Sheep shun dumb image

Researchers say sheep, like humans, have specialized memory systems

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Sheep, like turkeys and ostriches, are not considered the most intelligent animals but British scientists say humans may have underestimated the woolly creatures.

They could be much smarter than we think.

Researchers at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, southern England, have shown that the animals have a remarkable memory system and are extremely good at recognising faces -- which they suspect is a sure sign of intelligence.

Behavioural scientist Keith Kendrick and his colleagues trained 20 sheep to recognise and distinguish 25 pairs of sheep faces and used electrodes to measure their brain activity to show they could remember 50 faces for up to two years.

"If they can do that with faces, the implication is that they have to have reasonable intelligence, otherwise what is the point of having a system for remembering faces and not remembering anything else," Kendrick said.

So hours of seemingly mindless grazing may not be so mindless after all.

Scared animals don't act intelligently

Kendrick suspects sheep got their dim-witted reputation because they live in large groups and do not appear to have much individuality and they are scared of just about everything.

"Any animal, including humans, once they are scared, they don't tend to show signs of intelligent behaviour," he explained.

In research reported in the science journal Nature, Kendrick and his team showed that sheep, like humans, have a specialist system in the brain which allows them to distinguish between many different faces which look extremely similar.

"The most important finding (of the study) is that they are able, both from a behavioural point of view and from looking at the way the brain is organised, to remember a large number of faces of individuals for a very long time," said Kendrick.

"It is a very sophisticated memory system. They are showing similar abilities in many ways to humans."

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