Fat tailed sheep is not a single specific breed of sheep. It's a catchall word like "Health care worker".
There's tons and tons of different breeds.
They all store fat in their tails, but fall into two main categories: WIDE tails and LONG tails
Wide tails store fat in the rump area and have no visible tails.
Long tails store fat in the tail itself, which vary in length in different breeds.
In the olden days, people took pride in breeding sheep with the longest tail.
They are not so popular today as it's hard to find a decent tail cart on Amazon.
Speaking of Tail carts, they come in different styles and designs.
We dont have any that are actually preserved, but old drawing of them show different wheels harnesses.
Some of them are literally just skateboards
Back in the day, breeding sheep with long dragging tails was all the rage.
Nowadays different tails types have been developed to prevent them from dragging their tails on the ground.
Such as the "folded tail" or the "Only fat at the base" Tail
Despite fat tail sheep being the most common sheep breeds in the world, most people in the west have never heard of them.
The West likes Wool Sheep.
Fat tails are strictly meat sheep and have little useful wool. They also do poorly in colder climates
There's a huge community of shepherds on youtube that script, choreograph and shoot elaborate videos for their sheep complete uplifting music to highlight their best qualities (for sale and stud)
It is fantastic.
This is the original music by the way.
People kept bringing up Fat Bottomed Girls.
Ya'll are wrong. These are fat bottomed BOYS.
Sheep are often continuously bred, so the females are constantly getting pregnant, giving birth and nursing.
That's very hard on the body, so they can’t build up as much fat as the boys.
The fattest sheep, the ones with the truly VAST tails, rocking them little carts are ALWAYS males.
This is why the Bible specifically states that ONLY
the rumps of the Males are to fit to be offered to the lord......
"And he shall offer of the sacrifice of the peace offering an offering made by fire unto the LORD; the fat thereof, and the WHOLE rump" -Leviticus 3:9
I mean... look. Arguably these are just minor details and doesnt matter....
But beyond it's teachings the bible is also a work of literature about life in the ancient world.
And on some level these kinds of small details bring a sort of richness to these depictions of real people, their culture and how they lived. I just think it's neat.
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So...Mammals normally store fat under the skin in an even layer, but camels evolved to pile fat in one spot, so the rest of their bodies can stay cool in the desert.
Why don't other desert animals do this?
Well, they do.... but for some reason, we never talk about them..... 🧵🧵
These guys are called Fat-tailed sheep.
They're native to the Middle East and North Africa.
Like camels, they too store fat in one place on their body, keeping the rest of their bodies cool.
Fat-Tails are the oldest breeds of sheep.
Their images are found in the ruins of the oldest civilizations, scratched into clay tablets before the first languages formed.
A lot of butterflies are poisonous. But they're only poisonous if you eat them, you can touch them just fine.
When we think of poison, we usually think of DEADLY poisons, but that's not how it works....🧵
Blue jays fed monarch butterflies will vomit and become ill. They won't ever touch one again and will dissuade their family from eating them.
The nature of poison is sacrifice.
You give your life to ensure that your kind lives forever in the minds of your enemies.
Some animals that are deadly poisonous because their predators became strongly resistant to their poisons.
Thus they need to be extra EXTRA poisonous to teach these dense bastards.