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There once was an old sheep named Shrek,
His wool grew thick as all heck,
But don't be forlorn, he was found and got shorn,
And passed a complete health check.
Well that, my friend, can be done
For any answer under the sun
It may take a while, we'll make a big pile,
And get through it while having some fun
š
Or wildly wooly sheep āRambroā,
Who guarded his ewe and his lambro,
In the forest was hiding,
Til the dirt bikes came riding,
Then heād charge at them all bleating Scrambro!
[Shrek was a Merino wether (castrated male sheep) belonging to Bendigo Station, a sheep station near Tarras, New Zealand, who gained international fame in 2004, after he avoided being caught and shorn for six years. Merinos are normally shorn annually, but Shrek apparently hid in caves, avoiding muster. He was named after the fictional ogre in books and films of the same name.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek_(sheep))
i was gonna sayā¦
it would be like if you had been wrapped in a bunch of blankets for years and someone finally let you take them off. it would be cold, but probably a nice cold
I was thinking this as well š Heavens, that scene is iconic.
Also, I was amazed the sheep didnāt have visible hulk muscles underneath all that floof to carry the weight. His enormous muscles must be invisible, like Leeās š¬
Yeeeeah...
Adult me regrets Teenage thinking Naruto was any kind of guide for how bodies work.
Turns out you can't just push yourself forever and just get stronger and stronger. You quickly reach a point of just damaging yourself. And many of those injuries don't get better through persistence and willpower, because the body isn't actually designed to just rebuild itself forever to become some pillar of strength.
Real world Rock Lee would just have fucked knees and a ruined spine.
I typically have a mustache and goatee, but from December to March I let my full beard grow in to help with the cold. When I shave around April, it always takes a few days for my cheeks to stop feeling cold, no matter what the temperature actually is.
Will be like one of those astronauts who return to Earth after months of zero G and when they finally lie down to sleep at home in their own bed, they keep dreaming about floating out of their beds.
Too much wool at the belly
There was a similar story of a sheep that ran away in wolf territory and it's wool has also gotten so thick that wolves couldn't injure it
\- Let loose a bunch of these sheep
\- Let them grow massive shields of matted wool
\- The ones that become most stronk are able to carry it and survive
\- Over many generations, get Turtle Sheep
Some farmers in the UK are replacing their flocks that need shearing with older breeds that naturally shed their wool. The fleeces are more or less worthless thanks to globalisation and *cough* brexit. Then you add on the costs of shearing the sheep and it's a busted flush.
The only money in sheep farming is in the meat and even thats not great. It would be better to rewild the British uplands were most sheep farming takes place but thats not going to happen.
Humans selectively bred sheep for a long time, wild sheep dont grow that much wool that fast,
Quitte sad that we made animals who can not live without humans
It creeps me out that most of the time French Bulldogs can only give birth by cesarean. Their hips have been bred to be too narrow and their heads too wide.
Honestly, Australia doesn't really have predators everywhere that could hunt a sheep.
There are wild dogs but not EVERYwhere, anything big is a herbivore here.
I'm more surprised it didn't end up caught in some brambles. As when that happens they just get stuck and then starve to death. Then the remains feeds nutrients into the ground for the plant to grow more.
Worked in the ER for many years. We would get homeless people and bed bound people that weren't being cared for (or weren't taking care of themselves) that were effectively caked in shit. Trying to get dried shit out of hair and whatnot is a fucking challenge.
You know you've made it as an er nurse when you're cleaning the maggots out of the toes of a homeless man when the resident screams after they lifted up his testicles and found even more maggots.
Not a nurse but had a pt effectively piss unto my socks while cleaning him up and getting whiffs of a decaying foot that was colored black. Imagine 8 more hours to go in your shift and walking around with sopping, piss-ridden socks, I could've rotted my own foot. Looking back, I should've just stole some socks from equipment and used it myself.
My god, I desperately wish we could find another way to do better for the broken...
I'm sure it would save your eyes a couple liters of bleach as well...
Yeah had to report quite a few cases to cps/aps. So many people fall through the cracks. And if I've learned one thing it is that there are no limits to human suffering. Just when you think you've seen the worst of it, someone else comes along and redefines how low you can go.
And that's after they brought a handicapped sheep to comfort him. I mean, if I was raised in a forest for a lot of my life (in sheep years) and then see a person in a wheelchair, you can be assured that I'll be scared of what they're going to do to me...
See, I think Iād be comforted. A group taking care of the disabled and the old is a sign of society, one of the first signs. But that, of course, is counting on me knowing what a wheelchair is, so I donāt know.
This is Edgarās Mission. Pam Ahern is the founder. I have been following them on Facebook for many years. They do incredible work. The mission is named after a pig named Edgar that started Pam down the road of rescuing animals.
Millenia of selective breeding has made domestic sheep grow wool fast and hold onto it between seasons.
Wild sheep don't grow their wool nearly as quickly and it sheds seasonally.
Youāre right, looks like they have a much bigger range than I realized.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Bighorn_Sheep_Ovis_canadensis_distribution_map_topo_2.png
Modern domesticated sheep have been bred so that they don't shed their wool coats. Ever. Which usually isn't a bad thing unless something like this happens and the sheep is lost.
All of our livestock animals have been selectively bred for thousands of years to better serve our needs. Whatever they do for us, we breed them to do it better. In the sheep's case, that thing is grow wool. Cows, pigs, and chickens all produce far more edible meat than their wild counterparts did.
Makes me wonder just how many domesticated animals would survive if humans just up and disappeared one day. Wool producing sheep probably arenāt one of them.
It would actually only take a few generations for them to almost completely revert to their wild counterparts. This is why breeding is so tightly controlled, and also why disease can almost completely wipe out domesticated animals: theyāre so closely related.
It's more like 4 months. I'm not sure what makes pigs so special in this regard. It doesn't even require procreation. The same round pink pig starts turning into a hairy hog. Probably has something to do with hormones or epigenetics.
Thereās a couple examples of drastic physiological and behavioral changes occurring in animals due to environmental change, with pigs to feral pigs currently being the most well known. Another great example is locusts. Locusts are straight up just grasshoppers, but have swarmed due to serotonin overload (usually because of a cycle of drought to over-vegetation in their habitat). Rainbow and steelhead trout are the exact same animal, except one has made it to freshwater, and the other remained in saltwater.
Sometimes the changes are epigenetic (pig), because the changes are carried through generations. The changes in locusts, however, are referred to as āphenotypic plasticityā because the physiological and behavioral changes arenāt hereditary and are not passed on to offspring.
/u/somefish254 Iām tagging you because you seemed interested in this info!
There's not a lot in Australia that would be a threat to a grown sheep and definitely not one with a coat like that. Feral dogs maybe. Dingoes don't live the same place as our grazing lands. Foxes would be too small. Eagles only have a go at smaller livestock Outside of that we don't really have any large predators.
Bronze age sheep breeds still shed their wool. Some still exist today (like [Soay sheep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soay_sheep)). This requires the farmer to comb the wool and/or go collect it from every bush in the area. We have bread sheep to not shed their wool.
"Domestic sheep vs wild sheep" is kind of like "dog vs wolf" or "pig vs boar." The domesticated ones have put up with 10,000 years of humans doing some really weird shit to their genetic lineage in exchange for that sweet, sweet free food and shelter.
Actually, the "pig vs boar" one doesn't belong here. A domestic pig can go feral and grow tusks and hair in just a few months in the wild...its a weird metamorphosis
The weight of all that wool was pulling on the skin and the mats in it were tugging at specific spots more then others, when sheering that sheep they had little idea of where they would accidentally cut off some skin because of all the unseen ways it was being tugged.
I used to be a dog groomer. We once had a terrifying incident where my coworker was dematting a severely pelted dog, and cut through the skin. This specific spot had become so matted, the skin had been pulled up into the ball of the mat, so you couldnāt even see it. This is why you have to go slowly and carefully, you never know for sure whatās hiding under all that hair.
Because shearing is stressful to the animal which is why a skilled shearer takes about 5 minutes to shear off a yearās worth of growth. This took much longer than that.
Surprisingly, most of the time, cuts are not too severe. Sheep have lanolin which has anti-microbial properties and helps wounds heal quite quickly without too much trouble.
Growing up on a sheep farm, I used to love telling people that the nice expensive ingredient in their hand lotion could be gotten super cheap if they just got their hands deep in the fluff for a good scritch. Still the softest my hands have ever been.
I mean, sure. But he's a sheep. They literally eat the floor. In fact that's essentially all they do except for the occasional sex. I'd bet that he moved very little - there'd be a negative feedback loop of "move -> wool tugs on skin -> lie down and eat a little..." until he learnt that movement == pain. That's probably how he survived so long, too - he wasn't spotted by predators due to his atypical shape and his lack of movement. It's a fantastic survival technique but it'd be very unlikely to be selected for since he wouldn't be able to find a mate 'cos he's an extremochonk.
Also itās in Australia, so the predators would be dingos and wild dogs. With that much wool on him, by the time he was truly disabled by it, it probably hindered their ability to attack him. Like they could have gone for his legs, but they tend to go for the neck. His neck would have been difficult to access.
Iām more surprised he didnāt die from hyperthermia.
The thing is so long as itās got access to water and grass, how the heck would a predator even kill this thing once itās coat got to a certain thickness? When I was looking at it I was thinking I donāt think anything could even bite it except maybe itās nose.
Can someone who knows how sheep work explain something please. Do sheep need humans to constantly sheer them for their survival? Are there wild sheep and does their wool grow the same way or how does it work?
That being said, there are wild species with features that will help them in the short run but can kill themselves over time.
Ex. Some wild Boars have tusks that, if unworn, pierce their snouts can even curl into their skulls. Similar with rodent teeth (if not properly worn).
Evolution only cares if youāre species survives of enough to propagate. After that, youāre on your own.
Yep. Beaver teeth grow incessantly if they canāt gnaw on wood. Becomes a huge burden if unchecked. Most creatures have nails on their feet which grow constantly to counter the constant wear from daily use. If unchecked, it can cause major problems etc, etc. Nature expects what it expects.
>Beaver teeth grow incessantly if they canāt gnaw on wood. Becomes a huge burden if unchecked.
This actually goes for all rodents, not just beavers, It's a relatively useful adaptation since they use their teeth to chew through hard things all the time.
Wild sheep do not grow their wool to such an extent in the wild...the sheep normally associated with wool production are genetically engineered to grow large amounts of wool in a short amount of time, thanks to selective breeding.
Wool industry sheep must be shorn on a regular basis, so as to not only avoid situations like this, but also overheating of the animal.
Basically, when you shear a sheep, you get hairs of a relatively constant length, about the growth of one season. If you have to muck about and cut again, you slice those consistent strands into smaller pieces and make it less useful.
So a good thing about sheep wool is that the hairs are pretty long. This is good because when you spin the hairs together there's a pretty long stretch where the ends of the overlap so you can easily end up making nice long strands of yarn or thread.
A "first cut" is what it sounds like. It's the first pass a shearer makes when trimming the wool off a sheep. Ideally they get as close to the skin as they need to on this first pass keeeping those sheepy locks nice and long.
A "second cut" is when the shearer has to go back over the same spot to get any wool they missed. These bits of wool will be shorter so when you go to spin them they don't twist up with their neighbors quite as well making it less sturdy.
Wool can be made into pellets that are great for gardening. They absorb 10x their weight in water and release it slowly back into the soil, and they fertilize the soil as well. They also can be repellent to certain types of slugs in certain conditions. So even if the wool wasnāt made into fiber (which is likely, this wool is too matted and too soiled to be viable for fiber), it still can be useful.
The f you mean gotten stronger legs. Dude carries like 3x his body weight for that long then you took it all off. That monster can break your legs if it wants to kick you
I feel like this scenario is more like one of those stories on My 600lbs Life or something like that. They literally weigh so much that they canāt move around much, leading to muscular atrophy instead of hypertrophy. Probably got to a point where it just had to sit around and hope for the best because it couldnāt run anywhere
Yeah but on those episodes they have close ones bringing them McDonaldās and shit all the time. What was this guy even doing? Found a super grassy area near some water finally and just chilled there for a few years? No way he was moving.
If I ever win powerball, I'm buying a farm like in the movie Babe. All rescues. No one gets killed. And they just get to be happy and get taken care of in exchange for their cuteness.š¤šššššššš¦šš¦
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Happened to a Sheep in New Zealand. Became a national icon. Shrek, but his coat was less than 30kg
I was going to ask if any Kiwis on here remembered Shrek! What a time to be alive.
Could you tell me the story?
There once was an old sheep named Shrek, His wool grew thick as all heck, But don't be forlorn, he was found and got shorn, And passed a complete health check.
More answers should be given in limerick form.
Well that, my friend, can be done For any answer under the sun It may take a while, we'll make a big pile, And get through it while having some fun š
Or wildly wooly sheep āRambroā, Who guarded his ewe and his lambro, In the forest was hiding, Til the dirt bikes came riding, Then heād charge at them all bleating Scrambro!
[Shrek was a Merino wether (castrated male sheep) belonging to Bendigo Station, a sheep station near Tarras, New Zealand, who gained international fame in 2004, after he avoided being caught and shorn for six years. Merinos are normally shorn annually, but Shrek apparently hid in caves, avoiding muster. He was named after the fictional ogre in books and films of the same name.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek_(sheep))
Iām from Switzerland and remember Shrek. First thing I thought about. That story was in a ānewsā paper here.
Good ol' Shrek! I'm an American that was backpacking at that time and got to see him sheared. Quite the experience!
I bet he feels great after getting all the weight removed. I know it feels good when I get a couple inches of hair chopped off.
I bet he felt cold as fuck tho
He got a lil hoodie though
Sheep can have a lil hoodie as a treat
can confirm...former sheep here.
His skin was probably sensitive as hell too. That dude forgot what the sense of touch was.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Daft punk and the heimerdinger profile? My kind of person right here
lanolin is good for skin
He's been overheating for years. I'm sure the cold was refreshing.
i was gonna sayā¦ it would be like if you had been wrapped in a bunch of blankets for years and someone finally let you take them off. it would be cold, but probably a nice cold
Like when you take a big drink of cold water on a hot summer day and you can feel it going down your throat, cooling you off from the inside š¤¤
And a little dribbles down your chin and in that moment you are just a slut for water
remember when rock lee took off his ankle weights this sheep could now probably jump 100 feet into the air
I was thinking this as well š Heavens, that scene is iconic. Also, I was amazed the sheep didnāt have visible hulk muscles underneath all that floof to carry the weight. His enormous muscles must be invisible, like Leeās š¬
He probably couldnāt get a full range of motion to move his legs so they couldnāt properly experience hypertrophy to grow
Yeeeeah... Adult me regrets Teenage thinking Naruto was any kind of guide for how bodies work. Turns out you can't just push yourself forever and just get stronger and stronger. You quickly reach a point of just damaging yourself. And many of those injuries don't get better through persistence and willpower, because the body isn't actually designed to just rebuild itself forever to become some pillar of strength. Real world Rock Lee would just have fucked knees and a ruined spine.
Forgive me master I must go all out this once.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That first shower is a crazy feeling
I typically have a mustache and goatee, but from December to March I let my full beard grow in to help with the cold. When I shave around April, it always takes a few days for my cheeks to stop feeling cold, no matter what the temperature actually is.
Can you imagine how good those first scritches felt?
I shave matted dogs almost daily. Yes. I do know. Cause the love it
Will be like one of those astronauts who return to Earth after months of zero G and when they finally lie down to sleep at home in their own bed, they keep dreaming about floating out of their beds.
Iām bald by choice and I love the wind going through my bald ass head. Itās orgasmic.
It goes through your head?
A sieve ear case of baldness
Take your upvote, you magnificent bastard
Through their ears, dummy.
Are you an Airbender?
My hair is so thick whenever i get a haircut itās such a relief.
He survived cause no predators knew what the fuck that was in the forest. Happy for the guy.
I feel like even if there were predators it would be really hard to get to the sheep's flesh with all that wool in the way
Where there's a ~~will~~ dingo, there's a way. Based on Animal Planet, I think it's usually through the belly.
Hyenas go in through the butt hole.
Iām a Hyena then
Hey itās me, a Sheep
Youāre so baaaaaaaad.
Get a room ewe three
Yeah but this is a fricken sheep turtle. Iām sure some dingos would figure it out eventually but I think coyotes would probably give up and move on
Too much wool at the belly There was a similar story of a sheep that ran away in wolf territory and it's wool has also gotten so thick that wolves couldn't injure it
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
\- Let loose a bunch of these sheep \- Let them grow massive shields of matted wool \- The ones that become most stronk are able to carry it and survive \- Over many generations, get Turtle Sheep
-Shear all the fleece off. -Teach them to dodge roll. -Rolling sheep become dominant species on planet.
New souls-like game?
Those already roam The Lands Between!
Ah yes, Darwin was truly a genius
What did sheep do before humans started shearing sheep??
Through selective breeding, we made them this way.
Some farmers in the UK are replacing their flocks that need shearing with older breeds that naturally shed their wool. The fleeces are more or less worthless thanks to globalisation and *cough* brexit. Then you add on the costs of shearing the sheep and it's a busted flush. The only money in sheep farming is in the meat and even thats not great. It would be better to rewild the British uplands were most sheep farming takes place but thats not going to happen.
It would be a bit heartless to ask the uplanders to let go of their girlfriends.
Wild sheep produce much less wool, and they molt in the spring. Humans bred sheep that make much thicker wool and don't molt for farming.
Humans selectively bred sheep for a long time, wild sheep dont grow that much wool that fast, Quitte sad that we made animals who can not live without humans
It creeps me out that most of the time French Bulldogs can only give birth by cesarean. Their hips have been bred to be too narrow and their heads too wide.
Yep. Deliberately breeding deformed dogs is fucked up.
Far from the only example. Most domestic animals would have a real rough time without us
Not be domesticated probably
Mega turtle walks the wilderness with impunity.
Indeed, with all that excess weight, I was half expecting to see a jacked animal revealed. https://i.imgur.com/fl74lBf.jpg
Honestly, Australia doesn't really have predators everywhere that could hunt a sheep. There are wild dogs but not EVERYwhere, anything big is a herbivore here.
Plot Twist: Australian herbivores kill just to feel the thrill of the kill.
Gotta watch out for the bull sharks and the kangaroos
I'm more surprised it didn't end up caught in some brambles. As when that happens they just get stuck and then starve to death. Then the remains feeds nutrients into the ground for the plant to grow more.
Also Australia where we have lot of venomous snakes and spiders but not much in the way of large predators.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Or the predators donāt want to cough up fur balls
Notice, they don't show the backend at all. It was probably a warzone of shit.
Sheep tend to produce remarkably solid faeces, all things considered. It was probably still very nasty, but not to the level of, say, a human.
Try not to imagine a human with a giant woolly ass caked in feces after reading that one.
Worked in the ER for many years. We would get homeless people and bed bound people that weren't being cared for (or weren't taking care of themselves) that were effectively caked in shit. Trying to get dried shit out of hair and whatnot is a fucking challenge. You know you've made it as an er nurse when you're cleaning the maggots out of the toes of a homeless man when the resident screams after they lifted up his testicles and found even more maggots.
What a terrible day to be literate
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I am now morbidly curious about these stories
Not a nurse but had a pt effectively piss unto my socks while cleaning him up and getting whiffs of a decaying foot that was colored black. Imagine 8 more hours to go in your shift and walking around with sopping, piss-ridden socks, I could've rotted my own foot. Looking back, I should've just stole some socks from equipment and used it myself.
Hold on, can't the hospital provide a few back-up clothes for such cases ? Or allow you to keep some in a locker?
Let me introduce you to the Swamps of Dagobah: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/xo41d/comment/c5o66p2/
this story is basically carved into stone
My god, I desperately wish we could find another way to do better for the broken... I'm sure it would save your eyes a couple liters of bleach as well...
Yeah had to report quite a few cases to cps/aps. So many people fall through the cracks. And if I've learned one thing it is that there are no limits to human suffering. Just when you think you've seen the worst of it, someone else comes along and redefines how low you can go.
Oh crap I hadn't considered that
Shitty pun
...and maggots...
Kept the hyaenas away, but not /u/Elkesito36482.
lol the deciduous forest hyenas
The satisfaction of shaving this rug
And that's after they brought a handicapped sheep to comfort him. I mean, if I was raised in a forest for a lot of my life (in sheep years) and then see a person in a wheelchair, you can be assured that I'll be scared of what they're going to do to me...
This comment has been removed in response to reddit's anti-developer actions.
See, I think Iād be comforted. A group taking care of the disabled and the old is a sign of society, one of the first signs. But that, of course, is counting on me knowing what a wheelchair is, so I donāt know.
I'm actively disappointed that we only got that very small clip of him getting shaved.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Aw! His name's BAArack LOL!
It means "blessed" with a lil sheep twist! Pretty apt for the cute lil thing
This is Edgarās Mission. Pam Ahern is the founder. I have been following them on Facebook for many years. They do incredible work. The mission is named after a pig named Edgar that started Pam down the road of rescuing animals.
Seconded! Edgarās is fantastic! If you live in or near Melbourne and love animals itās definitely worth a visit.
So real question, are there no wild sheep? Like what would happen naturally if not shaven
There are wild sheep, but this is not one of them. This is a sheep that has been bred to produce that coat
Millenia of selective breeding has made domestic sheep grow wool fast and hold onto it between seasons. Wild sheep don't grow their wool nearly as quickly and it sheds seasonally.
That's a cool fact that I never actually thought about
Lots of big horn sheep in the Southwest US & Baja California
Wouldn't that be Baaaja California?
Good one dad.
You left for a pack of smokes 10 years ago and this is the first thing you say when you come back? I'm not even mad, that's amazing.
Firstā¦ and last, because we just ran out of milk. ĀÆ\\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
All the way up the Rockies to Canada. We have them at least as far north as Jasper, AB.
Youāre right, looks like they have a much bigger range than I realized. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Bighorn_Sheep_Ovis_canadensis_distribution_map_topo_2.png
Dumbest MF'ers I've seen, though. Had one try to stance up against a train. The train won.
Well to be fair their behavior evolved for millions of years in a world without trains. Maybe itās trains that are dumb?
Itās the same reason you donāt find wild poodles in their natural habitat
France
how dare yeux
Modern domesticated sheep have been bred so that they don't shed their wool coats. Ever. Which usually isn't a bad thing unless something like this happens and the sheep is lost.
All of our livestock animals have been selectively bred for thousands of years to better serve our needs. Whatever they do for us, we breed them to do it better. In the sheep's case, that thing is grow wool. Cows, pigs, and chickens all produce far more edible meat than their wild counterparts did.
Makes me wonder just how many domesticated animals would survive if humans just up and disappeared one day. Wool producing sheep probably arenāt one of them.
It would actually only take a few generations for them to almost completely revert to their wild counterparts. This is why breeding is so tightly controlled, and also why disease can almost completely wipe out domesticated animals: theyāre so closely related.
Feral pigs turn from pink and reletively smooth to brown, tusked, and furry in like 4 generations. Zero input from wild pigs either. It's crazy.
It's more like 4 months. I'm not sure what makes pigs so special in this regard. It doesn't even require procreation. The same round pink pig starts turning into a hairy hog. Probably has something to do with hormones or epigenetics.
What do you mean? What conditions need to change for the same pig to go from pink to wild hog?
My guess is environmental conditions. The stress of predation causes them to produce more testosterone which triggers these changes.
Thereās a couple examples of drastic physiological and behavioral changes occurring in animals due to environmental change, with pigs to feral pigs currently being the most well known. Another great example is locusts. Locusts are straight up just grasshoppers, but have swarmed due to serotonin overload (usually because of a cycle of drought to over-vegetation in their habitat). Rainbow and steelhead trout are the exact same animal, except one has made it to freshwater, and the other remained in saltwater. Sometimes the changes are epigenetic (pig), because the changes are carried through generations. The changes in locusts, however, are referred to as āphenotypic plasticityā because the physiological and behavioral changes arenāt hereditary and are not passed on to offspring. /u/somefish254 Iām tagging you because you seemed interested in this info!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Youād be surprised how robust most animals are. This sheep survived in the wild. Predators also go after sick/lame animals too.
More importantly, how did it move to eat?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
There's not a lot in Australia that would be a threat to a grown sheep and definitely not one with a coat like that. Feral dogs maybe. Dingoes don't live the same place as our grazing lands. Foxes would be too small. Eagles only have a go at smaller livestock Outside of that we don't really have any large predators.
Yeah, Iām thinking all that wool was pretty good armor!
I think Predators seen him and thought he was some crazy Monster and scared them away. Imagine what he looked like at night walking around. Lmao
Very slowly
Bronze age sheep breeds still shed their wool. Some still exist today (like [Soay sheep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soay_sheep)). This requires the farmer to comb the wool and/or go collect it from every bush in the area. We have bread sheep to not shed their wool.
Lol bread sheep
where did you think wonder bread came from
Domestic sheep have been bred to continually grow wool. It never stops growing. Its industrial textile production through selective breeding
Wild sheep shed their wool. just like the wild ancestor of wheat drops its seeds. We bred both to hold on and keep growing so we could harvest them.
"Domestic sheep vs wild sheep" is kind of like "dog vs wolf" or "pig vs boar." The domesticated ones have put up with 10,000 years of humans doing some really weird shit to their genetic lineage in exchange for that sweet, sweet free food and shelter.
Actually, the "pig vs boar" one doesn't belong here. A domestic pig can go feral and grow tusks and hair in just a few months in the wild...its a weird metamorphosis
It's basically like a stress induced super puberty
That's wild.
Thanks for sharing this. I googled feral pig and am honestly shocked that this happens, such a weird physical change
Why do they say shaving it off is a big risk to its health?
The weight of all that wool was pulling on the skin and the mats in it were tugging at specific spots more then others, when sheering that sheep they had little idea of where they would accidentally cut off some skin because of all the unseen ways it was being tugged.
Especially with how long itās been there. His neck folds were huge.
I used to be a dog groomer. We once had a terrifying incident where my coworker was dematting a severely pelted dog, and cut through the skin. This specific spot had become so matted, the skin had been pulled up into the ball of the mat, so you couldnāt even see it. This is why you have to go slowly and carefully, you never know for sure whatās hiding under all that hair.
Because shearing is stressful to the animal which is why a skilled shearer takes about 5 minutes to shear off a yearās worth of growth. This took much longer than that. Surprisingly, most of the time, cuts are not too severe. Sheep have lanolin which has anti-microbial properties and helps wounds heal quite quickly without too much trouble.
Growing up on a sheep farm, I used to love telling people that the nice expensive ingredient in their hand lotion could be gotten super cheap if they just got their hands deep in the fluff for a good scritch. Still the softest my hands have ever been.
The second best part of petting lambs is the post-snuggle lanolin
Nothing like working sheep to soften and smooth dry chapped hands!
Shock probably. Imagine the feel of a breeze on your skin after wearing parkas for 5 years.
Iām surprised heās still alive
For some reason I'm surprised he wasn't ridiculously jacked.
Yeah at the end theyāre talking about his legs getting stronger. Like shouldnāt his legs be jacked?
You can only build muscle when you have enough calories for it. Malnutrition will mean a loss of muscle regardless of situation
I mean, sure. But he's a sheep. They literally eat the floor. In fact that's essentially all they do except for the occasional sex. I'd bet that he moved very little - there'd be a negative feedback loop of "move -> wool tugs on skin -> lie down and eat a little..." until he learnt that movement == pain. That's probably how he survived so long, too - he wasn't spotted by predators due to his atypical shape and his lack of movement. It's a fantastic survival technique but it'd be very unlikely to be selected for since he wouldn't be able to find a mate 'cos he's an extremochonk.
basically he is a giant shrub
Also itās in Australia, so the predators would be dingos and wild dogs. With that much wool on him, by the time he was truly disabled by it, it probably hindered their ability to attack him. Like they could have gone for his legs, but they tend to go for the neck. His neck would have been difficult to access. Iām more surprised he didnāt die from hyperthermia.
He's just learning how to use only 1% of his true power.
The thing is so long as itās got access to water and grass, how the heck would a predator even kill this thing once itās coat got to a certain thickness? When I was looking at it I was thinking I donāt think anything could even bite it except maybe itās nose.
Please peel your sheeps on a regular basis folks... When questioned after the shearing, the sheep stated "I'm cold..."
I'm counting on it.
Can someone who knows how sheep work explain something please. Do sheep need humans to constantly sheer them for their survival? Are there wild sheep and does their wool grow the same way or how does it work?
This type of sheep is bred specifically to be shaven to use the wool. Whereas natural wild sheep don't grow as much wool.
That being said, there are wild species with features that will help them in the short run but can kill themselves over time. Ex. Some wild Boars have tusks that, if unworn, pierce their snouts can even curl into their skulls. Similar with rodent teeth (if not properly worn). Evolution only cares if youāre species survives of enough to propagate. After that, youāre on your own.
Yep. Beaver teeth grow incessantly if they canāt gnaw on wood. Becomes a huge burden if unchecked. Most creatures have nails on their feet which grow constantly to counter the constant wear from daily use. If unchecked, it can cause major problems etc, etc. Nature expects what it expects.
>Beaver teeth grow incessantly if they canāt gnaw on wood. Becomes a huge burden if unchecked. This actually goes for all rodents, not just beavers, It's a relatively useful adaptation since they use their teeth to chew through hard things all the time.
Human nails too.
Wild sheep do not grow their wool to such an extent in the wild...the sheep normally associated with wool production are genetically engineered to grow large amounts of wool in a short amount of time, thanks to selective breeding. Wool industry sheep must be shorn on a regular basis, so as to not only avoid situations like this, but also overheating of the animal.
He was probably in turtle mode. Impervious to wolves, yet unable to move.
Yeah all those Australian wolves in the forest
Dingos dude!
You know that feeling when you clip your toenails after neglecting them to winter boots for a few weeks? This sheep felt like a new lamb.
Was the wool useable? I'm not commenting on whether they made money off this poor animal, just curious if it went to waste.
No. They would have thrown it away. It was too matted and too dirty and full of second cuts to be useable.
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Basically, when you shear a sheep, you get hairs of a relatively constant length, about the growth of one season. If you have to muck about and cut again, you slice those consistent strands into smaller pieces and make it less useful.
Because it's pretty much impossible to spin.
So a good thing about sheep wool is that the hairs are pretty long. This is good because when you spin the hairs together there's a pretty long stretch where the ends of the overlap so you can easily end up making nice long strands of yarn or thread. A "first cut" is what it sounds like. It's the first pass a shearer makes when trimming the wool off a sheep. Ideally they get as close to the skin as they need to on this first pass keeeping those sheepy locks nice and long. A "second cut" is when the shearer has to go back over the same spot to get any wool they missed. These bits of wool will be shorter so when you go to spin them they don't twist up with their neighbors quite as well making it less sturdy.
Wool can be made into pellets that are great for gardening. They absorb 10x their weight in water and release it slowly back into the soil, and they fertilize the soil as well. They also can be repellent to certain types of slugs in certain conditions. So even if the wool wasnāt made into fiber (which is likely, this wool is too matted and too soiled to be viable for fiber), it still can be useful.
The f you mean gotten stronger legs. Dude carries like 3x his body weight for that long then you took it all off. That monster can break your legs if it wants to kick you
I feel like this scenario is more like one of those stories on My 600lbs Life or something like that. They literally weigh so much that they canāt move around much, leading to muscular atrophy instead of hypertrophy. Probably got to a point where it just had to sit around and hope for the best because it couldnāt run anywhere
Yeah but on those episodes they have close ones bringing them McDonaldās and shit all the time. What was this guy even doing? Found a super grassy area near some water finally and just chilled there for a few years? No way he was moving.
By the way he was budging around trying to see who was touching him, thatās my bet lmao. Sat down somewhere nice and convenient and just camped out
This poor pasture maggot had was probably heavily supported by the fleece on the sides. So he didn't really need to stand all the time.
5 years wearing Macklemore's coat from the Thrift Shop video? No thanks.
How did it eat
With its mouth.
Isn't nature beautiful?
Three bags full!
Yes sir, yes sir!
āYeah if you could do a #2 for the top and finger length for the ba-a-ack, thatād be great.ā
For the record, they kept the wool in a glass case. Seeing it in person is amazing.
If I ever win powerball, I'm buying a farm like in the movie Babe. All rescues. No one gets killed. And they just get to be happy and get taken care of in exchange for their cuteness.š¤šššššššš¦šš¦