What Does ovine Mean
Sheep is a term from the Latin word ovis that translates as "sheep . " As an adjective , ovino qualifies sheep as cattle (that is, they have wool : a type of hair used for spinning and weaving).
The concept of sheep can also be used as a noun to refer specifically to sheep . From these animals, mainly wool is obtained , but also meat and milk .
Sheep, therefore, are sheep. It is an ungulate mammal (its extremities end in a hoof or hoof), an artiodactyl (the extremities have an even number of toes, resting at least two on the ground when walking) and a ruminant (its stomach has four cavities) whose male specimens have of spiral horns.
The male sheep is called a ram , leaving the denomination of sheep to the females. The sheep breeding , meanwhile, receives the name of lamb .
The sheep has been very important throughout history . Sheep are believed to have been among the first domesticated animals for agricultural purposes, as their milk and meat are used as well as their wool.
According to historical documents, this relationship of exploitation by humans towards sheep dates back thousands of years, approximately to the year 11,000 BC, when in ancient Mesopotamia they began to domesticate the wild mouflon with the goal of using their skins, their meat and their milk.
The development of sheep with the aim of obtaining different secondary products from sheep led to a series of crosses that led to a new breed, and all this arose in western Europe and southwest Asia . The antiquity of a collection of statues that were found in some parts of Iran suggests that the exploitation of sheep for their wool may have begun much later, around the sixth millennium BC, although the first garments of Clothes made from this material began to appear about three thousand years later.
In this context, it is necessary to talk about shearing , the process that is applied to sheep to extract wool. This fiber has multiple uses, the most common being the manufacture of clothing. Through milking, on the other hand, milk is obtained that is used to create cheeses and other products.
Finally, sheep meat is often referred to as lamb meat . It is used to prepare multiple recipes , with the chop or rib as the most consumed part in many regions. Although the products obtained from sheep are almost the same as those produced by cattle, their prices are usually much higher, which is why their consumption is less common.
In 1758, the Swedish scientist and zoologist Carlos Linnaeus made a classification of domestic sheep, placing them in the species Ovis aries . Although some time later other studies showed that this species and its wild ancestor, Ovis orientalis (also called the eastern mouflon ), were part of the same and should receive a single scientific name, in 2003 the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature ruled that all were to be grouped under Ovis orientalis .
This decision included the rest of the domestic species, which in total number eighteen, and the reason for mentioning them as their wild variety has the goal of avoiding that some of the lineages are considered subspecies of their own descendants. On the contrary, at present the scientific name Ovis orientalis predominates for sheep and Aries is used to refer to the domestic subspecies.