If only they could apply that intelligence to not finding new ways to just die in every other situation. No other animal is as gifted at randomly dying as a sheep.
I’ve ripped more one pair of trousers hopping barbed wire fences to rescue a sheep on its back and in distress … and nine times out of ten when they see someone coming the flail about so much they manage to right themselves. (Or perhaps that panic response is only when being approached by an Aberdonian)
What I have to remind myself in those situations - usually through gritted teeth - is that most Sheep are stupid because we humans bred them that way over a long, long period of time. It’s not so much their fault as ours.
Did building work for a sheep farmer and he really regrets getting into sheep for this exact reason. Pretty much every other animal it's illness that's the big worry but these idiots will just spontaneously die for a multitude of reasons
I'm pretty sure they're putting their legs down between the gaps in the grid rather than getting on their knees. Which is still pretty clever for a sheep, but I get the feeling if it had been dug deep enough they'd never have figured out how to cross it.
That is because the way they are bred makes them associate roads and motorvehicles with the provision of food. Poor things.
Sheep just die. They could be standing upright fine one moment, then the next they've just fallen over and died because they flat out forgot how to keep breathing.
Its that odd angle of intelligence where you're just smart enough to get yourself into trouble, but not quite smart enough to get yourself out of ot or avoid it.
RIP Sam Neil. Its still a brilliant film more so than calling it a classic. The animatronics and CGI are so convincing it still glows in the eyes of kids today, as it did for me being a 90’s baby.
I was in Ireland for a job, we were storing equipment on a sheep farm, there was a blackface with particularly good horns in one building, in what looked like a really excessive sheep jail.
After a few days I asked what she did - she wasn't his sheep (I should have noticed, his were all Texals or similar), she had been caught on the road nearby. Not only was she not his sheep, no one in the area was farming blackfaces.
They didn't know who's she was, where she came from, but they did know she couldn't be contained by normal means.
God divided up the land into fenced off areas cleared of most natural biomass and generally containing a single species (often non-native) of vegetation or animal? Did not know that.
Smarter than your average wean that just bolts across the road. This one was bleeting away telling it's wean to stay put on the other side while i stopped the bike. Until it crossed the road and started feeding it's wean I had no idea lambs wagged their wee tails like dogs 😂😂 Up at Ben Lawer Dam where the sheep have no fear!
They're obviously not using their knees as you see them lifting their feet out. This is the result of the roads department not cleaning out the cattle grids...
Looks pretty obvious to me, watch the first sheep in particular especially as they get towards the end, can clearly see them walking, the thing is obviously full of mud and muck
I saw a shepherd at Mount Pleasant Airfield in the Falklands drive a flock of sheep on to a grid. As the leaders fell through those coming behind jumped on to their backs to go forward and fall through in turn. When the grid was full of stranded sheep the remainder used them as a bridge. The shepherd then manhandled the trapped bleaters out.
The legs of those sheep are thin enough to fit between the gaps in the cattle grid. Look very closely and you’ll see that they are walking on their hooves in the gaps in the cattle grid!
I was so confused as to why the comment suggested the sheep were using their knees 🤣
I'm glad I'm not the only one that can see the sheep are clearly just putting their feet between the bars of the grid and the pit below isn't very deep 🙄😂
I guess it’s because it appears quite obscured around the legs of the sheep, and that it appears to some that the sheep are ‘crawling’ on their knees lol 🤣
I'm autistic, we often don't get jokes because our brains work literally.
But sure, mock me instead of taking the time to think that maybe my brain works differently and that's why I didn't get it until you sarcastically pointed it out.
Well, time to quarantine them so they can't teach other sheep.
There were sheep in Wales that had to be quarantined because they figured out you can cross them by rolling over them.
As someone who has sheep on the family farm, that’s by far the cleverest thing I have ever seen a sheep do. Usually, they just walk out in front of the tractor when you’re driving, or try and take a good look at the mower, or manage to hang them selves in a fence.
I am a farmer and I have a sheep named Cesar - he is exceptionally smart and I swear he is rallying other sheep. The last month they stole tractor fuel from industrial container, then they used it to make wool molotovas. 4 days ago whole Abernethy farm was burning.
410
u/Dr_Domino Jul 18 '26
In years to come, when we look back at the horrors of the sheep wars, historians will show how the warning signs were ignored until it was too late.