Two goats peering through a wire fence in sepia tone

Goats

2006viral videoclassic

Published August 25, 2026

Goats is the wave of viral goat videos that took off on YouTube in 2006 with fainting-goat clips and grew through 2014 with baby goats, Nathan Fielder hoaxes, and dedicated Tumblr blogs. Jezebel called that June 'the summer of goats,' when the animals briefly rivaled cats as the internet's favorite pets.

animal memes youtube viral pet video memes tumblr memes late 2000s memes

Overview

Goats became an unlikely category of viral internet star through the late 2000s and early 2010s, with YouTube clips of the domesticated animals racking up tens of millions of views apiece1. The appeal covered a wide range of goat behavior: the freeze-response of myotonic (fainting) goats, baby goats prancing around enclosures, and older goats getting into strange situations with fences, motorcycles, and bicycles1.

By mid-2014, the trend had its own dedicated online homes. The Tumblr Baby Goats and Friends was devoted entirely to goat content4, with related blogs like Daily Goat and Fuck Yeah Goats gathering under the same #goats tag3. Jezebel declared that June 'the summer of goats'2.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (viral spread on Tumblr and Facebook)
Date
2006

One of the earliest widely-shared internet goat videos came from YouTuber jimmywan87, who uploaded 'Fainting Goats' on January 25th, 20065. The clip showed myotonic goats, a breed whose muscles stiffen for several seconds when the animals get startled; it drew more than 20 million views over its first eight years, with a second early hit arriving that October when YouTuber Curt Briscar posted a goat repeatedly licking an electric fence for roughly 7.6 million more views3.

How It Spread

The format kept expanding through the early 2010s. On December 6th, 2010, the channel Giggle with the Goats uploaded a clip of baby goats prancing around an enclosure that cleared 8.7 million views, and in July 2012, Kathryn Harnish posted a video of a baby goat named Buttermilk knocking over other baby goats that hit 12.5 million within two years. That September, comedian Nathan Fielder staged 'Pig rescues baby goat,' in which a pig appeared to push a drowning goat to safety, later revealing on his Comedy Central show Nathan For You that the whole thing was a hoax3.

By 2014, Nerve was cataloguing an entire menagerie of viral goats: Curly panicking inside his own pen, Frostie learning to walk with a wheelcart, goats riding motorcycles and bicycles, and a depressed goat reunited with his donkey best friend1. On June 20th of that year, Jezebel published its 'summer of goats' piece, arguing the animals had taken the crown that cats had worn online for years2.

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