Since I tend to split people into either sheep or wolves, here’s some basic information on each. Note the similarities between some of these descriptions and the behavior patterns of people. We’re not as far removed from animals as some of us think we are. From sheep101.org: “Sheep have a strong instinct to follow the leader. When one sheep decides to go somewhere, the rest of the flock follows, even if it is not a good decision. For example, if the lead sheep jumps over a cliff, the others are likely to follow. Their only protection from predators is to stay in the flock and follow the sheep in front of them.” A USDA report published in 2007 reports that “In 2004… predation accounted for 37.3% of sheep and lamb death losses for the year.”

It would appear that a defensive tactic of “staying in the flock” when a predator arrives means that 63% of the time the sheep lives. Understandably, that is not actually the case. If we have a herd of all the sheep, then 37% of them end up dead in a given year, those dead ones were the sheep on the outer edges of the herd. Does this suggest that sheep with less herding instinct, less conformity, tend to be those outside sheep that end up killed by predators? I have no idea. I just don’t favor being a non-conforming sheep and getting dead most of the time, or an average sheep and getting dead 37% of the time. Those are bad odds. Compare with this: if you are shot by someone using a handgun, you die 25% of the time. Getting shot with a pistol is less risky than being a sheep.

Yes, I am drifting around any purely scientific usage of predation percentages of sheep, but I am still making my point. For some balance, if a threat is using an knife on you, your get dead percentage goes to 65, and if you’re shot with a rifle, it’s dead 75% of the time. These figures come from all reported human to human altercations. Since they are statistics, one can alter, ignore, slant and otherwise butcher them for any or no reason.

Predictably, I don’t like any of the statistics. All of them relate to bad things happening to me and nothing happening to the predator. That situation alone violates my notion of fairness. If I am going to get hurt, then in the interest of equality, I should get to hurt (at the very least) the predator hurting me. As a sheep, though, that would not be possible, leading me to conclude I do not want to be a sheep. Since I have free will, I can choose instead to be a predator, a wolf, and then decide that I will not attack defenseless sheep.

“Though they almost never attack humans, wolves are considered one of the animal world’s most fearsome natural villains.” – National Geographic Society. And from Alaska Web Publishing, “If necessary, wolves will attack other wolf intruders to protect their territory… the wolf is an ultimate predator at the top of the food chain… the wolf is generally a docile animal with a strong aversion to fighting… Lone wolves have no social territory…” While it sounds like if I choose to be a wolf, I might not have any social life unless I happen to run across other wolves (and I have, they are out there but wolves don’t tend to socialize with sheep), this wolf choice sure does give me a lot better survival odds than one sheep in a herd of many.