John Weeks talks about bellwethers. In previous episodes he used the term, but never actually defined it. He reveals that term refers to a sheep, usually a gelded male. He wears a bell around his neck and is a leader for a flock of sheep and an indicator for the whereabouts of the flock in extremely foggy weather conditions. This was all he could find about the term and it was not even in the encyclopedia or other resources he looked in for the term. He had to “wing it” from there and elaborated on the definition based on his own experiences.
This episode of Nature of Things originally aired December 20th , 1991.
