November '25

Please note that, except for the cow-strewn and cow-obsessed North America and permanently uninhabited Antarctica, every continent is represented. The religious spread is also admirable. Which other club sees the flanking of the Catholic Ireland, Muslim Mauretania, Buddhist Mongolia and the infidels of Wales?

Climate is also not a common denominator because our enumeration contains representatives from each region, ranging from the subpolar frost of Iceland to the arid deserts of Namibia. What is then the ovine causal link connecting all these different regions?

A lower (human) population density, for one. This provides sheep with enough pasture for grazing, as well as a lower population hurdle to clear. Also, the appreciation of these fluffy ruminants is nothing new in those areas. Sheep have been keeping Mongolians warm for thousands of years, they accompanied the Vikings to Iceland in the ninth century and were also part of the first fleet of permanent settlers sent to Australia. Old love has roots that run deep.

The third, and most obvious, reason is socks. More precisely, the material they are made of. The lucrative popularisation of Merino wool in the 19th century caused such an explosion in this breed’s population that even homo sapiens could often not keep up. In Uruguay, for instance, the number of sheep rose from half a million to over 18 million just between 1860 and 1870. For humans, such a baby boom would be literally inconceivable.