I saw a post about a sheep that escaped owners/shearing for years and its wool was out of control. Have sheep ever existed in the wild without someone to shear them?
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Probably not in their current form.
I mean, the sheep you see in farms that are raised for wool, those have been bred over centuries for just that purpose. I don’t think any “wild sheep” would naturally develop that kind of thick coat of wool by themselves.
They don’t.
Domesticated sheep have been bred to never shed their seasonal coat and continue growing wool all year.
In the wild they’d shed this regularly to avoid overheating in the summer months.
Domesticated sheep that do escape will eventually overgrown and die.
Wild sheep lose their wool naturally. Even a lot of domestic sheep do not need to be sheered. It is only the sheep which have been bread for long thick wool that requires help from humans to shear them.
We bred sheep to be like this. Wool was a highly valuable resource; large parts of both the english agricultural revolution and then the industrial revolution were centered on wool production.
The ancestoral sheep still exists; it’s notably goat like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouflon
Domesticated sheep were bred to be that way for their wool. Sheep are Ovis and other species of that families like Bighorn Sheep, Dall Sheep, Mouflon, etc all have horn and a normal coat. Don’t don’t have those issues.
If a wild sheep ever developed the genes that gave it a wool coat so thick that they couldn’t see or move, wolves would have seen the end to that genetic line real quick.
Part of natural selection is also culling genes that are harmful to a species survival.
There are several breeds of sheep with hair rather than wool. The Barbados or Black Belly Sheep is one of those breeds. My sister in Arizona has a small flock. In the winter they may grow a layer of wool under the hair for insulation, buts it’s not commercially useful.
Most of hers are sold for meat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_Black_Belly
Sheep are domesticated – the species as a whole has been tamed and bred specifically to be what they are. They are not wild animals, so escaped sheep can’t really survive without coat maintenance. They can live, sure, but as you read, their coat gets out of control to the point they are matted and can’t move or can’t see.
They don’t.
Domesticated sheep create a lot more wool than any wild breed. Wild breeds also naturally shed
They are a prime example of selective breeding. People wanted wool, so only the fluffiest sheep bred. Come the modern day, domesticated sheep are thick cotton balls with legs.
Wild sheep shed like almost every animal with fur. The ones we have are selectively bred to produce more wool, faster and not shed it.
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