Suint, sheep

Wool fat or suint.—The potash found in plants is obtained from the soil and the potash in the soil is one product of the decomposition of rocks which form the earth s crust. The potash which herbivorous animals—e.g. sheep—draw from the land is largely exuded as an oily sweat from the skin, and called, after the French, suint. In the first century of our era, Dioscorides called the mixture of wool fat and water oTowos, eesypus, a name which it retained up to the middle of the seventeenth century. CEsypus is mentioned several times by Ovid. In spite of its disagreeable smell it appears to have been used by the Boman ladies as one of their choice cosmetics. It is mentioned in N. Culpeper s Pharmacopoeia Londi-nensis (London, 1653), but it soon afterwards disappeared from the pharmacopoeia... 

To observe the role of chemical cues in the sexual behavior of males of small mammals, we can alter the odor of females. Hair is a great substrate for odor-carrying lipids. For example, the behaviorally active body odors of sheep reside in the wool fat, also known as suint. Removing hpids from the fur of female mice reduces the lipophilic odorants significantly. Hair near skin glands is often anatomically modified into osmetrichia to hold sebum on its cuticular surface (Miiller-Schwarze et al. 1977). 

Wool fat is obtained from extracts of soapy water in which sheep s wool has been washed or extracted with solvents from grease wool. Lanolin is obtained by purifying the grease (or suint). This emollient is a yellow and viscous substance, consisting of fatty acids and fatty acid esters. 

Suint Suint is that portion of the sheep s fleece which is sol in cold water after the wax has been removed. It is a complex mixture of metallic ions organic acids, pep -tides, weak bases, neutral subatanoes, and inorganic cations. The following acids have been identified acetic, propionic, butyric, valeric, oxalic, succinic and glutaric. Paper chro -matography indicates the presence of adipic and pimelic acids Deane, Truter, Biochim Biophys. Acta I8t 435 (1955) J. Chem Sac. 1959, 2746- Determination of ion content Mohsin Shah. Pak J. Set Ind. Res. 12, 286 (1970) C.A. 73, 4778q (1970). 

Redundancy. In many behavioral contexts, signals sent simultaneously or consecutively in several sensory modalities achieve the same effect. As early as 1977, Barlow noted that multichannel redundancy is almost the rule . Priming cues in domestic sheep constitute an example of such multisensory signals. Chemicals from the ram, specifically hexadecanediol-1,2 and octa-decanediol-1,2 contained in the suint (wool fat), but also visual and tactile stimuli from the ram stimulate LH secretion and ovulation in ewes (Pearce and Oldham, 1988). 

Wool is the name given to hair shorn from sheep, goats, llamas, etc. In raw wool, the fibers are bound together with lanolin, wool suint, and vegetable impurities which first must be removed by carbonization. 

The weight of wool produced by sheep varies considerably from one breed to another, and an average value is useful only as an example. The typical annual fleece production of a 50 kg Merino would be approximately 5.0 kg, of which about 3.0 kg (60 per cent) represents clean dry wool fibres, with the remaining 2.0 kg (40 per cent) being wool wax, suint, dirt and water. Wool wax is produced by the sebaceous glands and consists mainly of esters of cholesterol and other alcohols, along with the fatty acids normally found in glycerides. Suint, the secretion of the sudoriferous... 

Raw wool from sheep contains other constituents considered contaminants by wool processors. These can vary in content according to breed, nutrition, environment, and position of the wool on the sheep. The main contaminants are a solvent-soluble fraction (wool grease), protein material, a water-soluble fraction (largely perspiration salts, collectively termed suint), dirt, and vegetable matter (VM) (eg, burrs and seeds from pastures). 

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