Sheep
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
146 free Sheep trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free sheep trivia questions with answers. Are you a sheep expert or just woolly curious? Test your knowledge with our comprehensive 146-question sheep trivia quiz covering breeds, history, behaviors, and fascinating facts. Whether you're a farmer, animal enthusiast, or trivia lover, this challenging quiz will entertain and educate. See how many questions you can answer correctly!
30 of 146 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many distinct compartments are there in the stomach of a domestic sheep?
Four
The first chamber alone holds 19 to 38 litres of fermenting feed; the last, the abomasum, works most like a human stomach and is nicknamed the 'true stomach'.
Q 02In the proverbial warning about hidden enemies, which animal comes disguised in sheep's clothing?
Wolf
Wolf: the image comes from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus warns his listeners to watch out for false prophets who arrive in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ferocious wolves.
Q 03What shape are the pupils of a sheep's eyes?
Horizontal slit
A horizontal slit gives a grazing sheep such wide peripheral vision that it can see behind itself without turning its head, a useful trick for an animal that predators hunt.
Q 04In which region were sheep first domesticated?
The Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent: herders there tamed wild sheep at least 10,000 years ago, at first for meat rather than fleece, and woolly sheep were only bred thousands of years later.
Q 05A rare hybrid of a sheep and a goat is popularly known by what name?
Geep
A geep is rare because sheep have 54 chromosomes and goats 60, so most such pregnancies end in stillbirth and a fertile survivor is rarer still.
Q 06Which dog breed, the star of sheepdog trials, controls a flock with a fixed stare known as 'the eye'?
Border Collie
Border Collie: the dog glares at sheep to intimidate them into moving where it wants, a habit thought to come from the stare its wolf ancestors fixed on their prey.
Q 07Which hard, salty Italian cheese, often grated over pasta, is made from sheep's milk?
Pecorino Romano
Pecorino Romano was a marching ration of the Roman legions and its name means 'sheep's cheese of Rome', yet nearly all of it is now made on the island of Sardinia.
Q 08What do a sheep's lower front teeth bite against?
Dental pad
A dental pad, a hard toothless cushion in the upper jaw, does the job of upper incisors: the lower front teeth press each mouthful against it to pick it off, and the back teeth grind it.
Q 09What is the most common vocalization made by sheep?
Bleat
A bleat, or 'baa', is mostly a contact call: sheep also bleat when they expect to be fed, and a lamb that bleats without stopping is usually a hungry one.
Q 10Shepherds traditionally judge a sheep's age by examining what?
Its teeth
Its teeth: a lamb's eight milk teeth at the front are replaced by bigger adult ones over its first few years, and the full set is not complete until the sheep is about four.
Q 11In the first hours after birth, a ewe learns to recognize her own lamb mainly through which sense?
Smell
Smell: as she licks the newborn clean the ewe learns its scent, and it is by scent that she then tells her own lamb from every other in the field.
Q 12Which substance, washed out of raw sheep's wool, is widely used in lip balms and skin creams?
Lanolin
Lanolin is the grease that waterproofs a fleece so rain runs off the sheep, and it is recovered when the raw wool is scoured.
Q 13A blood-sucking stomach worm of sheep, striped red and white, is named after which object?
Barber's pole
A barber's pole: the female worm's white ovaries coil around its blood-filled gut to give the red-and-white twist, and a heavy infection drains enough blood to kill a sheep through anaemia.
Q 21Cooks who insist a shepherd's pie must contain lamb give what name to the same dish made with beef?
Cottage pie
Cottage pie and shepherd's pie have long been used as two names for one dish of minced meat under mashed potato, and some cooks, food writers and dictionaries still treat them as interchangeable.
Q 22In the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', where does the lamb follow Mary against the rules?
To school
To school, where it made the children laugh until the teacher turned it out; in 1877 the rhyme's opening line became the first thing Thomas Edison recorded on his new phonograph.
Q 23Sheep have specialized scent glands located in front of their eyes and where else?
On their hooves
Q 14In the nursery rhyme, which girl has lost her sheep and can't tell where to find them?
Little Bo-Peep
Little Bo-Peep is told to leave them alone and they'll come home, but in the later verses she has to go and find them, and their tails are left behind, hung on a tree to dry.
Q 15Sheep are classified as what type of eater?
Herbivore
Sheep are herbivores: they eat nothing but plants, and a fore-stomach full of bacteria, fungi and protozoa lets them break down cellulose that a human gut cannot digest.
Q 16Domestic sheep are thought to descend from which wild animal, whose males carry heavy curling horns?
Mouflon
Mouflon: the Asiatic mouflon is the likeliest ancestor, while the 'wild' mouflon of Europe run the other way, being descendants of early farm sheep that went feral.
Q 17Which term, also known as 'chewing the cud', names the process where sheep regurgitate and re-chew partly digested food?
Rumination
Rumination fills several hours of a sheep's day: it feeds from dawn to dusk and stops at intervals to rest and work through what it has already swallowed.
Q 18What is a castrated male sheep commonly called?
Wether
A wether with a bell round its neck traditionally led the flock, which is how 'bellwether' came to mean anything that shows where the rest will follow.
Q 19What signal tells a ewe's body that the autumn breeding season has come?
Shorter days
Shorter days: fading daylight switches on the ewe's breeding cycle, and because she carries her young for about five months, an autumn mating delivers them in the mild weather of spring.
Q 20Which wool cloth may by law be made only by islanders weaving at home in the Outer Hebrides?
Harris Tweed
Harris Tweed has its own Act of Parliament: since 1993 the name has been reserved for cloth handwoven by islanders at their homes from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides.
On their hooves: each foot carries a scent gland in the cleft between its two toes, and nobody is yet sure what the glands are for, though the ones on the face seem to play a part in breeding.
Q 24When sheep are being moved, which features of the ground commonly make them baulk?
Shadows and dips
Shadows and dips make sheep stop: they are reluctant to go where they cannot see clearly, and they tend to move out of the dark towards well-lit ground.
Q 25What is meat from a grown sheep called?
Mutton
Mutton comes from a fully grown sheep and tastes stronger than lamb, which is exactly why some cuisines prefer it to the milder meat of younger animals.
Q 26Which common meat sheep breed is recognized by its black face and legs?
Suffolk
Suffolk rams are widely used as sires on ewes of other breeds, because the crossbred lambs grow fast and reach market weight early.
Q 27How often is each adult domestic sheep typically shorn of its fleece for wool?
Once a year
Once a year is the norm, usually in spring, and the shearing matters for the sheep's health and comfort in warm weather as much as for the wool.
Q 28Besides dogs and donkeys, which animal do sheep farmers most often keep with a flock to drive off coyotes?
Llama
Llama: it is naturally aggressive towards dogs and coyotes, so a single one pastured with sheep will sound an alarm call, then chase and kick at the intruder.
Q 29Which of these famous cloned animals was a sheep?
Dolly
Dolly, born in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, proof that a specialised body cell still carries the instructions to build a whole animal.
Q 30What is the primary food source for domestic sheep?
Grass
Grass and other short plants are what sheep are built to crop: they graze close to the ground and leave the taller, woodier growth that browsing animals strip.