Do sheep have feelings?

A car raced past me on the Teesdale valley. Some miles later I came upon the body of a lamb by the roadside. A forlorn bleating on the slopes behind me alerted me to the presence of its mother looking onwards. As I stood there the bleating continued without apparent cause or end and seemed to carry the need to have something heard with in it. She started to make her way over to me, her pace and snthusiasm increasing. The bleating stopped and I felt that maybe, seeing me standing by the lamb, a flicker of hope had ignited that maybe her offspring was not dead. I stood aside and she wandered up to still, woolen mound and put her nose to it. A moment standing there looking into space and she wandered heavily off again onto the slopes without ever looking back.

At the time I had a simple narrative running in my head. I tried to imagine what it was like for this ewe having nursed this lamb from springtime until now, some 16 or 20 weeks, to suddenly be separated catastrophically this glorious sunny day the golden light from the setting sun casting a long shadow from the heap that had only minutes before been her companion and biological imperative. Tonight and for the rest of the year she had no-one to worry about or look after. It seemed to me at first that the bleating was an expression of this loss and confusion that must come from such sudden and deep re-orientation. As she nosed the carcass on the road it was easy to be moved to tears.

Yet a second narrative started to take form. The bleating was actually to warn me away from her child. In a state of some confusion the instinct to protect the lamb was still present and she was protecting it like she would have done an hour ago. Yet returning to the lamb she was reminded that it was dead and so cancelled that behaviour and wandered off. While I didn't want to accept it, it was easier to believe that she was devoid of emotions and simply acting biologically
than to suggest that there was some internal tumoil and process of separation occurring.

It has been noted before that we humans have a lot to learn from animals. Their living in the moment, the acceptance and management of events as they happen has long been the envy of philosophers and artists. Something I should learn from maybe also!