Following like sheep is a phrase that is often
used as a derogative comment, but perhaps we should give a bit more credit to
the sheep because at least one of the sheep knows where it’s going or they’d all
be going round in ever diminishing circles like some political party.
Once
we start to give a bit more credit to our sheep friends about their
directionality, the question arises as to their laterality, this is are they
right-hooved or left-hooved? Anderson and Murray worried about this and decided
to put it to the test using a T-maze (1). They published their results in the
journal Laterality which takes these issues very seriously.
The
experiment was done with a total of 309 ewes. They were all white-faced ewes so
we don’t know if there is a breed difference and that might be tested in the
future. The ewes were tested as they were presented with a fork in the road and
had no choice but do what Yogi Berra said – “when you come to a fork in the
road, take it.” And they did. Two thirds of the time they turned left.
After
making this momentous decision, they had to make a decision on the exit lane to
get back to their friends. On balance,
the lefties stayed turning left, while those with an initial right bias tended
to switch to the left and return to the fold.
It
seems that this might be promising news for the forthcoming elections if the
population are really sheep-like as some pundits seem to assume. Those that had
their right-fling two years ago may be tending to return to the fold by taking
a left direction. We’ll see if the politics of sheep rules in November.
