Talk:Ovis

Breeds and species - can you help?
Please see this comment and comment on this page or that page as you see fit. Thanks Donama 05:47, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Anyone read Hebrew?
If you check out the Hebrew equivalent article, it has a lot of information about the species other than O. aries. If anyone can read and translate Hebrew, it would be valuable to have some of it here. Donama 02:25, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * You could try posting it to Translation into English, or post a message to one of the Hebrew-to-English translators. -- Ian &equiv; talk 04:36, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * A transation of the Hebrew article headings thanks to User:Woggly:

 ''Fragments translated from Hebrew article, as per Donama's request.

Introduction is relevant to sheep genus, but goes on to state that the article is mostly concerned with the domestic sheep. (irrelevant to English) I think we can see from this we almost have it covered between the Sheep and Domestic sheep articles. Donama 11:32, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Terminology
 * Wild Sheep
 * of the species Ovis
 * other species
 * Domestic Sheep
 * History of the Domestic Sheep
 * Origin
 * Domestication
 * Physiology
 * Diet
 * Reproduction
 * Behavior
 * Economic Significance
 * Breeds of domestic sheep
 * Agents of harm (lame translation, sorry. Maybe Problems is better in English)
 * Predators
 * Diseases
 * Husbandry
 * Sheep farming worldwide
 * Jewish Sheep farming
 * The Sheep in Culture
 * Judaism
 * Christianity
 * Other cultures
 * Secular art
 * Sheep in Israeli art
 * Sheep as symbol or emblem
 * For additional reading
 * external links

Sheep vs Domestic Sheep problems
The recent interwiki links in the Sheep article may be okay, but they appear to be duplicated at Domestic sheep. Considering, domestic sheep and generic O. subspecies sheep have gone into two separate articles I suggest we include a summarised paragraph about Ovis aries on this page and put all the interwiki links there. Perhaps it makes sense for the interwiki links to be duplicated on the Ovis aries (domestic sheep) article too? What do you think? Donama 01:41, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Wilson and Reeder (1993) classification
Here, for what it's worth, is how Wilson and Reeder sorted out the species in 1993:
 * Ovis ammon: the argali
 * Ovis vignei: the urial
 * Ovis aries: the domestic sheep and the mouflon
 * Ovis nivicola: the snow sheep
 * Ovis canadensis: the bighorn sheep
 * Ovis dalli: the Dall sheep

--Cam 04:37, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

IUCN/SSC - Caprinae Specialist Group (2000)
I distilled the following classification from this page:
 * O. aries: the domestic sheep
 * O. gmelini: the mouflon
 * O. g. gmelini: the Armenian mouflon
 * O. g. anatolica: (a Turkish mouflon, may belong in O. g. gmelini)
 * O. g. isphahanica: the Esfahan mouflon
 * O. g. laristanica: the Laristan mouflon
 * O. g. musimon: the European mouflon
 * O. g. ophion: the Cyprus mouflon
 * O. vignei or O. orientalis: the urial
 * O. ammon: the argali
 * O. nivicola: the snow sheep
 * O. canadensis: the bighorn sheep
 * O. dalli: the Dall sheep

--Cam 16:36, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

So where's species no. 8?
Count again, it's not there. - User:Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Sheep --> Ovis move
Initial contributions gathered from User talk:Lambiam and User talk:Donama. —Lambiam Talk 10:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Lambian, I'm a bit unhappy that you moved Sheep to Ovis without any kind of discussion first. I think Ovis is the latin word for sheep, or only the scientific genus name in English. Most people looking for an overview of sheep will go to "Sheep", not "Ovis". Domestic sheep are still at the article of that name anyway, so I'd really prefer we move Ovis back to sheep. Have you changed any of the redirects yet. If you have it's probably not worth moving it back straight away without starting a discussion about it on the talk page first. &mdash; Донама 02:50, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't know that this Sheep was one of your pets. Usually when I post something on an article's talk page there are about 2 reactions per decade. See for example the vivid discussion at Talk:Ovis. I did the same shuffle before with Goat and Capra (genus). My reasoning was that most people looking for information on goats or sheep are looking for information on the domesticated species, and will look up Goat or Sheep. I am firmly convinced that they vastly outnumber the people who want an overview of different species in the genus (from which they arrive one click away). Most don't probably even know there is more to it. The situation I created is very similar to how Cow goes to the domesticated beasties, not to Bos, same again for Cat which does not go to Felis, and so on. I'm not quite clear why you think that is sub-optimal for Sheep, but if I am correct in understanding that you want Sheep to exceptionally lead the reader to the genus and not the domesticated species, then all you need to do is to change that redirect page.


 * I tried to adjust all links into Sheep to go to Ovis if more appropriate, but found only one case, at Bighorn Sheep. All other links, previously going to the genus page, were actually meant for the domesticated fuzzies. Lambiam Talk 03:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * There are now nearly 100 unfixed redirects. I agree with the above (that is, Donama's contribution — L.), and it should go back to the english name. I'll fix it later, but wait for further comments. jimfbleak 05:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you mean with an "unfixed redirect". Redirect states emphatically: Most especially, there should never be a need to replace redirect with redirect . So an example is the article Llama. It has a link " [[sheep ]] " in the context "In fact, llamas were used in place of the horse, the ox, the goat, and the sheep of the Old World." I assumed, in the context with the other domesticated animals, that here the domesticated species was intended by the author, rather than the European Mouflon. In other words, this was a link that was fixed by the redirect  [[Sheep ]] →  [[Domestic sheep ]] : apparently the author of the text naturally assumed that  [[sheep ]] would resolve to  [[Domestic sheep ]] . I may have misinterpreted the authors' intentions in some cases, and overlooked some links, but the only links that need to be fixed are those that say "sheep" and mean (any individual of) "the genus Ovis (L.)".


 * As to what should go where, please help yourselves. It looks like [[Sheep ]] is unspoilt, and you can just move it back. All I did was what I thought would be the most helpful approach to the readers, and consistent with the treatment of other ambiguous names (domesticated species vs. genus) to boot. I do not understand why "sheep" should be singled out, but in light of all that ails Wikipedia I consider this a rather unimportant issue, so I hope you don't mind too much if I leave the further discussion to the regular visitors of this talk page. Lambiam Talk  11:39, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Lambian, I do understand your move of the page was well thought out and you thought it helpful, etc. Mostly I'm just concerned that there was no prior discussion. Thanks for starting it here, if belatedly.


 * I hadn't noticed the changes to the goat, cat or cow, etc. I personally still think an article about sheep (of all kinds) should go at "Sheep". To me that is intuitive. I'm not sure about the other animals. What do others think? &mdash; Донама 02:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Ovis orientalis
Urial and Mouflon are both placed together in one species by MSW:

''Populations of the species can be partitioned into Red Sheep or Mouflon sensu stricto, the aries/orientalis division (includes also isphahanica, musimon, and ophion); and Urial or Arkar, the vignei division (includes also arkal, cycloceros, and formerly severtsovi, now transferred to O. ammon by Wu et al, 2003); Laristan Sheep, laristanica, combine Urial-type morphology and Red Sheep karyotype. Hence vignei and aries/orientalis divisions treated as conspecific following Valdez (1982); multivariate morphometrics (Ludwig and Knoll, 1998) did not discriminate between the two. Hybrid zone between O. a. orientalis (2N = 54) and O. a. arkal (2N = 58) in Elburz Mtns, N Iran and apparent hybrids between O. a. laristanica and O. a. cycloceros recorded in SE Iran (Nadler et al., 1971b; Valdez et al., 1978).''

Wilson & Reeder's Mammal species of the world 3rd edition online

This species is at MSW called O. aries, but because of opinion 2027 of the ICZN the Name must be O. orientalis (Names from wild forms are preferred to domesicated forms.)

How should we call this species here? Wild sheep?--Altaileopard (talk) 18:11, 30 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I see your point, but I don't think "wild sheep" would make sense as it's the only one that includes domestic sheep – and of course all the other species are also wild sheep. I can't think of a term that covers both the wild and domestic O orientalis types but also excludes other Ovis species.  Do we actually need any vernacular name for the species as a whole?  There is no such name for domestic pig/wild boar, domestic cattle/aurochs or dog/wolf.


 * I agree that "groups" is the correct taxonomic level. I've put it with a lower case initial, as species or subspecies would be.  --Richard New Forest (talk) 19:08, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually we have such a Name in all other domesticated species: The Aurochs (Bos primigenius) includes the domestic cattle, the wolf (Canis lupus) includes the domestic dog and the (wild) boar (Sus scrofa) includes the pig. So the problem about the domestic sheep is not the point. The other thing is a real problem... All other species are called sometimes wild sheep. Perhaps we do not need a separate word right now.... I will try to organize the articles without using a common name for Ovis orientalis.--Altaileopard (talk) 09:56, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, MSW3 gives the Common Name Red Sheep....!?--Altaileopard (talk) 09:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Number of species
The text in the section "species" says: 5 species (etc.). When I count the list below I find 6. What is the truth? Dick Bos (talk) 21:28, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Six. The ultimate truth, that is. Ucucha 21:32, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Historical taxonomy
Collecting some links and references here until they can be incorporated into this or one of the relevant (sub)species articles. is my preferred formatting method, but for some reason the Templates drop-down is not working in my current web browser, so the formatting below may be a bit incomplete or haphazard. Pelagic (talk) 22:55, 20 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Sherborn, Charles Davies (1889). An index to the generic and trivial names of animals, described by Linnaeus, in the 10th and 12th editions of his "Systema naturae."
 * Ovis (x. 70, xii. 97) - aries, guineensis, strepsiceros. Page 68
 * Although Blyth writes "O. Musimon Linnæus", I see no entry for "musimon" in Sherborn.
 * ammon, Capra x. 70 (12); xii. 97 (12). Page 4
 * Linneus, Carl (1758). Caroli Linnæi Systema naturæ. Regnum animale. summary p. 70
 * Under Capra Ammon is noted "Tryelaphus & Musimon Gefn. quadr. 155. Habitat in Sibiria Gmelin."
 * Kerr, Robert (1792).  The animal kingdom, or zoological system, of the celebrated Sir Charles Linnæus. containing a complete systematic description, arrangement, and nomenclature, of all the known species and varieties of the mammalia, or animals which give suck to their young / Class I, Mammalia
 * Catalogue unnumbered page lists:
 * 731. Cretan sheep - 2. Ovis Strepticeros
 * 732. Argali - 3. Ovis Ammon
 * 733. Corsican Argali - β. O. Ammon europaea
 * 734. Pudu - 4. Ovis Pudu
 * Descriptions begin on p.330

Climbing ability
Perhaps a section should be added discussing the ability of sheep to traverse steep terrain. Some species are experts. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:21, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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