The myotonic goat or Tennessee fainting goat is an American breed of meat goat. It is characterised by myotonia congenita, a hereditary condition that may cause it to stiffen or fall over when startled. It may also be known as the fainting goat, falling goat, stiff-legged goat or nervous goat, or as the Tennessee wooden-leg goat. Four goats of this type were brought to Tennessee in the 1880s.
Myotonic goats tend to be less preferred for sustainable meat production.
The myotonic goat is important in history for researching and clarifying the role of chloride in muscle excitation.
Fainting goats were first brought to Marshall County, Tennessee, in the 1880s.
The fainting was first described in the scientific literature in 1904 and described as a “congenital myotonia” in 1939. The mutation in the goat gene that causes this muscle stiffness was discovered in 1996, several years after the equivalent gene had been discovered in humans and mice.
The experiments of Brown and Harvey in 1939 with the myotonic goat made a major contribution to the understanding of the physiological basis of this condition and influenced many other theories of myotonia and its causes.
In 2019 its conservation status was listed as “at-risk” in the DAD-IS database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.