Scientists studying the Soay sheep on the island of Hirta in the St Kilda archipelago have found that, over time, the sheep are getting smaller with each generation.
At first, this may seem to be a mystifying aberration of the precepts of evolution, until you realize that a large part of what makes evolution work is how the environment affects a species. To wit: due to continued climatological change, the winters have become less and less harsh, which allows for less-hardy species of sheep to survive. Concurrently, the grasses upon which the sheep feed are surviving out of season for longer periods of time, meaning that they’re available to more sheep than before. All these changes culminate in sheep bearing young earlier, and these young are smaller than previous generations.
And while it’s good ecological economics to have smaller sheep around, it also means that the first opportunistic infection to come along, expecting to meet the resistance of hardier breeds, could wipe out entire families at a stroke.
Why is this important? Aside from the obvious warning about our environment, the other thing our kids should know is that adversity breeds strength. It’s only when things don’t go our way that we are truly challenged, and this challenge is good for us. We learn so much by being forced to fight — we exercise our creativity in novel ways, we employ tenacity, and hopefully, we experience humility. Learning to be okay with things not being okay is one of the hardest lessons to teach our children, and one of the most important. Things don’t always work out the way we want them to, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s vital to our lives. Tell your children about the shrinking Soay sheep and let them learn not to shrink from the hard times.
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