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Thanks to Emma for the suggestion! Let's learn about some animals that live on the St. Kilda islands off the coast of Scotland!\n\nSt. Kilda:\n\n\n\nSoay rams (kept on farms, not the feral sheep):\n\n \n\nA small flock of Soay sheep (these are from a farm too):\n\n\n\nA Boreray ram (on a farm):\n\n\n\nA Boreray ewe with her babies (also on a farm, or at least I think so):\n\n\n\nThe St. Kilda wren (not a sheep):\n\n\n\nThe St. Kilda field mouse (also not a sheep) is the size of a hamster:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week\u2019s episode is a suggestion from Emma, who long ago told me about the interesting history and unique animals of the island of St. Kilda in Scotland. I\u2019ve been meaning to cover it ever since, so finally I\u2019m getting around to it after only two years or so.\n\nEmma says, \u201cIt's an amazing little island and sort of a reverse of the usual 'humans cause extinction' story. The humans on the island went 'extinct', being evacuated from the island partly because increased mainland human contact was bringing illnesses they couldn't fight without hospitals. Two lots of rad ancient sheep and some unique wrens and mice are happily living there to this day.\u201d\n\nSt. Kilda is not one but a group of islands off the coast of Scotland, but the largest island and the only one where people once lived is called Hirta. In 1930, everyone who still lived there moved to the mainland, but by that time hardly anyone remained on St. Kilda anyway. The island probably never had more than a few hundred people in residence at any given time. In 1957 St Kilda was designated as a nature reserve and in 1986 as a World Heritage Site.\n\nSince then, as Emma says, the animals of the islands have mostly been left alone. This includes two breeds of sheep that were left behind on two of the smaller islands when the last residents moved away.\n\nOne of these sheep breeds is the Soay, which originally lived on a tiny island called Soay, which actually means \u201csheep island.\u201d The island of Soay is only about 250 acres in size, or 100 hectares, but that\u2019s not the only place they used to be found. The breed has lived in northern Europe for probably 4,000 years, and was a popular sheep in Britain for centuries. When all the people moved away, 107 sheep living on Soay were moved to Hirta. The sheep on Hirta are feral and receive no care from humans, but they also have basically no predators on the island. They have been studied since 1955 by a small team of scientists and conservationists.\n\nThe Soay is a primitive breed of sheep that closely resembles its wild ancestor, the Asiatic mouflon. It\u2019s brown, usually with lighter markings on the face and rump, and the rams often grow a short mane of hair in addition to wool. Rams have dark brown horns and ewes often grow smaller horns too. It also has a short tail. In late spring, Soay sheep shed their fleece naturally instead of needing to be shorn. This is the case with many primitive sheep breeds. Its wool is considered high quality and sought after by handcrafters.\n\nAlso like many primitive breeds, the Soay doesn\u2019t have much of a flocking instinct. Soay sheep have been exported from the islands and are kept on farms in many areas for their wool, but if a sheep dog tries to herd a flock of Soay, the poor dog is going to be so frustrated. Soay scatter instead of flocking together. It can also be an aggressive sheep, especially the rams, but it\u2019s also a small breed, with even a big ram rarely heavier than 70 lbs, or 32 kg. And these days, the feral Soay sheep are actually getting smaller overall and have been for the last twenty years. The research team that studies the sheep thinks it\u2019s because climate change has led to shorter, warmer winters, which allows more of the sheep to survive, including smaller sheep that would ordinarily have trouble in cold weather. The smaller sheep breed and their offspring are more likely to be small too,