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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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.
shear luck?
Sorry, that was baa-a-a-a-ad.
I’ll see myself out.
Growing up, we had primitive sheep (Mouflon & American Blackbelly), and they shed their wool. We brushed it off of them, or collected hair bundles that they rubbed off on fencing or bushes.
Domestic sheep have been bred to not shed their wool, and they will continually grow wool until they die. Either the wool gets so cumbersome that they can’t escape predators and they’re eaten, or they die of heatstroke, or from infection as the uncared for wool’s weight damaged their skin to the point of tearing.
I saw a article where a domestic one had escaped but the wool was so matted from the wild that animals couldn’t bite through to reach its neck
Sheep were selectively bred to have more wool. They cannot live in the wild… for the most part. There are likely certain environments where they could survive, and over time, their offspring could adapt and move. But the current domesticated breed of sheep were in human care for many generations and wouldn’t do well on their own.
The book *A Short History of the World According to Sheep* by Sally Coulthard is an amazing look at, well , how sheep have helped form human history. Highly recommended.
Soay sheep naturally shed their wool ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soay_sheep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soay_sheep)). They are a fairly “primitive” breed, but are domesticated.
Soay is not particularly easy to get to though.
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