Sheep Senses

 EYES

Sheep depend heavily on their vision. They have excellent peripheral vision and can see behind themselves without turning their heads. However, they have poor depth of perception. They cannot see immediately in front of their noses. Some vertical vision may also have been sacrificed in order to have a wider field of vision. For example, they probably wouldn't be able to see a predator in a tree.

Contrary to previous thought, sheep and other livestock see colors, though their color vision is not as well developed as it is in humans. Sheep will react in fear to new colors.

 EARS

Sheep have excellent hearing. They can direct their ears to the direction of the sound. Sound arrives at each ear at slightly different times, with a small difference in amplitude. Sheep are frightened by high pitched and loud noises, such as dogs barking or firecrakers.

SMELL 

Sheep have an excellent sense of smell. They are very sensitive to what different predators smell like. Smell helps rams locate ewes in heat and dams locate their lambs. Sheep also use their sense of smell to locate water and determine subtle or major differences between feeds and pasture.

 TASTE

The sense of taste in sheep is probably not as important as the other senses. However, sheep have the ability to differentiate different feedstuffs and taste may play a role in this behavior. When presented with a variety of feeds, sheep will select certain feeds over others. Sheep will select different types and species of plants than other livestock.

TOUCH  

Since the sheep's body is covered with wool or coarse hair, only the nose, lips, mouth, and maybe ears readily lend themselves to touching behavior. Touching is important to the interaction between sheep. Lambs seek bodily contact with their mothers and the ewes respond to the touching behavior in many ways, including milk letdown in response to nuzzling/suckling stimulus of lambs. When young lambs sleep, they will seek out their mothers and lie close to them.

Click HERE to learn how a sheep's natural instinct helps to protect it from predators.

. . . New Words . .

Amplitude - the strength or volume of a sound.

Depth of perception - three-dimensional perception that is essential for the ability of an individual to judge quickly and accurately the speed and distance relationships between an object and the individual.

Peripheral vision - the seeing of objects displaced from the primary line of site and outside of the central visual field. Also called side vision.