From Sugar the long lost Australian sheep to an unfortunate Bulgarian man who became mummified way faster than scientists would expect, Amy's bringing it with a fact double header!

P.S. Sugar the sheep had 28 pounds of wool shorn off. That'd make a lot of sweaters!

Show Notes:

Brain Junk Merch

Sugar the Sheep article on UPI with a great link to an Instagram video of Sugar getting sheared

LittleCreekMontana.com history of why sheep need to be sheared

Trigger warning on this scholarly article on precocious mummification; there are full on color photos of an autopsy. Cureus article: A Rare Phenomenon of Natural Precocious Mummification

A less juicy review of the Cureus paper on IFLscience.com

Transcript

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Trace Kerr.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today on brain junk, we are going to talk about a couple little shorties that I'm just excited about and that have absolutely no relationship to one another. Oh, I feel like this is the true spirit of brain junk. Like, just, I'm interested in this and you might be, too.

[00:00:26] Speaker A: Okay, I'm ready.

[00:00:27] Speaker B: I have one very tenuous connection, but we'll let you decide at the end. Our first one is about sheep or a sheep. This fall, late fall, a sheep was found in Australia to be living with a herd of kangaroos. Are they a herd? What's a group of kangaroos called?

[00:00:44] Speaker A: Isn't it a mob?

[00:00:46] Speaker B: Probably. That sounds about right there. Yes, it's a mob.

[00:00:50] Speaker A: Aha.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: Okay, so let's get back on track here. A sheep was observed, and actually it's been for about a year. This sheep has been observed with a mob of kangaroos in the sugarloaf reservoir nature area in Australia. And for those of you who want to know where it's at on the map, it's a little northeast of Melbourne. Looks like maybe about an hour from the bay. Oh, southern central Australia is where this guy is hanging out. And they think sugar ran away about five years ago and has been living with this mob of kangaroos that whole time. And so somebody finally corralled sugar and brought him in because these modern sheep need to be sheared.

[00:01:35] Speaker A: I was going to say, how much wool was on that sheep?

[00:01:38] Speaker B: Quite a lot. But if you look at pictures, that was one of the noteworthy things is sugar was actually in pretty good shape. They sheared him and his skin looked good still, and he seemed to be in good health underneath his overgrown coat. And so apparently, the kangaroo life was good for sugar. And now sugar's living out his days in peace on a sanctuary, joined by other rescue farm animals. So he will still have community. It just won't be kangaroos anymore.

[00:02:13] Speaker A: Wow, that is so much I'm watching.

I don't know where I am. I'm on instagram. So much wool.

[00:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it looks so thick. And so that got me to wondering, what did sheep do before modern farming when we sheared the sheep? And the answer to that is pretty simple, that we, over time, have bred shaggy sheep, and that has been...

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