Sheep not as stupid as you think

THE average sheep has long been judged a placid and dim-witted creature, a view epitomised by Sir Winston Churchill when he labelled Clement Attlee a “sheep in sheep’s clothing”.

But a study by Cambridge University suggests that we may have underestimated their intellectual capacities.

Sheep can recognise human faces, spot the facial features of their handlers, and can even distinguish news reader Fiona Bruce from actress Emma Watson.

In experiments in which the animals were rewarded with food for picking out portraits of Bruce, Watson and Barack Obama, sheep proved they were experts at identifying individuals.

In fact, they could even recognise people when pictures were altered or were taken from a different angle, an ability only previously recorded in humans and primates.

And when shown pictures of their handlers without any training, the sheep did a double take then wandered over to their image.

“Anyone who has [worked] with sheep will know that they are intelligent, individual animals who are able to recognise their handlers,” Professor Jenny Morton, who led the study, said.

“We’ve shown with our study that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, comparable with those of humans and monkeys.”

“They are long-lived and have brains similar in size and complexity to those of some monkeys.”

As with some other animals such as dogs and monkeys, sheep are social animals and can recognise other sheep as well as familiar humans, but little is known about their overall ability to process faces.