Cool Potential Domestications

[edvardas]

Die hard Afrikaners sell a lot of Kruger rands and buy Palmer Land. they can harvest penguins and seals on a small scale. But their main interest is in seal milk, which is the richest milk of all. I know that seals can be tamed, but has anybody tried to milk a seal?

[RGB]

Originally Posted by mowque

Crazy idea- domesticate for lumber?

New Zealand etc. are definitely busy breeding trees to be fast-growing and straight, mostly pine for softwood. Does that count?

Domesticating something like Yew or Oak or Cork Oak would have been crazy impactful on Europe though but they're relatively slow growers.

[twovultures]

Originally Posted by edvardas

Die hard Afrikaners sell a lot of Kruger rands and buy Palmer Land. they can harvest penguins and seals on a small scale. But their main interest is in seal milk, which is the richest milk of all. I know that seals can be tamed, but has anybody tried to milk a seal?

That's one I haven't heard.

If you're in an area with very rich fisheries, I can see someone giving a seal farm a try. As they're obligate carnivores, though, feeding them isn't very efficient. Even if it's with small/poor quality fish, you could be using that as bait to catch large/better quality fish. And keeping an aquatic animal would be real tough. In order to make a seal farm worth it, there would have to be a serious economic benefit. I think seal fur would be the best bet to start a seal farm, and milking seals could come from that.

[DValdron]

Trees fail pretty much every criteria for animal domestication. They are long lived, slow growing, anti-social, and produce neither meat, for or labour. Add to this their vicious temper and open penchant for unprovoked violence....

[metastasis_d]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Trees fail pretty much every criteria for animal domestication. They are long lived, slow growing, anti-social, and produce neither meat, for or labour. Add to this their vicious temper and open penchant for unprovoked violence....

Kingdist against Plantae?

[DValdron]

Never turn your back to a tree. They attack when you least expect it.

[metastasis_d]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Never turn your back to a tree. They attack when you least expect it.

And they steal our jobs.

[Danbensen]

Originally Posted by twovultures

TAs they're obligate carnivores, though, feeding them isn't very efficient.

Domesticated sirenians? Hell, they're even called sea COWs, people.

[Danbensen]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Trees fail pretty much every criteria for animal domestication. They are long lived, slow growing, anti-social, and produce neither meat, for or labour. Add to this their vicious temper and open penchant for unprovoked violence....

http://media.photobucket.com/image/r...tcher-tree.png

But seriously.

What about bamboo? Can we consider bamboo to be a domesticate?

Dan

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Danbensen

Domesticated sirenians? Hell, they're even called sea COWs, people.

On Flashman's Kumari Kundam thread, I made a case for a domesticated variety of Sirenians.

Basically, it's a decent possibility. But there are some obstacles. First, the Sirenians are a slow reproducing, slow growing population. So you'd have to select for faster reproduction and growth. Difficult, but not impossible.

Second, you'd have to have a really unique culture, in the right place, with the right sort of insights and resources to domesticate sirenians. Maybe it did happen in Florida, say. Or the West Indies, or Indonesia. But if so, those cultures didn't survive, or didn't keep their domestications. On balance, I'd say it never happened, no evidence.

But its at least an interesting hypothetical.

[SPJ]

What about the quagga? It was a subspecies of zebra that was declared extinct in 1883 after its population was overhunted by Boers who found it to be a good source of meat and a threat to the grazing grounds of their cattle. According to some sources I've found it had been domesticated several times.

Allusion has already been made to the facility with which the quagga could be broken to harness, and it seems probable that the species could have been more easily domesticated than any of its South African relatives. Another trait in its disposition is worth brief mention. It was said to be the boldest and fiercest of the whole equine tribe, attacking and driving off both the wild dog and the spotted hyaena. On this account the Boers are stated to have frequently kept a few tame quaggas on their farms, which were turned out at night to graze with the horses in order to protect them from the attacks of beasts of prey.

http://todayinsci.com/Books/MostlyMa...inctQuagga.htm

[JimTheB]

The eucalypts harbour drop-bears, and they are seriously nasty.

[metastasis_d]

Originally Posted by JimTheB

The eucalypts harbour drop-bears, and they are seriously nasty.

And according to Cracked, they explode.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by twovultures

That's one I haven't heard.

If you're in an area with very rich fisheries, I can see someone giving a seal farm a try. As they're obligate carnivores, though, feeding them isn't very efficient. Even if it's with small/poor quality fish, you could be using that as bait to catch large/better quality fish. And keeping an aquatic animal would be real tough. In order to make a seal farm worth it, there would have to be a serious economic benefit. I think seal fur would be the best bet to start a seal farm, and milking seals could come from that.

There are freshwater populations of seals, so its not actually untenable. But yes, they're huge consumers of fish.

Best bet for seals would be a large freshwater lake, and stock it with the fastest growing fish species you could get your hands on.

Seal milk? I have no idea, but I suspect that's pretty far fetched.

Seal furs are historically extremely valuable. But the question is, can you get a better return farming seals than you could harvesting the wild populations?

[Danbensen]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Best bet for seals would be a large freshwater lake, and stock it with the fastest growing fish species you could get your hands on.

What if the seals eat something that is difficult to get or poisonous to humans?

Lake Baikal is a fun candidate, of course, with its population of fresh-water seals and its goofy abyssal amphipod fauna.

Then of course there's lake Vos...I mean lake Vostok.

[Dangimill]

Originally Posted by Danbensen

What if the seals eat something that is difficult to get or poisonous to humans?

Lake Baikal is a fun candidate, of course, with its population of fresh-water seals and its goofy abyssal amphipod fauna.

Then of course there's lake Vos...I mean lake Vostok.

Lake Vostok? I doubt it.

[Zirantun]

Yeah, it was a carnivore, but it kinda turned out an omnivore, just shows how people cultivated the breed. Dogs today will eat anything except fresh vegetables and fruits. But cook that stuff and they will eat it

When I was a kid we had a cocker spaniel named Copper. Best dog I ever had. She would eat anything with the exclusion of lettuce... she didn't really care for lettuce... in fact, her everlasting hunger was so great that as a kid, we didn't really pick food up off the floor when we dropped it, as Copper somehow always walked in the room the moment the food hit the ground and happily ate it. She could even successfully get salad dressing out of the carpet to such an extent that we only had to go over the spots with cleaners if it was an oily variety, and even then, only sometimes. So, when my parents divorced when I was 12, and Copper stayed with dad, we had to learn to pick up after ourselves when we spilled, since we had never had to before.

But Copper ate it all. Meat, cheese, vegetables, fruit, nuts, rice, corn... whatever, whenever. She also had this glorious ability to hold her piss for weeks at a time. If we went out of town for a few days and our neighbors forgot to let her out, it didn't matter. She'd just hold it and then dump a bucket's worth on the lawn once we got home and let her out. The only real downside was that she licked windows when she wanted to go out...


Anyways though, enough about the greatest dog ever, may she rest in peace... this is an awesome thread, and I would like to see it continued.


I saw someone bring up thylacines a little bit ago? Do we know enough about their behavior before they were maliciously hunted into extinction? Because my How a Ptarmigan Changed History timeline may end up including an Australia devoid of dogs... perhaps even with another kind of hominid on it. We'll see though.

[Hamurabi]

what about the oryx?
apart from the nasty horns they are tameable and desert adapted.

another idea is ostriches? why hasnt an ostrich breeding culture developed
?

[DValdron]

Ostrich are a 19th century domesticate.

[Zirantun]

I was considering rheas, but unlike emus and ostriches, they don't appear on farms. At least to my knowledge... I imagine that they'd make a very useful source of meat in a barren place like Patagonia. This was when I was looking at the Parana River has a potential cradle of civilization of sorts in South America for my How a Ptarmigan Changed History timeline. I have the domestic livestock sorted, but the plants? I have no idea what a Parana River civilization would cultivate...