What if there was something that could combine two very useful functions: keeping the grass around a home of business mowed while also helping people tell time? Here’s the thing: such a useful multi-functional device exists: it’s called a sheep. Much has been written about how helpful sheep can be in keeping lawns maintained, which seems like a win-win for people and sheep alike. But it turns out looking at a sheep’s eyes can also help you abreast of the time of day.
That’s one of the useful facts Cathy Haynes brings up in her new book The Fullness of Time: Marking the Day by Birdsong, Blooms, Shadows, and Stars. In an excerpt from it published at Literary Hub, Haynes chronicles some of the different ways in which the animal kingdom can help humans without a timepiece have a sense of what time it is.
While researching the book, Haynes observed the eyes of several sheep. At one point, she writes, “it was late in the day, it still felt fairly bright outside. At this stage the ewes’ pupils were a narrow pill shape.” After 45 minutes, she returned to the sheep to observe them again. What did she find? She discovered that, as she phrased it, “the ewes’ pupils had morphed into rounds.”
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These clever timepieces allow you to track all of the world’s time zones simultaneouslyHaynes is not the only writer to observe this property; she cites an essay by the writer Nina Gockerell, titled “Telling Time Without a Clock,” as one of the documents that sparked her interest.
It’s worth noting here that Haynes’s explorations of time and timekeeping have extended to more corners of the world than just sheep; she has explored time through art installations and has an upcoming program on nature-based timekeeping. A sheep is too large to use as a watch, but it can still be very useful to get a sense of when in the day you currently are.
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