Photo proves bighorn sheep are masters of disguise in Badlands. How many do you see?
Bighorn sheep grow to 250 pounds, so it would seem they’re hard to miss, but a photo shared by Badlands National Park in South Dakota proves otherwise.
Park officials challenged their Facebook viewers to count the number of sheep in the park photo and many people failed the test.
“The fur of bighorn sheep serves as perfect camouflage among the buttes of the Badlands,” the park explained.
“When you come across a group of Bighorn in the Badlands, make sure to pause from a responsible distance of at least 100 (feet) and look closely — there might be more than you first see.”
Two are easily seen in the photo and a third becomes clearer at second glance. But anyone who guessed there were three or even four in the photo guessed wrong.
There are five in there somewhere, a number some people accused the park making up.
“Whoever said five, are you playing a joke on the rest of us? I can only find four and it’s driving me nuts looking for the fifth,” Becky Shattuck posted on the park’s Facebook page.
“I give up. Even with all the directions on where to look, I just don’t see it. I can use my imagination and see all kinds of things...but are they really there?” Linda K. Peterson asked.
“I’m losing my damn mine looking for the fifth,” Morgan Evans wrote.
It took screenshots with circles around the sheep to convince some people that there were five. To see some of those circled photos, click here and here. The toughest of the sheep to find is a “little baby in the crevice” to the right of the central sheep. It was “keeping itself safe from any prospective predators,” the park says.
Badlands National Park consists of 244,000 acres and is known for geologic deposits that “contain one of the world’s richest fossil beds,” according to the National Park Service.
It’s estimated 250 desert bighorn sheep roam the park, according to a National Park Service report. They grow to about three feet tall at the shoulder, and the males have large curled horns that “weigh up to 30 pounds,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The males, called rams, use the horns as weapons during fights for dominance, running at each other “head-on at distances of up to 20 feet or more,” the service says.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Photo proves bighorn sheep are masters of disguise in Badlands. How many do you see?."