Mauro Belloni, a student visiting from Italy who had stopped at Benaddi’s tree, looks both stunned and baffled as he takes in the scene. “It’s quite amazing,” he says. "I thought the goats were fake when I saw photos of them. But they're real—they’re actually posing.” These animals are being manipulated and exploited,” she says. “They're not moving freely. They don't have access to food, water, or even shade. Being forced to stay in trees for hours is not a normal behavior." ‘Flying goats’

The organization evaluates animal welfare according to five domains: nutrition (access to food and water), environment (comfort), health (freedom from pain and injuries), behavior (freedom to express natural habits), and mental state (psychological well-being). Goats forced to climb trees for the pleasure of tourists were maltreated in all five, Cabrera Holtz says. Using goats as aerial eye candy is good “for attracting tourists,” Fedriani says, “but it's not good for the trees at all.” Benaddi’s argan tree is second in line out of Marrakech. He hopes that when drivers pull over, they’ll leave a generous tip. “Some people pay 10 dirhams [about a dollar],” he says. Some even give 10 dollars. “It’s not like selling potatoes—there’s not one set price.” Benaddi says the money is crucial for caring for his wife, five children, and animals—two sheep and a donkey as well as the goats. Take bear dancing in India, Bergin says. Formerly, cubs were poached from the wild and trained to dance on the streets for tourists. In 2012, India’s government condemned the practice as cruel and made it possible for bear owners to take jobs in sanctuaries for the animals. Goats simply can’t digest the fruit’s seed, no matter how much they enjoy eating it. Their munching on them, though, strips away the skin and fruit. They then swallow the seed or spit it out, meaning a clean, spit-out seed or one that’s passed through their digestive system and been “softened.”When you travel the world, you’ll find all kinds of interesting animals doing unexpected things. If you’re an animal lover, you’ll set your sights on destinations like Australia, where sugar gliders swoop through the air and quokkas snuggle up to visitors on Rottnest Island in the hopes of getting some fresh greens from the Melaleuca bush tops nearby. But the rest of the world has some pretty interesting animal situations, too, including the tree-climbing goats of Morocco. Why Do Moroccan Goats Climb Trees? Asma Kamili, the head of Morocco’s Animal Health Division for the World Organization for Animal Health, says she isn’t aware that goats in the Essaouira region are put in trees to earn tourism dollars. She says climbing trees is “a natural behavior” of the animals and is good for argans because if goats eat the fruit and disperse seeds in their feces, that increases the number of trees. While the activity might appear to be benign, it is animal cruelty,” she says. Tourists, she adds, “are essentially getting photos of living props. What’s going on here is not natural. It’s coerced, and any time you introduce an element of coercion, it’s not relevant whether their bodies can manage to stand on trees.” Tourism is another primary reason you’ll see goats in the trees. Farmers formerly encouraged them to jump up so they could do their part in “cleaning” the argan seeds, but now it’s more about keeping tourists coming to see the uniquely behaving quadrupeds and their happy munching. Many of the farmers charge for a variety of things, like taking photos, posing with the goats, and so on. Tour buses bring in groups to see the goats and the tour companies give a stipend or tip to farmers for allowing them to bring sightseers by for the stop on the way to other Moroccan destinations. If you want to see the tree climbing goats, you’ll have to travel to the Souss-Massa-Draa region, in the southwestern part of Morocco. Most visitors pass through this area on their way to Essaouira or Agadir, which are beautiful destinations for any Morocco itinerary.

If you want to see authentic goats that climb trees of their own free will, I encourage you to scout the area with a good local guide who can take you farther away from the main road. After all, the reason we think tree goats are so cute isprecisely because they do it naturally . This natural phenomenon is unique to North Africa. The goats are attracted to the Argan fruit which grows mainly in southwestern part of Morocco and western Algeria The best time to see goats climbing on trees in Morocco is in late spring, early summer (May – June), when Argan fruits are ripe. FAQ To see these critters climbing the branches of the Argania tree, you’ll first trek to Morocco, generally via one of the larger cities that has an airport for easy access. Once you’re in-country, you’ll need to head to the Souss-Massa-Draa region south of Marrakech. There are popular tourist destinations in the area that you’ll enjoy visiting as well, including Agadir, Essaouira, and the fortified market city of Taroudant. Jose Fedriani, an ecologist with the Desertification Research Centre, an institute in Spain that’s dedicated to the study of environmental degradation in dry lands, agrees that seed dispersal is a good thing. But he says the goats aren’t just eating fruit; they’re devouring leaves and seedlings. It takes from seven to 15 years for argans to reach maturity and produce fruit, so putting several goats in an area where they can destroy the seedlings—especially during droughts—actually prevents tree rejuvenation.Nine separate herds, including Benaddi’s, can be seen adorning trees along the roughly hundred-mile road from ancient Marrakech to Essaouira, a bright, breezy city on the Atlantic coast that’s popular with tourists. The goats generally stand from late morning to mid-afternoon, when traffic is heaviest between the two cities. Goats in trees also can be seen farther south, near Agadir in the Souss-Massa region.