India, Oct. 4 -- Most sheep usually get a haircut once a year. However, on Campbell Island, a remote sub-Antarctic island south of New Zealand, that routine ended in 1931. According to a 1986 paper by M. R. Rudge in the New Zealand Journal of Ecology, farming was discontinued that year and more than 4,000 sheep were left behind. No one came back to shear them.

Sheep were first introduced to the island in 1895. The island was cold, windy, and extremely difficult to access. The paper notes that it was likely overstocked from the beginning, and fires and grazing had reduced the vegetation. At its peak, there were over 8,000 sheep on the island. The population declined after that. In 1931, the last farmer on the island went broke, and the sh...