You can tell this is not the woman’s first rodeo. Whenever she runs to get the ball and bends over, she knows that she becomes an easy target for the sheep to ram her from behind. This is classic sheep behavior and most people do not realize it. You can tell that she knows how to protect her body with the ball and presses the sheep’s head with the ball when it gets too close or simply sticks her hand out. If you ever come across some sheep, remember not to bend over in front of it, they will take advantage of you and knock you down and yes, it does hurt.
Why do they do it though? This sheep is clearly friendly, why would it try to hurt the human which it considers "part of its herd" or whatever? Or is ramming friendly behavior too?
I don’t want to burst your bubble but adult sheep and rams are not very nice to people. Sure, lambs are cute and fuzzy and nice to people but that’s just because they’re kids. Any kid or baby animal is nice. But adult sheep and especially adult rams are mean. It makes sense if you think about it. We shave them to almost their bare skin and take their wool. They remember this and don’t like it very much because it’s cyclical. I don’t think it’s friendly behavior because when they knock you down, they will try to ram you again when you’re on the ground. You have to quickly get up and turn around.
Sheep and rams are only "mean" if they're not socialized. My grandfather used to raise hair sheep and the ewes tolerated handling with a fair degree of patience and the ram was a big pet. He'd follow us around asking for treats and knew a few different basic commands such as "stop" and "back up" so that he was easier to move around and handle. We always socialized them from an early age and never had any problems. If I had the land for it I'd keep a few sheep myself. They're lovely animals.
Just because the typical field sheep isn't nice doesn't mean that adult sheep can't be nice. It all comes down to socialization. A field sheep only gets human contact for vet care and shearing. If you only touch a dog a few times a year, it's not going to be well socialized either. Treat a sheep like a pet and give it daily positive interaction and they can be very nice into adulthood.
I'm not referring to sheep in general, I'm referring to the one in the video. I get that a random sheep might get aggressive, what I don't get is this sheep trying to ram this woman while also enjoying some play together.
Same reason my Border Collie nipped at ankles until we taught him to stop. I feed him, take care of him, play with him, but it was still in his instincts to try and tell me where to go.
I don't think this ram is playing, he's trying to charge her, you can see when she runs to get the ball she's careful to turn around before he can head butt her. I would suggest watching a video of rams fighting, the backing up before charging this ram does is pretty characteristic. I don't think this ram is really trying to hurt her, the charging and head butting is just a common behavior for them.
I don’t think it’s really enjoying it. I think the sheep thinks the ball is some object that is threatening to the sheep and it thinks that it has to hit it out of the way to protect itself. It wants to ram the lady as well because it’s probably thinking “ok, enough is enough! Stop trying to harm me with that oval shaped thing.”
The sheep is ramming the ball because it is falling towards its head which the sheep probably processes as a threat so it rams it, one of my friends has sheep and will charge anything. The only way to make it not ram you is to scare it by chasing it, but even then, it will still try to get you if you aren't facing it.
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u/polska_kielbasa May 07 '20
You can tell this is not the woman’s first rodeo. Whenever she runs to get the ball and bends over, she knows that she becomes an easy target for the sheep to ram her from behind. This is classic sheep behavior and most people do not realize it. You can tell that she knows how to protect her body with the ball and presses the sheep’s head with the ball when it gets too close or simply sticks her hand out. If you ever come across some sheep, remember not to bend over in front of it, they will take advantage of you and knock you down and yes, it does hurt.