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Sheep (: sheep) or domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term sheep can apply to other species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated sheep. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. There are around 1.2 billion domestic sheep as of 2019, making them easily the most common species of sheep. An adult female is referred to as a ewe ( ); an intact male as a ram, occasionally a tup; a castrated male as a wether; and a young sheep as a lamb.

OverviewAI-generated

Sheep, scientifically identified as Ovis aries, are herbivorous ruminants classified as productive animals. They belong to the genus Ovis and have a temporal range starting in the Pleistocene. The longest observed lifespan for these animals is 22.8 years. Their habitat includes pens.

These animals are a source of meat, milk, and wool. The Unicode characters 🐑 and 🐏 represent them. They are the subject of the Commons category "Sheep" and the topic's main category is Category:Sheep. Descriptions of sheep appear in sources such as the Bible Encyclopedia of Archimandrite Nicephorus, the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, Zedler, and the Großes vollständiges Universallexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste.

The topic is on the focus list of the Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have and Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4. In academic contexts, the query "sheep" yields 164862 results in PubMed. Additionally, the subject is referenced by 4,759 other encyclopedia articles.

Synthesized by Vinony from 19 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, PubMed, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.