I have had it with the anti-vaxers and their belief that humans are dumber then sheep and are mindless followers of what ever numbskull suggests a new trend.
IT AIN'T SO !
I have been raising them for many a decade and know them well. They are so intelligent they have figured out to hide it from the average human, esp the un-vaxed ones.
I even have science on my debate team.
" Professor Jenny Morton, neuroscientist, tested the sheep with a series of spatial memory trials normally carried out on humans with Huntingdon’s. Different coloured buckets were placed in front of the sheep, with one colour always filled with food, so the sheep learned to associate a certain colour with food. They adapted quickly when the colour was changed and when the buckets changed shape, proving that they can recognise different patterns and change their behaviour accordingly.
While these kinds of trials are easy for humans and other primates, most animals struggle because the task relies on the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is larger and more developed in humans.
Previous studies have also shown that sheep can identify when another is lost in their flock, display emotional responses, mentally map out their surroundings, respond to their names, and recognize human faces.
“In a flock they’re rather silly,” Professor Morton said. “When you work with them as individuals, they behave very differently.”
Jumpin' Jehoshaphat !
Sounds like some bipeds we know!
So bear with me and you will get your visual award (treat)!
1) Naturally, sheep like most animals, are able to learn and recognize their own names.
2) In Great Britain, on the Yorkshire Moors, sheep farmers report that sheep have learned how to get across cattle guards on their own. They don’t do it by carefully balancing on the bars with their tiny hooves. Instead, they lie down beside the cattle guards and then roll across them.
3) Sheep subjected to memory testing have been found to have the ability to remember and recognize familiar human faces. They also seem to be able to distinguish one sheep from another and to remember as many as fifty individuals for as long as two years.
4) Not only can sheep recognize life human faces, they can also recognize pictures of human faces. Furthermore, they can tell the difference
between human facial expressions and like happy expressions better than sad or angry expressions.
see:
5) The fact of the matter is, sheep travel in flocks and stick together as a defense mechanism. This behavior has nothing to do with their intelligence. When casually observed in a peaceful pastoral setting, sheep actually exhibit the ability to solve problems, build lasting relationships, defend their friends and display signs of sorrow when those friends are taken off to slaughter.
( I know that to be so.)
6) Sheep have unique rectangular pupils that allow them amazing peripheral vision - it’s estimated that their field of vision is between 270 and 320 degrees! Humans, in comparison, average 155 degrees.
( This can make it pain to get them from place to place - good dogs help)
7) They self medicate! Sheep who aren’t feeling well have been known to seek out plants and substances that make them feel better. In winter my flock goes crazy for soft pine needles like balsamic for the vitamin C. You get some interesting blue spots on the snow after they strip a Christmas tree to bare bark.
8) Sheep have more Omega-3’s when fed from biologically diverse pastures. Ever wonder why we lost in Afghanistan? We fed our troops for 20 years on chicken MacNuggets and the locals were munching on sheep and goat.
8) As to human relationships, I give the floor to the volunteers at Wikipedia:
" Sheep husbandry spread quickly in Europe. Excavations show that in about 6000 BC, during the Neolithic period of prehistory, the Castelnovien people, living around Châteauneuf-les-Martigues near present-day Marseille in the south of France, were among the first in Europe to keep domestic sheep.
Practically from its inception, ancient Greek civilization relied on sheep as primary livestock, and were even said to name individual animals. Ancient Romans kept sheep on a wide scale, and were an important agent in the spread of sheep raising. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (Naturalis Historia), speaks at length about sheep and wool.[European colonists spread the practice to the New World from 1493 onwards.
The exact line of descent between domestic sheep and their wild ancestors is unclear. The most common hypothesis states that Ovis aries is descended from the Asiatic (O. gmelini) species of mouflon; the European mouflon (Ovis aries musimon) is a direct descendant of this popuation.Sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated by humankind (although the domestication of dogs may have taken place more than 20,000 years earlier); the domestication date is estimated to fall between 11,000 and 9,000 B.C in Mesopotamia and possibly around 7,000 B.C. in Mehrgarh in the Indus Valley. The rearing of sheep for secondary products, and the resulting breed development, began in either southwest Asia or western Europe.:
From en.m.wikipedia.org/…
My flock was "made in America" from a mix of bloodlines. ( well Golly Gee - sounds like the American Immigration story ) For the back story see:
www.unitedhornedhairsheepassociation.org/…
So, the next time you read a comment from a Covid denier, an anti-vaxer, an anti-masker or a Southern State Govenour just remember not one of them is smarter or wiser them a common ruminating sheep.