Sheep are far more cognitively sophisticated than their reputation suggests, with implications for how we manage their social lives, environmental needs, and welfare in farming systems.
Sheep's cognitive complexity - long-term memory, face recognition, emotional contagion - makes their common management practices more problematic than often recognised. Single housing for treatment, routine separation of ewes and lambs, and transport to unfamiliar environments with unknown sheep all impose psychological suffering. Understanding that sheep have individual social bonds and emotional lives should shift management toward maintaining social groups, reducing isolation, and providing cognitive stimulation in their environments.