The Bighorn Sheep Story - Nature Labs

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The Bighorn Sheep

Bighorn sheep: Majestic. Iconic. And 100% eccentric.

As one of North America’s longest running residents, bighorn evolved from the same family as the domestic sheep. You know, like Dolly. Well, the original Dolly, not the cloned one. Anyway.

After crossing the Bering Land bridge, it didn’t take bighorn too long to find their niche: chief regulator of the ever-important grass ecosystem of the high alpine.

My goodness, that does sound niche, doesn’t it? But trust me when I say the bighorn keep the grass ecosystem in a perfect state of Goldie Locks – ensuring it doesn’t grow too much or too little, but replenishes just enough to stay healthy and do its job of preventing erosion and filtering pollutants. Also trust me: that’s important.

Niche found, the bighorn worked on evolving their quirks.

Let’s start with their horns. Beautiful and, for a ram, they can be massive: 125cm long, 40cm thick. Why do they have them? So, during mating season the males can run at each other at over 30 km/hour and smash their heads against one another to prove dominance.

Nothing says sexy like a concussion.

They will often do this for hours and even days on end. As I said, eccentric.

Bighorn are a favourite prey of bears, cougars and wolves. The good news is sheep can run fast, but not as fast as the aforementioned predators.

They are great climbers – their hooves have evolved to give them a better grip of steep slopes when escaping predation. Buuuut not as good as a mountain goat. And seeing as they can often be found in the same areas, let’s just say when a wolf comes calling, you’d rather be a goat.

Loser = Bighorn

Winner = Mountain Goat

Bighorn do have excellent eyesight. They can spot tiny movement from a kilometre away. Of course, the eagle – remarkably, a sometimes predator of the bighorn – can see five kilometres away, so…

Loser = Bighorn

Winner = Bald Eagle

Here’s what’s really neat though. Recently, scientists determined that sheep have excellent facial recognition abilities. Some believe it could be as good as people, or even better. The studies have focused on domestic sheep, but it’s believed to be a trait shared by all sheep. That means bighorn are very employable in emerging technology sectors.

Though, in the wild, it’s a superpower that seems more super cool than super useful. Like, bighorn Erma can recognize that a specific wolf killed her buddy Fred, but does that really help the sheep get to safety?

Oh, and did I mention they’re weird about water? They can swim, they just seem very iffy about the concept. But not quite as iffy as walking around a body of water. That takes time, burns calories. So, usually they’ll try to jump over the water.

It’s weird. I really can’t explain why they do it, but years of dumbfounded observation suggest it’s a thing.

So, there you have it: bighorn sheep. Critical lawnmowers of the high alpine, evolutionarily super-power challenged, and experts at head-banging. Insane Clown Posse has finally found an audience.

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