The Lítla Dímun sheep (Dímunarseyðurin) was a type of short-tailed sheep endemic to

Lítla Dímun Lítla Dímun is a small, uninhabited island between the islands of Suðuroy and Stóra Dímun in the Faroe Islands. It is the smallest of the main 18 islands, being less than a square kilometre (247 acres) in area, and is the only uninhabited o ...

in the

Faroe Islands The Faroe Islands ( ) (alt. the Faroes) are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. Located between Iceland, Norway, and the United Kingdom, the islands have a populat ...

. It became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was a

feral A feral (; ) animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in som ...

sheep, probably derived from the earliest

sheep Sheep (: sheep) or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to d ...

brought to Northern Europe in the

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

Period.Ryder, M L, (1981), "A survey of European primitive breeds of sheep", ''Ann. Génét. Sél. Anim.'', 13 (4), p 400.
/ref> The last of these very small, black, short-wooled sheep were shot in the 1860s. It was similar in appearance and origin to the surviving

Soay sheep The Soay sheep is a breed of domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') descended from a population of feral sheep on the island of Soay, St Kilda, Soay in the St Kilda, Scotland, St Kilda Archipelago, about from the Western Isles of Scotland. It is one ...

, from the island of

Soay Soay (pronounced "soy") is the name of several Scottish islands. It is Sòdhaigh (sometimes anglicised "Soaigh") in Scottish Gaelic, and comes from the Old Norse ''so-ey'' meaning "island of sheep". It may refer to: * Soay, Inner Hebrides off south ...

in the St Kilda archipelago off the west coast of Scotland. Soay is an island of very similar size and topography as Lítla Dímun, and has similarly difficult access. The sheep now living on Lítla Dímun are Faroes sheep, a more domesticated short-tailed type.

References

Sheep breeds Extinct sheep breeds {{sheep-stub