In the modern era, Australia, New Zealand, the southern and central South American nations, and the British Isles are most closely associated with sheep production. Sheep husbandry is practised throughout the majority of the inhabited world, and has been fundamental to many civilizations. Sheep continue to be important for wool and meat today, and are also occasionally raised for pelts, as dairy animals, or as model organisms for science. In Commonwealth countries, ovine meat is called lamb when from younger animals and mutton when from older ones in the United States, meat from both older and younger animals is usually called lamb. A sheep's wool is the most widely used animal fiber, and is usually harvested by shearing.
One of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes, sheep are raised for fleeces, meat (lamb, hogget or mutton) and milk. Sheep are most likely descended from the wild mouflon of Europe and Asia, with Iran being a geographic envelope of the domestication center. An adult female is referred to as a ewe ( / j uː/), an intact male as a ram, occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether, and a young sheep as a lamb. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Although the term sheep can apply to other species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to Ovis aries.
Sheep or domestic sheep ( Ovis aries) are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock.