A new paper last week in Science reinforced the idea that migrating sheep develop their mountaineering skills by transmitting cultural knowledge. This is no mindless ramble but a complex hike that takes wild bighorn sheep through the regions richest in food, safest from predators. To pull this off they have to be good followers, for sure, but at least some of them also need leadership qualities.
By monitoring sheep with GPS-equipped collars, the researchers found that sheep transplanted to new areas for conservation reasons often don't migrate at all at first, and only gradually start getting up to speed. How does the whole, spectacular migration behavior get going, and then get refined over generations?
Biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet broached the topic of leadership in a commentary piece accompanying the research paper. I reached him by phone last week, at a field camp in Australia. He said it's possible that certain sheep with leadership qualities blaze the trails. Another intriguing possibility is that the sheep all have a little bit of leader in them, and they pick up information from each other, adjusting their behavior according to the wisdom of the crowd.