The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
Sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated, and they are raised all over the world. They are ruminants, so they need spacious areas and are not useful for industrial agriculture.
Sheep are herbivores, they typically eat seeds, grass and plants. Most some sheep don’t need much water, a fact that makes them a perfect livestock for the scarce regions of the world. In Western countries they are most used for their meat and more recently also for their milk, while sheep wool plays a less important role in industrialised countries.
While China leads the list of countries with sheep, the map shows a high proportion of sheep living in Australia, New Zealand and the whole African Continent. In Europe most of the sheep are living in the United Kingdom, followed by Turkey and Spain.
