Saw these bunch of bighorns along the highway in a small town in Montana. . I couldn't see quite where doggo was coming from, but I heard a human yelling at him. He'd run back towards his house and then out again. In this case, maybe you can't be too critical of the dogs person as these sheep were in a small neighborhood where it's probably pretty normal to let dogs lay around unleashed and unfenced. . The dog also didn't attack or bite the sheep, and the sheep didn't seem particularly alarmed or threatened by the dog. In fact, you see in the series of pictures, that the dog ran past the sheep to the back of the herd and seemed to be actually trying to move them away from the road and toward his own yard. . We all seem to have folk wisdom that herding instinct is bread into dogs, but it's actually pretty peculiar to me. Dogs and humans likely coevolved and there are even theories that out early alliance with the canines (we gave them food and they borked to alarm us of threats) was part of how we won out against neanderthals. . The evolutionary theory goes on to suggest that we and dogs have been friends for so long that it impacted both species evolutionary development. Potentially so much so that modern domesticated dogs have natural instincts coded in their dna, like herding animals, that are only there because we used them for so long to herd animals. . Like, this dogs owner certainly didn't teach it to herd wild bighorn sheep. And although I don't eat meat, early humans did. It got me thinking about how incredible it might be to an early human if this dog you sometimes threw scraps to chased a dozen or so wild sheep into your village. That's me imagining, not what the little I've read about co-evolution suggests. I'm not sure when or why any sort of herding trait evolved in domesticated dogs. . Also, I really like the rhyme baked into one of these photos. Big horn sheep, big honking jeep. . . . #sheep #herding #herdingdog #herdingdogsofinstagram #herdingdogs #bighornsheep #bighorns #urbanwildlife #sheepherding #bighorn #sheepofinstagram #sheepdog #sheepdogsofinstagram #sheepdogs (at Montana) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNF5lW3gip-/?igshid=1wnvtooph485n