Sheep

The sheep (Ovis aries) is a quadrupedal, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Although the name "sheep" applies to many species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to Ovis aries. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. An adult female sheep is referred to as a ewe (/juː/), an intact male as a ram or occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether, and a younger sheep as a lamb.

Sheep are most likely descended from the wild mouflon of Europe and Asia. One of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes, sheep are raised for fleece, meat (lamb, hogget or mutton) and milk. A sheep's wool is the most widely used animal fiber, and is usually harvested by shearing. Ovine meat is called lamb when from younger animals and mutton when from older ones. Sheep continue to be important for wool and meat today, and are also occasionally raised for pelts, as dairy animals, or as model organisms for science.

Sheep (video game)

Sheep is a strategy puzzle video game released for PlayStation, Microsoft Windows and Game Boy Advance. In 2001 it was released for OS X by Feral Interactive.

Gameplay

Sheep bears some resemblance to the video game Lemmings. The player can choose between 4 herders, the people Adam Halfpint and Bo Peep, and the dogs Motley and Shep.

The player must then guide sheep of 4 types (Factoral, Longwool, NeoGenetic, and Pastoral), actually aliens from the planet Ovis Aries, through a series of obstacles to the finish line in the level.

There are a series of different worlds, starting with Polygon Farm and on to others, such as Village Fete and Lost in Space. If you collect all the golden sheep trophies in a world, you get to play a bonus game, devised from some other, like Snake (in this version, you are riding a sheep, and have to collect the trapped sheep in bubbles).

The obstacles between you and victory vary from world to world, including tractors, knights, archers and demonic chefs. Eventually, you must thwart the schemes of the mad scientist Mr. Pear and his hench-cows.

Sheep (novel)

Sheep is a horror novel by British author Simon Maginn, originally published in 1994 and reissued in 1997. It is now out of print. The book provided the basis for the 2005 film The Dark, although the plot changed drastically in the conversion from book to film.

Plot

A young family moves to rural Wales to renovate a farmhouse and recover from the drowning death of their daughter, Ruthie. While there, the family witnesses a series of terrible mutilations of sheep by an unknown perpetrator.

Editions

External links

Lamb and mutton

Lamb, hogget, and mutton (UK, India, South Africa, Canada, Nepal, New Zealand and Australia) are terms for the meat of domestic sheep (species Ovis aries) at different ages.

A sheep in its first year is called a lamb, and its meat is also called lamb. The meat of a juvenile sheep older than one year is hogget; outside North America this is also a term for the living animal. The meat of an adult sheep is mutton, a term only used for the meat, not the living animals. The term mutton is sometimes used to refer to goat meat in the Indian subcontinent.

Lamb is the most expensive of the three types, and in recent decades sheep meat is increasingly only retailed as "lamb", sometimes stretching the accepted distinctions given above. The stronger-tasting mutton is now hard to find in many areas, despite the efforts of the Mutton Renaissance Campaign in the UK. In Australia, the term prime lamb is often used to refer to lambs raised for meat. Other languages, for example French and Italian, make similar, or even more detailed, distinctions between sheep meat by age and sometimes by gender, though these languages don't use different words to refer to the animal and its meat.

Sheep (disambiguation)

Sheep are quadrupedal, ruminant mammals that are typically kept as livestock.

Sheep may also refer to:

See also

The Sheep

The Sheep is a character, created by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll. It appeared in Dodgson's book, Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to his book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Storyline

The Sheep is first mentioned in the fifth chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, "Wool and Water". The White Queen is talking to Alice, when she suddenly starts "baa-ing" and then seems to 'wrap herself in wool'. Alice figures out she is in a shop, and that The White Queen has turned into a sheep. The Sheep sits in her chair knitting as Alice looks around the shop. She gives Alice a pair of her knitting needles, and asks her if she can row. As Alice begins to answer, she realizes that they are in a little boat, and that the needles have turned into oars. As they glide along the water, the Sheep repeatedly shouts out "Feather", which means to lift the oar blades out of the water, turn them to a horizontal plane and swing them toward the bow so they don't get 'caught' in the water. The sheep then tells Alice that they will be catching 'crabs' (which is rowing terminology for getting one's blades stuck in the water if one fails to feather properly). Alice's attention is then put onto some scented rushes growing in the water. She tries picking them, but they are only 'dream rushes' and melt away. She then "catches a crab" and they are all suddenly in the shop again. Alice buys an egg from the Sheep (that ends up turning into Humpty Dumpty) and the two part ways.