The photographer thought it was a goat. The photo editor thought it was a goat. Sure looked like a goat to the author of this post. It turns out to be a sheep, in Dakar, Senegal. Claire Harbage for NPR

From a strictly culinary vantage point, those of us at Raxa Collective who are not vegetarian are at least slightly more inclined to lamb than to mutton (though this dish is a favorite); but we find ourselves in goat territory more often than in sheep territory. And in goat territory, from a productive agriculture vantage point, we are focused on dairy rather than meat. From the time we started paying close attention to goats we have also been wondering whether sheep might be adaptive to the same territory, and this post got us thinking further along those lines:

So perhaps you noticed a post I wrote last weekend about how you know if your goat is happy. Yes, scientists do study that.

The story had a cute picture of a goat at the top, taken by a photographer in Dakar, Senegal. The farmer told the photographer that the animal was his “goatie.” And to our untutored eyes, it looked like a goat.

And then NPR’s ruminant-wise Africa correspondent, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, send me an e-mail with the subject: “MARC, THAT’S A PIC OF A SHEEP, NOT A GOAT!”…

…This humiliating experience made me eager to learn more about sheep and goats, and the differences between them. I turned to Cathy Dwyer, a professor at Scotland’s Rural College, who does research on animal behavior and welfare. “I’ve worked on sheep quite a bit,” she says. “Most of the last 20 years.”

So clearly we can’t pull the wool over Dwyer’s eyes.

We started our interview by showing her the photo of the sheep we thought was a goat.

I feel really stupid. I’m the editor of a blog called “Goats and Soda,” and I can’t tell a sheep from a goat.

I can understand the difficulty. It’s usually the tail that’s the real giveaway. Sheep tails always go down; goat tails go up. But there’s only a face to work from in the photo…

Read the whole article here.