Why can’t domestic sheep naturally shed their winter coats?
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Because they’ve been selectively breed over past ~10,000 years to grow excessive coats and to maintain those coats until actively sheared by a human. It’s both a behavioral and physical change as wild sheep would naturally lose their coats either via molting behaviors (scratching up against trees & rocks) or through non-domesticated life (just moving through branches and underbrush and getting it continuously removed). We’ve just selectively breed sheep to reduce the molting *behavior*, put them on farms free from the brambles and branches that would naturally remove the coats, and changed them physically to grow thicker, hardier coats that don’t naturally molt.
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