Scurred Sheep

 

    I was looking up information about horned animals when I found this image of a scurred ewe that looks sick as hell! It looks like it's an album cover. It's an image from a scientific journal that was published all the way back in 1912! That's 114 years ago!

Now, when I first saw the picture I did worry about whether the sheep is alive in it. I think it is! There are other pictures in the journal where the animals are more obviously alive, so there's no reason to think this one would be dead.

    I imagine most people learn about the basics of farm animals when they're about 3 years old. Cows go "moo", sheep go "baa" etc. And then you don't really think about it for over 20 years. Which can lead to misconceptions, because your assumptions from when you were a little baby will stay dormant in your head. I've heard a bunch of times that as kids, people believed that all dogs were male and all cats were female. But dogs and cats are more ingrained into our daily lives. If, at 3 years old, you believed that all dogs are boys, you will most likely have adapted out of that belief by the time you're 8, because dogs are everywhere and you're constantly hearing about them. To be clear, I personally was never under that impression. I'm pretty sure I've known about "girl dogs" for basically as long as I've known about dogs. I also have vague memories of having watched this cartoon about spy dogs when I was very little, which had a girl dog in it, and I would've been watching that when I was VERY young.

Mitzy from The Secret Files of the Spy Dogs

    A misconception that I did have as a little baby, was the idea that sparrows were just baby pigeons. You see, my house had a park nearby, where there were a bunch of sparrows and pigeons that always hung out together. Sparrows are little, and pigeons are bigger. So following that logic, it made sense to my child brain that these birds were directly related and, in fact, parent and child.

A happy family

Another misconception that I had about animals as a kid was about horns. I don't think I assumed this on my own, I'm pretty sure someone else told me, and I just didn't think to question it. The idea was that bulls and rams have horns, and cows and ewes don't. That is not true at all! Both male and female cattle and sheep can grow horns!

In genetics, the part of a gene that affects a genetic feature is called an allele. Some alleles are dominant and some are recessive. They're usually symbolized by capital and lowercase letters respectively. You can't have a recessive feature unless you get a recessive allele from both parents. And in cattle, having horns is a recessive allele! As opposed to being "polled," which means the animal won't have horns. Some animals are artificially polled i.e. people cut off their horns. But some animals are naturally polled and in cattle that is the dominant gene. So, in order for a bull to have horns, BOTH of its parents MUST have the horn allele. There is a way for them to have this allele without having horns themselves. Since it is recessive allele, they might just have it from one of their parents but not the other, so it is suppressed by the dominant polled allele. If a polled allele is P, then a horned allele is p. The animal will be polled if it has PP or Pp, and it will only be horned if it has pp, which is a 25% chance. But if a bovine has the pp alleles, regardless of its sex, it will be growing horns. Female cattle, cows, grow horns! Dairy cows are often artificially polled because the farmers don't want them poking people or one another with the horns, but they do grow them naturally!

It works a little differently for sheep. A little more complex. They don't have one gene for whether they're horned or not, they have separate genes for polled and horned. The polled gene takes priority and will basically override the horned gene. So in order for the sheep to have horns, they need to have both pp (not polled) and HH (horned). If it has PP, it will be polled, even if it has HH. There is also another gene that factors sex in. So if a female has that gene in a particular combination of alleles, they won't grow horns, even if they do have ppHH. But if the sheep doesn't have that gene, they will grow horns regardless of sex. So it's kind of a misogynist gene, smh. Anyway, here's some ewes from the same article as the first image:

There's a secret third thing that I haven't written about yet: Scurs. Scurs are little horn-like developments in animals' heads. Horns are usually pretty firmly in their place, they connect to their roots stably and can't be moved. Scurs are less firm in this connection, you can grab them and wiggle them. Though that's most likely considered rude by the sheep. Scurs are handled by their own allele that can be represented by Sc for "having scurs" and sc for "not having scurs"; which, unlike the allele for horns, takes priority over that of polled. So a sheep that's ScScPPHH won't be polled, it WILL have scurs. There's also a difference between the rams and ewes for scurs. Rams only need one Sc to have scurs, so a ram with the gene Scsc will still have scurs. But for ewes, they need both of them to be Sc; so a Scsc ewe will not be scurred, but a ScSc will. In either sex, the scurs genes are irrelevant if the sheep is horned. So ScScppHH sheep would grow horns. The HH basically overrides the ScSc.

Now, what prompted me to research all this? In art, polled sheep are used to represent innocence. It follows that horned sheep would represent aggression. When it comes to involving oneself in these allegories, I don't think it's good to represent oneself as the polled sheep, the pure and innocent one. It is absolving yourself of any potential wrongdoing. To do so would mean you are either lying or are too full of yourself. "I'm just a little lamb, I couldn't possibly have done anything wrong". But I don't identify with the aggression of a horned sheep either. A scurred sheep is good symbolism. A person who isn't overtly aggressive, but has the potential to cause hurt. As people go, most, even good people, have these scurs. Being aware of your own scurs and how to handle them is what keeps you good.

I am considering this from an allegorical perspective. I have nothing against people having sheep as their furry OCs.

I am in no way an expert in this field, and I have tried to simplify things even more than how much I understand. If I have made any factual errors at any point, no I didn't, it's the scientists who are wrong!

Sources:

1. Arkell, T.R. (1912). Some data on the inheritance of horns in sheep, Bulletin, no. 160. University of New Hampshire Scholars Repository (University of New Hampshire at Manchester), (160).
2. Ibsen, H.L. (1944). Horn and Scur Inheritance in Certain Breeds of Sheep. The American Naturalist. doi:https://doi.org/10.1086/281224.
3. 'Bone/Time' (1998) The Secret Files of the SpyDogs, Season 1, episode 3. Fox Kids, 26 September.
4. 'A Feral Pigeon perched on the railing of a fishing pier in Ocean City, NJ.' Chuck Homler / FocusOnWildlife.Me
5. 'Male house sparrow in Prospect Park' Rhododendrites
6. 'Adoration of the Mystic Lamb' Van Eyck brothers