Dumb Animals

The researchers gave sheep intermittent access to food from a trough, and then turned on an air blower above the trough at an unexpected moment while they were eating.

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After the blower came on, the sheep bleated four times more than sheep that were not disturbed, and their heart rates immediately increased. View image of A mouflon, a species of wild sheep Credit: It is ironic how little most of us know about sheep, given how deeply entrenched they are in human culture. The animals have been referred to by different cultures, religious texts and even astrology for thousands of years. For example, the Greek astrological sign Aries is a ram, and in ancient Egyptian religion the ram was the symbol of several gods. Further, the common phrase "to separate the sheep from the goats" comes from a passage in the New Testament.

In the story, the sheep righteous people find salvation with God, and the goats sinners are sent to damnation. Sheep are thought to have descended from wild mouflon that roamed Europe and Asia. They were particularly common in ancient Mesopotamia, an area that covered a large chunk of what we now call the Middle East, including modern-day Iraq, Kuwait, east Syria and south-east Turkey.

These ancestors had mighty horns with which to defend themselves, but humans have largely bred these out of modern sheep. Nowadays, domestic sheep are bred to be big fluffy creatures, covered in wool that never stops growing so that farmers make money all year round. View image of There is surprising intelligence behind these eyes Credit: For starters, they can deliver a painful kick to anyone who gets too close, especially if they are defending their young. They can also run fast and scale steep cliffs that many predators are not equipped to handle.

Finally, their peripheral vision is impressive: Humans very much like to eat and wear sheep: The world's biggest producer of sheep is China, which is home to nearly million of them.

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It is followed by Australia at over 70 million, India with over 60 million, Iran with 45 million and Nigeria with 41 million. Sudan has nearly 40 million sheep, while the UK has 33 million and New Zealand nearly 30 million.

In Kenya, where there are estimated to be over 17 million sheep raised for slaughter, the animals are spelling catastrophe for wildlife. View image of Dall sheep are a species of wild sheep Credit: The affected species included warthogs, many species of antelope and the rare Grevy's zebra. During the same period, sheep numbers increased by This is terrible because most wild animals [like elephants, buffalo and zebra] need taller grasses to eat.

In the Maasai Mara National Reserve , Ogutu says the buffalo population was nearly 13, in , but has since sharply decreased. Drought is not uncommon in Kenya, but the issue now is the number of animals, both wild and domesticated, trying to survive it. View image of A Dall sheep Ovis dalli , a relative of the domestic sheep Credit: Ogutu and his colleagues are calling on the Kenyan government to limit the number of sheep and other livestock, to prevent large wild animals going extinct. But what is happening in Kenya is a microcosm for a global story.

The demand for livestock products is still rising, putting pressure on the environment. In their huge numbers, sheep are hugely destructive creatures. Examined in many species, only few have succeeded. When elephants were first tested, experimenters gave them a stick and placed food just out of reach. In this setup, elephants failed. Elephants knew where the food was placed and could grab the stick, but would not use it to obtain the food.

Later, researchers realised a species bias in the experimental design. So researchers tried something different.

They added a box to the experiment. Elephants kicked the box until able to stand on it to reach the food.

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4. Sheep are not stupid, and they are not helpless either.

A less widely studied cognitive capacity is empathy. For a very long time experiments seemed to show that non-human primates were selfish. Monkeys were allowed to either take food or push food to a companion. Monkeys would more often take food for themselves suggesting general selfishness.

In a recent study monkeys learnt that two different types of tokens would exchange for food: This set-up proved successful. Monkeys preferred tokens that rewarded both individuals. These are two simple examples among many where animals seemed void of a certain type of intelligence. But in reality they only failed solving a task the way we expected a human would. Negative findings tell us only so much. Squirrels fake hiding seeds when they know others are watching. Crows can construct hooks out of wire to use as tools. Chimpanzees have better short-term memories than humans. Bumblebees can solve some problems faster than computers.

Rats feel empathy for their species companions. Honey bees can recognise faces. And Caenorhabditis elegans , a worm with only brain cells, can learn and remember.

It takes up to 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat.

For some, hearing that animals are intelligent is enthralling. But for many, losing their exclusivity on intelligence is discomforting. Even harder to take for some is that humans may not be as smart as we once thought. More and more research is showing that the seemingly complicated logic and intellect we routinely use to solve problems relies heavily on short cuts known as heuristics. Put simply, this comes very close to what we consider instincts. All this means is that we should remind ourselves that we are animals living in a world with other animals.

All species are of course different from each other. What we once thought was restricted to humans is showing up not only in animals like us, but also in organisms much different from us. From our closest relatives, like other primates and mammals, to animals far from us on the evolutionary tree, like birds and insects, all biological organisms have some level of intelligence. To be successful, they all need to solve the problems they face in life.