That’s gotta hurt.
But like a couple of NFL special teamers, they will go for a straight for a head-on-head collision. That is the cost of being a bighorn ram, though.
These creatures are muscular beasts that live in some of the roughest terrain out there, the mountains. These sheep are pure muscle, allowing them to go up and down steep faces with ease.
Bighorn sheep have true horns, which they grow and have their whole lives unlike antlers. These horns grow out of their head and curl back towards their face. They can even reach weights of 30 pounds.
But the cool part of these creatures is their head. These use it as a weapon against other bighorns and will run full speed before butting heads to see who is the most dominant. It is a display that seems like it must hurt them, but they have the tools for it.
They are thought to have a bubble-wrap type layer that surrounds their brain. They also increase the volume of blood in their head to minimize the impact. Although, they are known to occasionally get a brain injury, but they usually are fine after these battles.
These 2 Montana bighorns decided they were going to show everyone how it was done right in the middle of a road. The sheep were being watched for a bit and out of nowhere they square up and charge. They knock heads, and it almost hurts my head to watch, but the circle back and do it again.
Here’s a little backstory:
I drive up Skalkaho Highway in the Sapphire Mountains in Hamilton Montana a few times a week to watch the Bighorn Sheep. On this day, these two were on the road alone without the rest of the herd. I had been taking pictures for about 10 minutes when the two sheep began butting.
I missed the first encounter but put my phone on video and began filming the sheep walking towards me when suddenly they split and butted each other. This is the first time I’ve seen them do this in such a dramatic fashion. They continued down the road and butted twice more which I also filmed before walking down the hillside in front of my car to go to the creek for a drink of water.
Oh, the things you can see in Montana.
