The evening of November 3, 1888, started out like any other Southern England night. Farm animals were secured in their pens or locked safe behind pasture gates; however, around 8pm, the people around Oxfordshire heard something they didn’t expect: the sounds of a mighty stampede outside their homes.
If one dared to look out their window to see the cause of the cacophonous din, they would have seen one of the strangest events in history. The Great Sheep Panic of 1888 is one of those strange events that puzzles people to this day.
The Great Sheep Panic of 1888
That night, tens of thousands of sheep suddenly went berserk and ran for their lives. Sheep were busting through their pens, barreling through fences as if they were made of paper, jumping over stone walls, and tearing up property as they ran.
The following day, farmers were stunned to find that their flocks of sheep were not where they had left them the night before. The tens of thousands of sheep were spread everywhere, sometimes miles away from their usual fields. It was reported that when some farmers located their sheep, some hid under bushes or stood in the streets panting in sheer terror. Others had packed themselves into any corner of the fields they could find.
The day following the Great Sheep Panic of 1888, a local farmer wrote of the event to a science-gossip magazine. The farmer described something triggering all the sheep around to panic so severely that they went rampant through the streets and fields of the town.
What was interesting was his information about how widespread the Great Sheep Panic was. The farmer wrote, “The extent of the occurrence may be judged when we mention that every large farmer from Wallingford on the one hand, to Twyford on the other, has reported that his sheep were similarly frightened, and it is also noteworthy that with two or three exceptions the hill-country north of the Thames seems to have been principally affected.” Whatever caused the sheep to panic occurred across an area of 200 square miles (520 square kilometers).
The farmers whose sheep were victims of the Great Sheep Panic could not figure out what caused the sheep to stampede into the night. It was agreed that there was no possible way that troublesome children, normally the guilty party when sheep have been scared, could have caused the Great Sheep Panic. How could children across several villages all rile the sheep up so much that all of the creatures broke through fences in sheer terror simultaneously?
Another possible cause was perhaps the sheep had been severely frightened by dogs or a wild fox. Sheep are very skittish animals, and when they are being chased after by a dog or fox they become extremely stressed.
This can cause what is known as “sheep worrying.” Sheep worrying is intense stress caused by fear that can be so consuming that it can make a sheep die, pregnant sheep miscarry, and lambs and ewes can die of starvation or hypothermia if they are separated from their mothers and can’t find mom again. While this sounds plausible, all flocks being spooked by a dog or fox at the same time across 200 square miles (520 square kilometers) is impossible.
Farmers, looking for a more wide-ranging phenomenon, wondered if some atmospheric event caused the Great Sheep Panic. A loud clap of thunder, drastic changes in the weather, vibrations from an earthquake, or a meteor falling to earth would all be terrifying to animals.
But nothing like that occurred on the night of November 3, 1888. The weather was calm, but the night was described as being “very dark” with occasional flashes of lightning. Could tens of thousands of sheep become terrified of the dark at the same time?
Sheep Behavior
Sheep are prey animals and are always on guard, looking for threats that may harm them. Their senses of smell, sight, sound, touch, and taste are incredibly sharp, which makes them hyper-aware of their environment, other members of the flock, and themselves.
Sheep also have a very intense instinct to follow each other and gather together in flocks. Like many prey animals, sheep know that there is strength in numbers, and running in a large, tight group away from a predator can prevent any of the sheep from getting caught. The flocking instinct can vary by breed, but all sheep will flock together. It is why a single person can look after a large flock of sheep.
Along with strength in numbers, sheep will follow each other. If one sheep moves, all the others will follow behind, which can be dangerous. In 2006 in Turkey, around 400 sheep fell to their deaths after following one sheep that tried to cross a deep ravine. When it comes to the Great Sheep Panic of 1888, was this event triggered by one spooked sheep and the rest followed due to their natural instincts and herd mentality?
While nobody could determine the cause of the Great Sheep Panic of 1888, they were even more confused when a similar panic occurred in 1889 and again in 1893 in the Reading/Oxfordshire regions. In the two following sheep panics, farmers were unable to determine the cause of the sudden panic attack that swept across the land.
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A naturalist named Oliver Vernon Aplin became interested in the panic of 1893 and began to investigate what caused the event. Alpin’s theory as to what caused the Great Sheep Panics of 1888, 1889, and 1893 was that it was very dark outside.
Alpin had spoken with witnesses who all said that in 1888, it was impossibly dark from around 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. The darkness traveled from the northwest to the southeast, blotting out the moonlight.
Alpin believed that even though sheep can see in the dark, when it is exceptionally dark, it can make the animals feel trapped and become scared. Alpin explained that all the sheep crowded in a pen would begin to feel scared and start moving around, only to bump into other sheep doing the same thing or into objects in their pen.
All it would take was a single sheep to start running in fear, and it would cause a domino effect soon; the entire herd would be panicking and rushing to escape an unseen danger they felt was after them.
The exact cause of the Great Sheep Panic of 1888 is still a mystery. Alpin’s theory can explain a flock panicking but it doesn’t explain how so many flocks of sheep across a wide area all became spooked at the exact same time. Perhaps the tens of thousands of sheep who went berserk saw something unexplained and maybe extraterrestrial.
Top Image: The cause of the Great Sheep Panic remains unexplained to this day. Source: Rudy and Peter Skitterians / Public Domain.
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