Sheep are stoic prey animals that conceal pain and illness as an evolutionary defense against predators. This makes pain recognition challenging and means suffering is frequently undetected in farm flocks.
The stoicism of sheep is not a sign of pain tolerance but an evolutionary adaptation that conceals vulnerability from predators — and from farmers. An injured or sick sheep that shows obvious signs of distress becomes a target; concealment of pain and illness is a survival strategy that persists in domesticated animals. This creates a profound welfare challenge: farmers managing large flocks have limited time for individual observation, and the subtle signs of pain that sheep do express — facial grimacing, altered ear position, gait changes, social withdrawal — require training and attention to detect. The consequences of this detection gap are significant: footrot left untreated causes weeks of chronic pain; post-operative pain after castration or docking without analgesia is now clearly documented by behavioral and physiological research. The welfare improvement pathway is straightforward: farmer training in pain recognition, routine use of analgesics for painful procedures, and systematic flock health monitoring that catches problems early.