I was just wondering, what animals could possibly have been domesticated, but weren't? I suppose some extinct animals could have been domesticated too. I don't really know what signs a domesticateable animals has, so I guess if you knew the signs you could tell.
Alternate Domestic Animals
- Thread starter Leistungsfähiger Amerikan
- Start date
Foxes would be very suitable for this purpose: Soviet researchers successfully created a breed of domestic foxes, which quickly took on a number of doglike characteristics (more variable fur coloring, friendliness, timidity, barking, tail-wagging, loss of musky vulpine odor, etc).
most of the canines in the world can be domesticated; people have domesticated bushdogs and foxes... the big question is, why bother when we already have dogs in a huge variety of sizes? There's not much hope of domesticating any of the wild hoofed animals of the world; most likely, if they could be domesticated, they would have been already...
Moose, Reindeer and Elephants are all considered semi-domesticated at best. I'd say that they'd be candidates. Caribou, which are near identical to Reindeer are a possible. Given the ease with which Elephants were tamed and actively incorporated into human economies, I'd say that Mammoths, Mastodons, Stegodonts and Gomphotheres, all of which overlapped humans, could potentially have gone the same way. The last Gomphothere in South America was believed to have gone extinct around 500 CE.
Depends on what domestication is for: Food? All sorts of critters. Useful household functions, dogs and cats, possibly possibly monkeys. Draft animals? The list gets a lot shorter. Riding? Very short.
Depends on what domestication is for: Food? All sorts of critters. Useful household functions, dogs and cats, possibly possibly monkeys. Draft animals? The list gets a lot shorter. Riding? Very short.
The javelina (collared peccary) is native to my home state. For some reason I'm very fond of it; I think the javelina should be our emblem, and appear on the Arizona state flag too. But I was going to say, javelinas, tapirs, etc. are too small to be ridden, unfortunately (except maybe by the Batwa) but what if careful breeding and domestication of some of our country's numerous and equally fierce feral hogs had produced a great tusked boar, that could be bridled, saddled and ridden?
Porcine cavalry, what a fearsome weapon that would be, in the War on Terror! They would strike the hearts of Islamist insurgents with horror and loathing.
Rattenfänger von Memphis
Donor
I think you would like a book by Jared Diamond, "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" in which, among many other things, he lists what makes an animal capable of being domesticated or not.
One example he gave that I really enjoyed was why horses can be domesticated but seemingly similiar zebras most definitely can not be domesticated.
One argument I have with Jared Diamond's "if it could have been domesticated, it has been" hypothesis is that of necessity. For example, if an animal could have been domesticated for agricultural purposes, but the only people in its native range for most of history were hunter-gatherers, couldn't it have been left undomesticated? For example, look at rats. Rats have long lived in symbiosis with humans in urban areas, but only within the past three centuries have people turned to them as a useful domesticated animal - originally for entertainment purposes but later for scientific purposes as well.
Either way, I'm sure there are plenty of animals with the potential for domesticated that were driven extinct first. North America once had horses and donkeys... I don't think we know enough about their nature to say without a doubt that they could have been domesticated as easily as their Old World counterparts were, but perhaps.
Either way, I'm sure there are plenty of animals with the potential for domesticated that were driven extinct first. North America once had horses and donkeys... I don't think we know enough about their nature to say without a doubt that they could have been domesticated as easily as their Old World counterparts were, but perhaps.
Could the Dodo have been domesticated? I know at the time its meat was considered to be disgusting, but I don't know, maybe if it survives, people become fans of eating dodo eggs, or using dodo feathers in garments?
Or the Madagascan megafauna could be an idea too- elephant bird egg omelette anyone?
Or the Madagascan megafauna could be an idea too- elephant bird egg omelette anyone?
I am thinking Jared Diamonds assertion here was oversimplistic. "If it can be domesticated, it has been"
Leaving asides the fact that animals such as the fox is domesticable, but hasn't been. I think it is more of a question of an effort/reward ratio for a tribe or civilization.
"How much work must we put in to domesticate this animal, and do we get anything from it in the meantime? And has someone else already domesticated a better species and bred it in the bargain?"
If you can breed it in captivity, practically any species is domesticable. Eventually. But with many species, you'd have to spend so many generations of breeding to socialize and pacify it, that you might as well not bother.
Such as the Zebra. Since horses do not do well in the Zerbas range, there is a high payoff to domesticating it. But it is so vicious that you'd need to spend 40-50 generations just to get it placid. And there does not seem to be too much you can use it for in the meantime. So the investment have been to long-range for anyone to do it.
Or the Fox. You need to breed it for sociability, since foxes are not pack animals, but as the russians have shown, they are easily domesticable. However, the dog was domesticated first. So there was an alterntive available, at much lower cost.
Or the lion. Its a highly intelligent pack hunter, that previously shared a very large amount of the human range. The female is probably quite domesticable, but you can tolerate far less agression from it towards its human "packmates" than you can accept from a dog. So you are faced with a situation where any misfire could easily result in the death of the breeder, and again, where they wouldn't be useful for much untill they were "finished".
Afterwards...there are only a few things the lion would be better for than a dog, and it would be very high maintenance.
Best bet to domesticate something unusual is a civilization which uses the animals for some religous purpose and keeps a breeding pool for it. If it is stable over a long time, the animal keepers might consider it in their interst to breed them for "not-killing-us"
Leaving asides the fact that animals such as the fox is domesticable, but hasn't been. I think it is more of a question of an effort/reward ratio for a tribe or civilization.
"How much work must we put in to domesticate this animal, and do we get anything from it in the meantime? And has someone else already domesticated a better species and bred it in the bargain?"
If you can breed it in captivity, practically any species is domesticable. Eventually. But with many species, you'd have to spend so many generations of breeding to socialize and pacify it, that you might as well not bother.
Such as the Zebra. Since horses do not do well in the Zerbas range, there is a high payoff to domesticating it. But it is so vicious that you'd need to spend 40-50 generations just to get it placid. And there does not seem to be too much you can use it for in the meantime. So the investment have been to long-range for anyone to do it.
Or the Fox. You need to breed it for sociability, since foxes are not pack animals, but as the russians have shown, they are easily domesticable. However, the dog was domesticated first. So there was an alterntive available, at much lower cost.
Or the lion. Its a highly intelligent pack hunter, that previously shared a very large amount of the human range. The female is probably quite domesticable, but you can tolerate far less agression from it towards its human "packmates" than you can accept from a dog. So you are faced with a situation where any misfire could easily result in the death of the breeder, and again, where they wouldn't be useful for much untill they were "finished".
Afterwards...there are only a few things the lion would be better for than a dog, and it would be very high maintenance.
Best bet to domesticate something unusual is a civilization which uses the animals for some religous purpose and keeps a breeding pool for it. If it is stable over a long time, the animal keepers might consider it in their interst to breed them for "not-killing-us"
Bill Cameron
Banned
Umbral,
Oversimplistic? First, his comments regarding domestication are not simply "If can be domesticated, it has has been domesticated". Second, Diamond is a trained scientist, something you are not.
Looking at the effort and reward curves intersect is a beginning and, oddly enough, something Diamond addresses.
Nonsense. Domesticability is much more than breeding in captivity.
First, some species can never socialized or pacified. Second, as you correctly point out, the effort required to domesticate others is too great.
Easily domesticated? Score a laugh point.
A forty-plus year effort undertaken in a scientific research lab and funded by a superpower which produced less than 100 individuals and a few pets does not point to "easy" domestication. And a domestication effort that is essentially over too.
The Russian scientists involved are looking for funding, hence the few pet sales, and, if they don't receive it, those domesticated foxes will either die out or be subsumed into the wild population, something we don't see with dogs or cat. Feral dogs and cats can be captured and re-socialized with relatively little effort. The same can't be said for the project's foxes.
What always gets lost in these discussions is that any domestication effort needs to take place within a Stone Age level of technology. You need to domesticate your targets early lest the niche they're meant to fill has already been filled by another candidate.
Lions? Half-ton carnivores? Those lions? This isn't the ASB Forum, you know.
Those religious animals bred in captivity would be no more "domesticated" than the centuries of bears raised in captivity for European blood sports.
You, and most of the others in this thread, really need to review just what domestication actually means.
Bill
Or you could use them as pigs, which was what I was talking about.
STOP KILLING BUTTERFLIES!
No they couldn't. I asked this in a thread once but Tapirs usually live around water sources and are solitary creatures.