Excavations have found several wall paintings of the kri-kri from Minoan Crete. Some academics believe that this animal was worshiped on the island during antiquity. On the island the males are often called 'agrimi' (αγρίμι, 'the wild one'), while the name 'Sanada' is used for the female. The Kri-kri is a symbol of the island, although few tourists or even locals have ever seen one.

As molecular analyses demonstrate, the Kri-kri is not, as previously thought, a distinct subspecies of the wild goat. Rather, it is a feral domestic goat derived from the first stocks of domesticated goats in the Levant and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean around 8000-7500 BC. While this may affect its legal conservation status, the Kri-kri is an emblem of Crete, had an immense cultural significance in the history of that island and thus the preservation of what represents a nearly ten thousand year-old "snapshot" of the first domestication of goats should be considered valuable in its own right.