Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe CALCUTTA, India, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Those goats on Barren Island are not mystical seawater-drinking beasts after all, sheepish Indian researchers admitted Monday. The billies and nannies have thrived on a small, uninhabited 2-square mile volcanic island for more than a century, likely survivors of a shipwreck. Advertisement For decades, lore grew that the animals had become capable of surviving on briny sea water, making them ideal candidates as a food source for India's arid inland where fresh water costs more than gasoline, the Calcutta Telegraph reported. But Dornadula Chandrasekharam, professor of earth sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology spent three nights on the island with three other geologists, two from Italy, for the first-ever detailed geological exploration of Barren Island. Their discovery was the goats are normal, a century's worth of stories are wrong, and the island has, in fact, two freshwater springs.
