Whether it be a long day in the office or having a haircut in the shearing sheds, a new study has found that sheep and humans have more in common than we thought when it comes to leaning on one another after a big day.
Key points:
- A study finds exposure to a stressful experience is a major factor when it comes to building bonds
- GPS devices were strapped to sheep for a day to monitor movements
- The data found that sheep tended to flock with their friends
A recent study from the CSIRO in Armidale found stressful experiences are key to bonding when it comes to sheep, with individual sheep flocking towards other sheep who were there when they were exposed to stress.
The study was published in The Royal Society’s online journal Biology Letters.
CSIRO senior research scientist and study co-author Dana Campbell said that the revelation came from an attempt to understand social relationships between sheep.
“There can be some temporary stresses, such as when they’re being herded by dogs or when you’re putting them out in the yards, or in standard management husbandry, such as shearing them,” Dr Campbell said.
“We picked a selection of these things, and we did them across one day,” she said.
With GPS devices strapped to their backs, the sheep were set free in the paddock to decompress from their busy day.
“We found that those sheep that had experienced this stress together were more likely to spend time together compared to groups of sheep who hadn’t shared this experience,” Dr Campbell said.
Research conducted prior to the study had found that sheep can not only recognise one another, but can even identify humans they’ve seen before from a photograph.
While the GPS data found that sheep tended to flock with their friends, stressful experiences were a major factor when it came to building bonds.
Dr Campbell said that the research could be useful beyond the reassurance of knowing sheep have someone to comfort them when coming home from a long day in the paddocks, yards, or shearing shed.
“When you’ve got groups of hundreds or thousands of sheep … you can account for those to make sure you’re not splitting up groups of sheep that are close to each other.”
“If you have a social companion, then it can actually reduce the stress that you experience,” Dr Campbell said.
While reducing the impact of necessary stresses is an important step for farmers, everyday activities involved with sheep production aren’t likely to cause excessive amounts of stress.
“As long as those are temporary stressful events, then the sheep will recover from them.
“It just understands that if you have these stressful procedures that you do have to implement, just keep the duration as short as possible,” Dr Campbell said.
Sheep looking to one another for comfort is an important finding from the study, but there’s much more to learn.
“Now that we have this ability to really measure and understand these relationships, the questions for us are endless.”
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