Operatic sheep really do grow golden fleece (Italian opera!)

[phoebe]

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2006-01-26T072429Z_01_SYD157142_RTRIDST_0_OUKOE-UK-AUSTRALIA-WOOL.XML&archived=False

snip

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Pampered Australian merino sheep who listen to opera have again produced a bale of the world's finest wool, matching the record set by the flock last year.

Italian designer Loro Piana said the 93 kg (205 lb) bale measured 11.8 microns, compared with the average Australian merino wool which measures 20-21 microns. Superfine wool is defined as 19.5 microns or finer per strand. A micron measures one millionth of a metre.

Loro Piana said it bought the bale from the Highlander Partnership, a fine-wool project in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales state, for A$232,500 (98,220 pounds) or A$2,500 a kilogram -- 357 times the normal market price for wool.

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The special flock is kept mostly indoors in small groups and listens to music, including Italian opera and recordings of Italian singer Andrea Bocelli.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

1. I read recently about some Italian vintner

who plays classical music for his vines.

Here's a blivet I found on the internet about it:
You may think you've heard it all when it comes to grapegrowing methods--sustainable, organic, biodynamic--but how about "audiodynamic" farming? In short, while the vines are out soaking up the sun, they’re also being exposed to classical music--like a sonic fertilizer. Pioneering this new, cultured approach to grapegrowing is Italian Carlo Cignozzi, owner of Il Paradiso di Frassina in Brunello di Montalcino. In 2000, he installed loudspeakers around his estate's 8 acres of vineyards, and he claims the vines have responded favorably, maturing more quickly and healthily. The music also chases off grape-gobbling wild boar and birds. "When people ask me what's in my wine," says Cignozzi, "I tell them it's 60 percent Mozart, 20 percent Vivaldi and 20 percent other composers." The project has attracted the attention of the University of Florence, which recently sent a team of researchers to set up a controlled experiment to test the scientific basis of Cignozzi's claims; the results should be published within a year. But what do the neighbors think? "They're a Sardinian family," says Cignozzi, "so every Sunday, I treat them, together with the vines, to a compilation of Sardinian music. In that way, everyone's happy!"