Sheep are far smarter than previously thought

They are an animal so apparently dim-witted that they have become a byword for stupidity and mindlessly following the crowd. New research, however, reveals that sheep are far more intelligent than they have been given credit for.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the creatures have the brainpower to equal rodents, monkeys and, in some tests, even humans.

The results suggest that sheep have relatively advanced learning capabilities, are adaptable, can map out their surroundings mentally and may even be able to plan ahead.

The findings will surprise any motorist who has had to follow a stray sheep trying to escape oncoming traffic by running down the middle of a country road.

The animals' tendency to blindly follow the flock has led to sheep becoming enshrined in the English language as a description for unquestioningly doing what others are doing.

In George Orwell's Animal Farm they were portrayed as easily-led and of lowest intelligence of all the farmyard inhabitants. Even the look the animals adopt when chewing grass has led to the phrase "sheepish".

But professor Jenny Morton, a neuroscientist at University of Cambridge, said sheep had been greatly undervalued for their intelligence.

She said: "They have a reputation for being extremely dim and their flock behaviour backs that up as they are very silly animals when in a group – if there is a hole they will fall into it, if there is something to knock over, then they will knock it over.

"So I didn't expect them to be so amenable to testing and certainly didn't expect them to be so smart. In our tests they performed at a level very similar to monkeys and humans in the initial learning tasks.

"When we then changed the rules they still performed as well as monkeys and better than rodents.

"They are quite intelligent animals – they seem to be able to recognise people and even respond when you call their name."

Professor Morton, whose research is published in the journal Public Library of Science One, was studying sheep intelligence in the hope that they may be useful as an animal model of Huntington's Disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to dementia and affects muscle control.

Researchers in Australia have created a genetically-modified sheep that displays symptoms similar to Huntington's Disease in humans, but it is unclear whether the animals would undergo the same cognitive decline that would make them useful for testing potential treatments.

Professor Morton put a flock of seven normal Welsh Mountain sheep through a series of tests to examine their learning ability as a mark of their intelligence.

Read more at The Telegraph