
Life in the new role was inevitably fraught with difficulties.
"I was constantly falling down the slopes, and of course I had to eat grass. In addition, the goats did not accept me right away, sometimes it seemed to me that they wanted to attack me. And they have dangerous horns. Later I realized that they have a hierarchy, and I should know my place."
video-I gave up living in London
"I learned something important: even goats have a hard life, and they have to fight for their existence. And I also realized that goats are better than people. They live in the moment, and we really need to learn to take life easier," the Briton shared.
By the end of the experiment, Thomas even had a girlfriend: “The most wonderful moment was when one of the goats decided to be my friend and started following me around. She was rubbing her face and enjoying my company. The goat herder told me that the herd had accepted me.”
Twaits wrote a book about his adventure, “Goatman: How I Temporarily Stopped Being Human,” and received an Ig Nobel Prize, “for achievements that first make you laugh, and then make you think.”
