Do sheep miss gone flockmates?

Another question that we get a lot. And I think it's wrong to ask this question in this way, since sheep are not people, so while they certainly have a full range of emotions, these would be different emotions than our own. Just like I have read somewhere that it's almost impossible to find 2 people who see colors in exactly the same way, so when we say "blue" your blue and my blue can be actually pretty far apart, even though it's the same word.

Sheep do form lasting social relationships. First it's with their mom and siblings, later with other lambs and even later it's usually with unrelated members of the flock. I often say our flock is a lot like all girl high school with rivalry between groups, shifting alliances, etc. In my experience the alliances do not last longer than a several months, although hatred between certain members can go on for years. I've yet to see a sheep growing restless because one of her girlfriends is missing. They will call each other while they can see but other than that it's pretty much "out of sight - out of mind". Or at least it seems this way from their behavior.

Well, may be relationship between a lamb and the mother is much stronger? Yes, for a couple weeks. It's amazing how strong mother's protective instinct is in the first few days and how fast it disappears. In the beginning your average ewe will protect her lamb from anything or anybody, make sure it's not lost, etc. But the little one better use this time to grow and became stronger, because in a week or two mom's attitude will change to "just follow me and try to keep up and if there is a danger run fast somewhere, it's not my problem anymore" (that's pretty smart actually because lams of that age are even more difficult to catch than adults but they still can't survive without milk, so mother's sacrifice would be pretty counterproductive). There are variations but from two weeks on the relationship seems to be mostly based on milk - lambs come to mother when they're hungry and mom calls them when her udder is full and starts to hurt. They still sleep together for a while but that may just because lambs don't want to miss when mom gets up so they can latch on her. If separated before weaning, mothers and lambs will seek each other for a few days but that, once again, may be just about milk. After weaning, I don't think their relationships are any different from those of other flock member.

So, in short – no, I don't think they “miss” gone flock members and it makes perfect sense if we remember how the sheep (and other prey animals) defend themselves from predators. No, not by being faster than the predators but by being faster than some of their flock mates. In the wild, almost every night someone would be eaten and sheep couldn't survive if they all needed therapy every time that happens. I'm sure there is some emotion involved and there is probably a word in the sheep language that describes this emotion but it's not “miss” or any other label we could slap on it. A group of humans lives and behaves like a pack, not like flock or herd, so it's relatively easy for us to understand and describe emotions of dogs or other pack animals but prey animals are difficult, so we tend to dumb it down to the level where we can “relate”.

P.S. I just did a quick google for "do sheep miss gone flockmates?" and the amount of the snake oil science on the first two pages is pretty amazing, as well as the depth of the male bovine excrement presented as gospel by people who are either pretty ignorant on the issue or have the agenda and stick to it, the facts be damned.