Scientists in Australia have asked farmers to contact them if they have any ugly sheep in their flocks. On Tuesday, the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) said it is looking for "Australia's ugliest merino lambs" so they can study their genetic makeup.

Farmers usually send sheep with uneven wool, strange fibers, clumps of wool that fall out, bare patches, no wool, or highly wrinkled skin to the slaughterhouse. But the project's leader, Simon Bawden, says studying unattractive sheep can help improve Australia's $2.8 billion merino wool industry.

Bawden told the Associated Press that "studying animals with extreme features offers one of the most efficient ways to find good genes that can impact on certain wool traits.

"It might seem a paradox that ugly wool may be good, but when looking through a genetic profile, the random genetic mistakes act like a flag, speeding up our search to finding genes critical to wool formation and synthesis."

The institute hopes that Australian sheep will have stretchier, less scratchy and shinier wool that is easier to spin as a result of the study.