December 5, 2025
Thicc tails, thicker drama
The Fat-Tailed Sheep on the First Fleet; Australia's First Sheep
Australia’s first sheep had mega butts — and the comments are baa-nanas
TLDR: The First Fleet brought fat‑tailed sheep to Australia, prized for their tail fat rather than wool. Commenters are split between marveling at the history, questioning 1881 claims of 80‑pound tails, geeking out on domestication timelines, and cracking “thicc tail” jokes — turning a niche breed into big drama.
Australia’s earliest sheep weren’t fluffy wool-makers — they were fat-tailed meat machines with tails so huge, 19th‑century writers claimed they could weigh as much as the rest of the animal. The First Fleet reportedly brought at least 29 of these Cape Fat‑Tailed legends from South Africa in 1787, where the tail fat was a delicacy. Cue today’s internet discovering this and immediately asking: Wait… people ate the tail?
That’s exactly the culture clash lighting up the comments. One reader admits they’d never heard of tail as a cut, while another rides in with a history lesson: these sheep have been domesticated for thousands of years and still thrive across the Middle East and Turkey. The thread splits between skeptics calling the 1881 “80‑pound tail” claims Victorian tall tales and foodies praising tail fat as the original flavor bomb. Local pride jumps in too, with a plug for Romney sheep — “the sheep that conquered the world” — sparking a side quest on which breed truly ruled the globe. Meanwhile, meme-lords flood the chat with “thicc-tail energy” jokes and “booty-of-mutton” puns, as armchair geneticists debate how many generations it takes a chonky tail mutation to become a breed. Verdict? The history’s wild, the science is spicy, and the tail talk is wagging the whole thread.
Key Points
- •In 1787, Captain Arthur Phillip purchased about 500 live animals at Cape Town for the First Fleet, including at least 29 sheep.
- •These were Cape Fat-Tailed Sheep, the first sheep landed on Australian soil.
- •The breed was primarily raised for meat, with less woolly coats, and had exceptionally large fat tails.
- •Arthur Bowles Smyth documented the sheep’s distinctive tails in his First Fleet journal.
- •An 1881 article by August Locher described tails often weighing 25–80 pounds and noted the breed’s wide geographic distribution.