Sheep

Animal Series

by Philip Armstrong

The Egyptians worshipped them, the Romans dressed them in fitted coats, early Christians made the shepherd synonymous with their divine saviour. In Sheep, Philip Armstrong traces the natural and cultural history of both the wild and domestic species of Ovis: from the Old World mouflon to the corkscrew-horned flocks of the Egyptians, to the ‘Trojan sheep’ of Homer’s Odyssey, to the vast migratory mobs of Spanish merinos – all the way to Dolly the cloned ewe and the sheep-human hybrids of Haruki Murakami. Above all else, Sheep demonstrates that sometimes the most mundane animals turn out to be the most surprising.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals, History, Nature

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 15, 2016

About the author

Professor of English

Reviews

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It definitely helped me to gain a greater appreciation for the intelligence and sociality of sheep as well as the ways in which they have shaped and oppressed by humans throughout the course of history. Sheep are explored as sources of food, as religious and spiritual symbols, as literary and cultural figures, as providers of wool, and ultimately as subjected to the whims of humanity when it comes to their genetic destiny as a domestic species and their all too often unfortunate status as farmed animals. This book allows one to truly appreciate how bright sheep are though. I learned that bisexuality is common in male sheep, for instance, and that the bonds sheep can form with each other and with people can be especially strong. Highly recommended.

[El Rato Pequeño · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read 8 books from the Reaktion Animal Series thus far, and from among these, Sheep was easily the most thought provoking of all. What connects Don Quixote, William Blake, The Bible, homosexuality, Karl Marx, the rise of capitalism and english imperialism throughout the world? Sheep wool. Who'd have suspected the poster animal of docile herbivorous innocence to have so much blood under its hooves?

A few tiny factual errors that made it in threaten the painted historical image's veracity a little (rats do not have a tapetum lucidum, for instance), but it's an image bound to stay memorable, particularily for its unexpected, borderline absurd underdog angle. Turns out that some of history's biggest players also happen to be the silliest.