ABSTRACT
Sheep and goats are among the earliest animals domesticated by mankind (Zeder 2009). Both goats and sheep may have made better candidates for domestication than other animals like deer because they follow a single dominant leader, the herdsman (Geist 1971). They now have a nearly ubiquitous worldwide distribution, and they are among the most abundant of all commensal animals. However, they have also become some of the most widespread invasive feral mammals, particularly on the 100 or more islands throughout the world where they have been introduced, causing severe damage to island ecosystems, in some cases for hundreds of years (Rudge 1984; Chynoweth 2013). Problems caused by feral goats and sheep are a subset of the larger problem of domestic livestock and natural systems. Feral goats are perhaps more widespread than feral sheep because goats have not been as highly modified by the process of domestication (Francis 2015).
