Study Finds Canarian Goats Have Remained Unchanged for Centuries

Goats on Lanzarote and the Canaries are genetically identical to the livestock kept by the aboriginal inhabitants of the islands; a study has found.

Clara Diaz of the university of La Laguna in Tenerife analysed hundreds of archaeological samples of goat remains to establish that Canarian goats, unlike sheep and pigs and human beings on the islands remain unchanged from the pre-conquest era.

This shows that the goats are perfectly adapted to conditions on the islands. Attempts to introduce strains from Europe were a failure.

Diaz says the findings show that the Canarian goat is a “living time capsule” and contrasted the results with those of sheep.

Canarian sheep were originally a hairy species adapted to the island’s arid conditions, but attempts to cross-breed them with wool-producing sheep led to both strains dying out. Most sheep currently found on the Canaries are a hairy variety which was imported from Venezuela in the 1950s, and are distant descendants of the original hairy sheep from the Canaries which were taken across the Atlantic centuries ago.