If you’re wondering why that goat up there has an employee ID, well, it’s exactly what it looks like. Mikiyagi and other fellow goats actual “work” at Amazon Japan!

But don’t worry, these guys aren’t in charge of taking care of your orders or anything crazy like that. According to Kotaku, the goats are brought in weekly to mow the lawn and eat weeds. It’s a neat little way of saving power and minimizing pollution by letting goats do their thing and it still gets the job done without the need for lawn mowers.

Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku also adds that Amazon Japan isn’t even the first company to do this, with reports dating back to 2009 saying that Google does the exact same thing. Here’s the official Google blog post made back then:

At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we’re not “kidding”). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

I’m sure Amazon Japan probably thought the same thing. And yes, goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

[via Kotaku, TechCrunch]