Fattailed sheep: The stretching of ovine tails by fat-focussed farmers
(writing in progress)
Sheep are quintessentially fatty rather than woolly
http://vk.com/wall-20522290_1198?reply=1221&z=photo-20522290_337525758%2Fwall-20522290_1198
The domestic sheep (Ovis aries, of which the wild ancestors are Ovis orientalis and possibly O. musimon)
has been bred for wool, meat and milk, but what really sets the sheep apart from other domestic animals is its wool.
While some of the several hundred breeds of the domestic sheep are woolly, all are extremely rich in fat compared to wild sheep. Indeed, the domestic sheep is the fattiest (in terms of both the amount and the anatomical distribution of fat) species (including all wild as well as domestic species) of all the hoofed mammals, indicating that the predominant effect of selective breeding has been for quantity and quality of adipose tissues.
http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4a723tA3k1rvh7eeo1_500.jpg
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/69/392640030_7310a92162_b.jpg
http://www.sheep101.info/Images/fattailedsheepAfgn.jpg
All domestic hoofed mammals have been selectively bred for various purposes. What distinguishes the domestic sheep from other hoofed mammals is the extremes to which the pelage has been bred to form wool.
The domestic sheep is unique among domestic animals in that its tail has been converted from extremely short in the wild ancestors (and all other wild species of sheep) to long in most breeds and extremely long in some breeds. Indeed, by far the longest tail skeleton, proportional to body length, of all hoofed mammals occurs in the domestic sheep, as shown by the Han breed (in which the caudal vertebrae reach to the ground and then curve back up beyond the height of the hock) pictured here. The fact that the tail is never clipped for wool but grows extremely fatty in certain breeds indicates that selective breeding for fattiness3 inadvertently lengthened the sheep’s tail
I asked myself:
Is there any breed of sheep that contains little body fat? If the answer is yes, we would not be able to generalise that all selective breeding of Ovis aries has emphasised fat in one form or another, whereas only certain breeds have been bred for their wool.
I am still looking for the answer, but in the meantime I would like to report the following misinformation.
The Texel breed of sheep (see below) is noted for its ‘leanness’, something that modern consumers of course value (incorrectly). But what does ‘lean’ actually mean?
The second screenshot below indicates that lean meat is defined as containing less than 10% fat and less than 4.5% saturated fat.
Please note that 100 g is unfortunately expressed as 3.5 oz. But since fat is a form of dry matter but total weight of flesh is about 70% water, I infer that the real concentration of fat would be, on a dry matter basis, more like 10 g divided by 30 g, = 33% fat and 14% saturated fat.
My point is that in even the leanest breeds of sheep, and even when the obviously fatty tissues are cut away, the ‘lean meat’ (= muscle tissue) may still contain one-third fat by weight on a d.m. basis.
The relevance:
This seems to illustrate just how fatty the domestic sheep really is, an adipose animal rather than a fibrous animal, as it were. People think ‘sheep’ and mainly think ‘wool’, whereas a more realistic association would be to think ‘sheep’ and then think ‘fat’ (and of course good fat, at that).
The milk of sheep is also unusually fatty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texel_sheep#Characteristics
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-lean-really-means-for-lean-meat.html
[try to find a photo of a skeleton of a long-tailed sheep.]
(writing in progress)
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