An escaped sheep was found with 60 pounds of wool.
Shrek the sheep ran away and hid in a cave in New Zealand for 6 years. When Shrek was finally found in 2004, the sheep had gone unsheared for so long that it had accumulated 60 pounds of wool on its body, enough to make 20 suits! The sheep became famous and even got to meet the Prime Minister. Shrek finally passed away last month at the age of 16.
LOL is this what they looked like when they roamed wild? how majestic
This is the most majestic sheep I’ve ever seen in my life.
fat little bastard
Aware that this is a few reblogs down, but no, this is not what sheep looked like when wild. The wild ancestor of the domestic sheep is actually disputed, but the best candidate right now is the mouflon, which looks like this:
Shrek appears to me to be a Merino, which is a specific breed of domestic sheep that has been bred for wool production for a very long time. Merinos not only have a very specific wool texture, which is softer and more plush than other breeds of sheep, but they have also been selected to produce a lot of wool, far more than a sheep really needs to keep warm over the winter. (Most strains of Merinos also have wrinkled skin so that they produce more wool per sheep. They are also bred to be solid white because white wool is easier to dye.) Domestic livestock often look very different from their wild counterparts as a result of being very strongly selected for certain traits that are useful to humans, especially the more common breeds currently used for agricultural production. Merinos are hands down the most common breed of sheep used for wool production, partly because they produce more and finer wool than other breeds of sheep that haven’t been under as strong selection for those qualities, and they are more exaggerated than some heritage breeds that have been historically selected for other traits.
(Source: omg-facts.com, via superhslfightingrobot)
