Wild sheep shed their coats every year, but humans have bred the animals to keep growing in order to increase wool production. merino wool is common in high-end clothing. hilariously humongous sheep, in other words, are the result of people tinkering with animal evolution.. Natural sheep, like the wild dall sheep pictured on the right, don't need any help. they grown just enough wool to protect themselves from the cold in the winter and to keep cool in the summer. when it is time, they will shed their winter coat all by themselves.. The more ancient species of sheep like the shetland, soay etc do shed their fleeces naturally and humans would just go around picking up the wool but once man started to selectively breed sheep for their fleeces they lost the ability to shed naturally and had to be shorn..
The wild ancestors of today's domestic sheep breeds had long, coarse hair and a short, downy undercoat, which under domestication gradually became wool, while the long hair disappeared. wild sheep, such as the mouflon, still do not have wooly coats.. Unlike wild sheep, who shed most of their wool every year, merino sheep don't periodically lose their hair. they just keep growing more wool, which is exactly what sheep farmers want. in the 13th. In the wild the sheep lose it by it getting snagged on things in the environment and it also mats and then falls out in clumps. i saw many of these clumps hanging on the bighorn sheep out west when i was there..
