Are sheep too smart for their own good, or are they just plain dumb? Is it matter of supernatural sense of unity or is it just an animal stupidness? I’ll let you to judge and discuss that after you have read this bizarre yet slightly fascinating story which happened in 2005 in Turkey .
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) – Stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd of sheep to graze, while they had breakfast, one sheep decided that it had enough of the world and jumped to its death. It doesn’t stop there though…
As the shepherds looked on, their herd of sheep one by one followed the initial sheep’s actions and jumped one after one to their death as well – a nearly whopping 1,500 of them!
In the end, 450 sheep died after the mass suicide jump, lay on top of one another in a white pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher, cushioning the fall, the daily newspaper Aksam reported.
"There's nothing we can do. They're all wasted," Nevzat Bayhan, a member of one of 26 families whose sheep were grazing together in the herd, was quoted as saying by Aksam.
The estimated loss to families in the town of Gevas, located in Van province in eastern Turkey, is close to 100,000 Turkish lira, which is equal to roughly $91,000 Cdn. This is a significant amount of money in a country where average GDP per person is around $2,700 US.
"Every family had an average of 20 sheep," Aksam quoted another villager, Abdullah Hazar as saying. "But now only a few families have sheep left. It's going to be hard for us "
