Are sheep getting bolder?

Strange goings-on in the Welsh countryside

I have been wondering about this for a few years now.

So I posed the question to Google AI, with reference to Wales in the first instance:

Q: Are sheep becoming bolder in Wales?

A: While there's no definitive evidence to suggest sheep in Wales are becoming bolder in a general sense, anecdotal reports and observations indicate some sheep are exhibiting more assertive behaviors, potentially due to increased human interaction and habituation to tourists. This might manifest as sheep approaching people more readily, particularly in areas with high foot traffic, or showing less fear of humans in general.

I am sure that in my youth, and throughout my middle years, sheep in Wales would run away as default behaviour. OK, I am aware that there are exceptions: lambs whose mothers die, or else reject their offspring, are often raised in the farmhouse and bottle-fed. These individuals will always be less fearful of humans.

And I’m not really qualified to speak of sheep in other parts of the world, despite once being offered a job as a shepherd in rural Sicily; but there was never anything to suggest that sheep in the Mediterranean basin were significantly different from those on the Atlantic seaboard.

But now, there are more and more of them that don’t act like . . . well, like sheep.

In this brief resumé, I am posting some pictures of sheep I have taken over the past four years. They tell a story, I believe, of growing assertiveness and rudeness; even, in one instance, of brazen theft.

The sheep that ate my crisps

I first encountered the sheep pictured below as I was sitting by the Trig point on Crug Mawr, in the Black Mountains, enjoying my picnic lunch. It approached me without so much as a ‘by your leave’ and stuck its muzzle into my bag of cheese and onion crisps (potato chips to US readers), retrieved a mouthful and chewed them up while standing there in front of me, bold as brass.

A couple of weeks later I did the walk again, with Rose, my wife. The same sheep approached us by the Trig point and actually snatched a tuna sandwich from Rose’s hand. The photo was taken a couple of minutes later when the offending ewe came back to see if there was any dessert. I was shocked.

You will notice that even the lamb looks embarrassed by Mum’s behaviour, its head lowered in shame.

I’m not certain, but I think that the sheep trying to get into my friend Tristan’s backpack in the picture below, is actually the same offender as in the photo above. The shot was taken a year later, again at the peak of Crug Mawr. I know a face when I see it.

And as for the next sheep, photographed just below Hatterrall Hill last weekend — just look at it trying to get my attention, with that posse of three hovering behind as back-up, but clearly not bold enough to stand alongside their leader: what on earth was all that about?

She followed me a way up the hill, and if it wasn’t for the fence between us, I don’t know what she might have tried on . . .

The sheep that are not sheep

So those are some of my recent encounters with Welsh mountain sheep. But that’s not the whole tale. There is something else going on, an altogether darker story . . .

I would like to share some other pictures that indicate — I’m sure you’ll agree — a physiological change in the appearance of certain sheep, and I’m not talking about the preference in Welsh upland areas for the breed known as ‘Badger-face sheep’, though there is a degree of crossover. Badger-face sheep seem quite benign, and these ones, the ones I wish to reveal to you, are not.

The sheep in the pictures below look decidedly pugnacious, in my opinion. If you were to draw a speech bubble for the one on the left of the triptych, it would probably be an invitation for me to carry out the anatomically impossible upon myself.

I believe that these individuals are part of a new race that has been planted here for nefarious reasons, yet to be disclosed.

My private belief is that they are not sheep at all.

And my portrait of this ugly specimen confirms the worst. There is no trace of subservience, no notion of humility or fear. Nothing sheep-like at all. Just naked, brute aggression; a ‘get off my patch look’ that brooks no compromise.

George Monbiot has been warning us about sheep for years, and although his attitude towards them stems from an altogether more worthy impulse — their husbandry is the greatest obstacle to the re-wilding he advocates — I am sure there is a part of him that, like me, goes in awe of these terrifying beasts, and the things they might be capable of.

Monbiot cites Thomas More, writing in Utopia, published in 1516:

Your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities. For look in what parts of the realm doth grow the finest and therefore dearest wool, there noblemen and gentlemen, yea and certain abbots, holy men no doubt . . . leave no ground for tillage, they inclose all into pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down towns, and leave nothing standing, but only the church to be made a sheep-house . . . the husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or else either by cunning and fraud, or by violent oppression they be put besides it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell all: by one means therefore or by other, either by hook or crook they must needs depart away.

Prophetic words, indeed. Especially if, as Monbiot notes, due to their destruction of the uplands, Wales now possesses less than one third of the average forest cover that can be found in the rest of Europe.

Be warned, hill walkers: these creatures are not what they seem. Sheep may yet turn out to be harbingers of something unspeakable, and the subtle mutation that seems to be occurring in their physical appearance might yet turn out to be accompanied by a far more perilous inner or psychic metamorphosis.

Richard Gwyn is a writer and translator from Wales. Information about his books, as well as articles, interviews etc can be found at https://richardgwyn.com or by clicking here.