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The exact line of descent from wild ancestors to domestic sheep is unclear. [2] The most common hypothesis states that Ovis aries is descended from the Asiatic (O. gmelini) species of mouflon; the European mouflon (Ovis aries musimon) is a direct descendant of this population. [3]
Ovis is a genus of mammals, part of the Caprinae subfamily of the ruminant family Bovidae. [1] Its seven highly sociable species are known as sheep or ovines. Domestic sheep are members of the genus, and are thought to be descended from the wild mouflon of central and southwest Asia.
The ancestral sheep is presumed to have had 60 chromosomes, as in goats (Capra). Mouflon and domestic sheep have 54 chromosomes, with three pairs (1+3, 2+8, 5+11) of ancestral acrocentric chromosomes joined to form bi-armed chromosomes. This is in contrast to the argali and urial, which have 56 and 58 chromosomes respectively.
According to some zoologists, the European mouflon is not a genuine game species, but a descendant of a very early race of domestic sheep, [10] derived from the first stocks of sheep domesticated in the Levant and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean around 9000-8500 BCE. Therefore, it represents a nearly ten-thousand-year-old "snapshot" of ...
Four breeds of sheep, in the illustrated encyclopedia Meyers Konversationslexikon. This is a list of breeds of domestic sheep. Domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are partially derived from mouflon (Ovis gmelini) stock, and have diverged sufficiently to be considered a different species. Some sheep breeds have a hair coat and are known as haired sheep.
Prominent members include sheep and goats, with some other members referred to as goat antelopes. Some earlier taxonomies considered Caprinae a separate family called Capridae (with the members being caprids), but now it is usually considered either a subfamily within the Bovidae, or a tribe within the subfamily Antilopinae of the family ...
This is a list of sheep breeds usually considered to originate in Canada and the United States. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Some may have complex or obscure histories, so inclusion here does not necessarily imply that a breed is predominantly or exclusively from those countries.
The Soay sheep is a breed of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) descended from a population of feral sheep on the 100-hectare (250-acre) island of Soay in the St Kilda Archipelago, about 65 kilometres (40 mi) from the Western Isles of Scotland. It is one of the Northern European short-tailed sheep breeds.