Cool Potential Domestications

[Sevarics]

Foxes.
Zebras.
Gazelles.

[Titus_Pullo]

Complete ASB as it completely ignores the problems associated with domesticating large herbivores. Not one of the animals suggested comes even close to being potential domesticates by their very nature. Some of them could be tamed, but being tamed and being domesticated are two different things. You can tame a cheetah, but you could never domesticate it like a common house cat. Even common housecats aren't really fully domesticated as humans really have no hand in domesticating them, cats "domesticate" themselves on their own terms, and as such are not completely dependent on humans like dogs are, and some of you have suggested large cat carnovores like sabertooths and cheetas? Complete and utter fantasy. There's a reason why sub-saharan Africans never domesticated the zebra, zebras may look like a horse but they're not horses. Zebras are more skittish and have a vicious streak that prevented them from being domesticated. The same goes for African elephants. Humans have already domesticated all animals that could be domesticated, and gave up on those that couldn't. Therefore there's a very good reason why rhinos and hippos don't pull plows, why zulus didn't have zebra cavalry, (cool as that may sound) and why Hannibal crossed the Alps with Asian elephants rather than African elephants.

[DValdron]

Hmmm. I see someone's been reading his Jared Diamond.... but not much more.

Chill out dude, it's all fun and games here.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Titus_Pullo

Complete ASB as it completely ignores the problems associated with domesticating large herbivores. Not one of the animals suggested comes even close to being potential domesticates by their very nature. Some of them could be tamed, but being tamed and being domesticated are two different things.

So you say.

You can tame a cheetah, but you could never domesticate it like a common house cat.

Actually, Cheetahs are quite domesticable in temperment. The problem is just about no species diversity, which means that Cheetahs express a narrow range of traits. One of these traits is that their ingrained courting behaviour requires a huge, huge range of territory, which makes domestication largely nonviable. What you'd need is for Cheetah's to be born with a minor behavioural mutation that would not bring about cross country fornication.

Even common housecats aren't really fully domesticated as humans really have no hand in domesticating them, cats "domesticate" themselves on their own terms,

There's a fairly live argument that all historical domestications have an element of auto-domestication. ie - the Animal itself habituates itself to human presence and human activities and express behaviour that finds a niche in human cultures.

and as such are not completely dependent on humans like dogs are,

Y'know, where I come from, sometimes dogs will start to run together, and in harsh winters, packs of semi-feral dogs will take down a child. No lie.

and some of you have suggested large cat carnovores like sabertooths and cheetas? Complete and utter fantasy.

Well, less complete and utter fantasy, than sideways economics. Logistically speaking, its extremely expensive to have a pure carnivore as a domesticate, because a whole meat diet is pretty costly. It's hard to find a niche or role for a domesticate like that where the returns exceed the costs. Hard, but not impossible.

But then again, you look at the Inuit, and you've got a society whose primary domesticate was a whole meat carnivore. So there's precedent.

The same goes for African elephants.

Actually the problem with African elephants, and Indian elephants for that matter, is extremely slow maturation rates, slow gestation periods and slow reproduction rates. Once grown to the point of being useable, you've got a 50 year working lifespan. But you have to feed the thing for 15 to 20 years first, and wait 2 years for one to be born.

Compare that with cattle. The economics just don't work, and elephants get competed out of the marketplace. Now, the really interesting thing is that despite this, four separate urban cultures made extensive use of tamed elephants on a scale and a level of economic significance that would qualify them as semi-domesticates.

Humans have already domesticated all animals that could be domesticated, and gave up on those that couldn't.

Bullshit. Not being antagonistic or anything... just saying.

Therefore there's a very good reason why rhinos and hippos don't pull plows, why zulus didn't have zebra cavalry, (cool as that may sound)

In the case of Hippos, part of that would be lack of an indigenous rice based/water production agricultural economy which would have a use for a water tolerant draft animal the way Water Buffalos are used in Southeast Asia. That's part of it.

and why Hannibal crossed the Alps with Asian elephants rather than African elephants.

Sent all the way to Thailand for them? Dam, but FedEx is good.

Listen, I don't know who pissed in your cornflakes, and I don't care. I'd appreciate it if you could check the attitude at the door.

I appreciate that you've read Guns Germs and Steel, and that's all very well. But truthfully, the subject of animal domestications are a lot more intricate, on both sides of the species barrier, and that in all likelihood there are multiple pathways to domestications, and multiple kinds of domestication.

The domestication of the honeybee is not the same as the domestication of the cat is not the same as as the domestication of the chicken is not the same as the domestication of the water buffalo.

Now, this thread is all in fun, it involves a bit of free association, and I can guarantee that stupid things will get said, and maybe, just maybe, people will come up with cool and clever nuggets in with all the dross.

That's how things work - people free associate, a lot of stupid things get said, and some interesting things pop up.

Dude, you don't have to read this thread.

[Sicarius]

Originally Posted by Titus_Pullo

Complete ASB as it completely ignores the problems associated with domesticating large herbivores. Not one of the animals sugges-

*runs over you riding a giant sloth*

[Laplace's Demon]

In terms of difficulties with domestication, let's take foxes as an example. An animal that, while like dogs, has not shown the capacity to auto-domesticate the way the original post-wolf canines are supposedly to have done, finding an ecological niche based around following human bands around and experiencing natural selection for traits well suited to that niche. However, foxes can be domesticated; as that Russian breeding experiment with Siberian Foxes showed after 45 years of work.

Of course, selectively breeding animals with little useful purpose until there is success and with frames not well suited to easy captivity is a bit out there; I will admit. But with potential food sources that can be more easily kept penned, eating the more ornery but still pen-able ones until the fight has been bred out of them and they are suitable towards the yoke is perhaps less outlandish?

So herbivores and omnivores that can be penned with wooden fences, meet a static agrarian society and boom.

Though I would really like to know more about how OTL beasts of burden and food animals were domesticated, as I know nothing about that as compared to knowing a little bit about the dog situation. Also, did an agrarian society first domesticate goats, or were goats just tamed by pastoralists? That is, I'm having a hard time seeing the transitory period of domesticating or at least taming wild animals working out very smoothly for a nomadic people; with that not being a problem in the case of nomadic humans and the auto-domestication of dogs, by comparison.

Also, it is not exactly domestication, but regarding apes I can imagine a wild orchard being claimed by some humans; who kill any predators that get into it, and kill off any of the apes that attack them when they try to take the fruit as well; eventually leaving a population of apes that have come to rely on the humans to come and kill the tigers and/or wolves when they hear the apes in a tizzy, and have had all of the ones aggressive towards human removed from the genepool. But in that case, wouldn't they eventually stop making noise when the humans come into the orchard, making them lousy alarm systems against bandits/looters?

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Titus_Pullo

Complete ASB as it completely ignores the problems associated with domesticating large herbivores. Not one of the animals suggested comes even close to being potential domesticates by their very nature. Some of them could be tamed, but being tamed and being domesticated are two different things. You can tame a cheetah, but you could never domesticate it like a common house cat. Even common housecats aren't really fully domesticated as humans really have no hand in domesticating them, cats "domesticate" themselves on their own terms, and as such are not completely dependent on humans like dogs are, and some of you have suggested large cat carnovores like sabertooths and cheetas? Complete and utter fantasy. There's a reason why sub-saharan Africans never domesticated the zebra, zebras may look like a horse but they're not horses. Zebras are more skittish and have a vicious streak that prevented them from being domesticated. The same goes for African elephants. Humans have already domesticated all animals that could be domesticated, and gave up on those that couldn't. Therefore there's a very good reason why rhinos and hippos don't pull plows, why zulus didn't have zebra cavalry, (cool as that may sound) and why Hannibal crossed the Alps with Asian elephants rather than African elephants.

http://www.honoluluzoo.org/cheetah.htm

See, cheetahs *have* been rather easily tamed. It's a reason I mentioned them as a potential candidate. One would think tameability has something to do with domestication, no?

[The Ubbergeek]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

http://www.honoluluzoo.org/cheetah.htm

See, cheetahs *have* been rather easily tamed. It's a reason I mentioned them as a potential candidate. One would think tameability has something to do with domestication, no?

The problem was, I heard, that to make them really domestic, they would have to be bred in captivity - the human selections of traits over generations, making them another specie maybe, more domesticated and all. Like for dogs, ferrets, cats, etc.

[Thespitron 6000]

Anacondas.
Whales.
Bullet ants.

[twovultures]

I will second the cheetah. I've seen tamed cheetahs before, and they would be awesome pets. Beautiful, potentially useful for hunting, actually quite friendly if raised right, and not really more dangerous than a large dog as their claws are blunt and their slender bodies aren't built for power. Pity they're so difficult to breed

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Laplace's Demon

In terms of difficulties with domestication, let's take foxes as an example. An animal that, while like dogs, has not shown the capacity to auto-domesticate the way the original post-wolf canines are supposedly to have done, finding an ecological niche based around following human bands around and experiencing natural selection for traits well suited to that niche. However, foxes can be domesticated; as that Russian breeding experiment with Siberian Foxes showed after 45 years of work.

Actually, I saw a Fox crossing the road last night, in an urban downtown area of Winnipeg. I was startled. I've seen raccoons occasionally, and rabbits, but this was the first fox ever.

Fox's are exquisitely effective vermin predators - rats, rabbits, mice, earthworms, you name it. They mature rapidly, have large litters.

So why aren't they domesticated?

Cats. The Verminator Niche in human society is occupied by Cats. So there's no real economic or social reason to go through the effort of domesticating Foxes.

Interestingly, I've read that the Ferret was probably a European domesticate. What happened? Cats pushed them out of the Verminator Niche.

It's simple economics really. A domesticated animal has to pay its way, it has to be valuable in the human economy. It has to contribute a use or a dollar value or a benefit that cannot easily be otherwise obtained and can't be supplied by harvesting the wild ones.

If you have one very efficient Verminator, you don't actually need a second. Once cats managed to occupy the 'catbird' seat in the economy, its hard to domesticate a second verminator. That's time, effort and short term unreliable results, when its cheaper and faster to buy a cat.

Now, there's a couple of interesting wrinkles. Ferrets managed to hang on as a domesticate or semi-domesticate, even though they largely got pushed out of their niches by cats. And a number of specific breeds of dogs - terriers and dachschunds were bred as Verminators, when the Vermin - big ass rats - were too nasty for cats.

The interesting thing about the fox in the city, is that clearly the animals are habituating to human presence. The Foxes are slowly meeting us half way. The trouble is that we don't really have a job opening for them in terms of the stuff they do and what we need.

Here's what I think though: If Feline HIV wiped out cats, then Foxes would be the new domesticate in a generation. And the henhouses would be armour plated.

But with potential food sources that can be more easily kept penned, eating the more ornery but still pen-able ones until the fight has been bred out of them and they are suitable towards the yoke is perhaps less outlandish?

The sad thing is that these days, all we want from animals is food sources. And sometimes a nice leather jacket.

Remember the good old days when they carried packs, we rode them around, they pulled plows, herded sheep, stood watch, killed mice and rats and generally put in an honest days work? Hell, its getting harder to come up with an economic use of animal labour that you can't get a machine to do cheaper and easier.

It's getting so bad, I hear that Cat geneticists are conspiring to build better mice, and technologist sheepdogs are working on ways to make sheep incompatible with GPS.

Anyway, if you want an interesting source on potentially untapped domesticables, check out this link on Micro-Livestock.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=1831&page=R1

Though I would really like to know more about how OTL beasts of burden and food animals were domesticated, as I know nothing about that as compared to knowing a little bit about the dog situation. Also, did an agrarian society first domesticate goats, or were goats just tamed by pastoralists? That is, I'm having a hard time seeing the transitory period of domesticating or at least taming wild animals working out very smoothly for a nomadic people; with that not being a problem in the case of nomadic humans and the auto-domestication of dogs, by comparison.

There are multiple pathways. But what it seems to come down to is that you need an interface zone. An area on the borders of both settled and wild territory. In the heartland of settled territory, the wildlife is killed off - its free protein, no one is going to domesticate it. In wild territory, lots of wildlife, very few humans, and no one willing to make the effort.

So you generally need a geographical or ecological zone on the peripheries of core habitats. So even if you kill all the local wildebeest or llama, more keep drifting in slowly every year. Multiple points of contact over a long long span mean more domestication opportunities.

Second, generally people underestimate the factor that self domestication plays. Here's how it works. Startle a dog, and he'll jump and then look at you with a hurt expression. Startle a wolf, and five miles later, he's still running.

Now, that's partly a temperment issue. But what it really is, is human habituation. The potential domesticate starts getting used to human presence. Human presence is associated with opportunities, so they start to calm down around us, they're hanging around, chillaxing.

Look at it from the cats point of view: Human agriculture was a mouse buffet! Hot and cold running rodents, with an all you can eat menu. For Dogs, we were the ultimate picky eaters, you could get fat following them around and eating the leftovers. For horse and cattle, they were looking at huge cleared fields of millet, sorghum, barley, and the feebs were only eating the seeds. Free grass, particularly in winter.

In short, there was an advantage to them to hang around humans and get used to human presence.

These weren't the only ones. In the city, I've come within a dozen feet of a wild raccoon. There's 700,000 people, a downtown of high rises. And the raccoons are good with that. They know we are there, they're not bothered by that, they see all sorts of opportunities for the good life.

There are a lot of animals that habituate to human presence - seagulls, pigeons, the pariah dogs of India, raccoons, foxes, skunks, even bunnies and coyotes. They're all urban dwellers like the rest of us.

So that's half the battle. And the interesting thing is that when you model it out, most of the domesticates probably were domesticating themselves. They were animals who saw enough advantage to human presence and works that they just started hanging around and got used to us.

The other half the battle, what separates the cats and dogs from the raccoons and skunks, is that one group - in terms of their natural behaviour and habits, turned out to be useful to us. An animal that wakes up in the morning and lives and breathes for the purpose of killing mice? Hell, that's the answer to a farmer's prayer. A social animal that is highly territorial and inclined to functioning cooperatively? Hallelujah hunters, shepherds, etc.

On the other hand, what the hell is a raccoon going to do for anyone? They'd be a terrific domesticate, if someone could figure out something useful for them to do that's within their natural behavioural range.

[Flocculencio]

Originally Posted by Titus_Pullo

Hannibal crossed the Alps with Asian elephants rather than African elephants.

The extinct Atlas mountains elephants actually They were much smaller than the African elephants (not much bigger than a large horse) and were semi-domesticated.

[Mr. BoJangles]

Originally Posted by DValdron

You know, thinking out loud, humans or hominids are contemporaneous with a lot of funky critters in the Pliocene or Pleistocene. At least some of them might have been potential domesticates.

What would be the most fun?

How dare you steal my thread...

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Mr. BoJangles

How dare you steal my thread...

My bad. You want it back?

[Laplace's Demon]

Originally Posted by DValdron

On the other hand, what the hell is a raccoon going to do for anyone? They'd be a terrific domesticate, if someone could figure out something useful for them to do that's within their natural behavioural range.

At 30 something % of their diet, raccoons are inefficient in this area, but thinking about it does bring to mind the idea of an insectivore domesticate as being in some areas as useful as a mouse and rat hunting domesticate.

[The Ubbergeek]

Minor thing - take domestic cats out forever, and the niche would be taken eitheir by ferrets, or terriers style dogs...

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by The Ubbergeek

Minor thing - take domestic cats out forever, and the niche would be taken eitheir by ferrets, or terriers style dogs...

Maybe, but I think its the best shot foxes (foxi?) got.

[history nerd]

Originally Posted by DValdron

On the other hand, what the hell is a raccoon going to do for anyone? They'd be a terrific domesticate, if someone could figure out something useful for them to do that's within their natural behavioural range.

Crime!

Imagine a group of theives armed with trained raccoons!!!

[The Ubbergeek]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Maybe, but I think its the best shot foxes (foxi?) got.

Fur industry by products like the famous russian experiments, maybe more..

Because mind you, dogs are used for deratisation since centuries, and ferrets are an old pal of europeans too - heck, they where there before cats got popular, and they are better than dogs and cats at this even, maybe. Rabbit hunting style...

[Simreeve]

Originally Posted by Titus_Pullo

Humans have already domesticated all animals that could be domesticated, and gave up on those that couldn't.

Except that, as the Russian experiment, proved, that wasn't the case as far as foxes were concerned.. or, for that matter, mink with which they also had a reasonable degree of success in breeding for friendliness towards humans during that period...
And take a look at the work that's been done during the last century, in several countries, on Eland.

I'm certainly not trying to claim that "all" animals are domesticable, and I definitely agree with you about the various cats, but there may well be some other species that could be domesticated if people make the effort. To start with, some of the other species closely related to those 'Ungulate' ones that have been domesticated IOTL so far, perhaps?

(BTW, I'm a Zoology graduate.)

Originally Posted by The Ubbergeek

Minor thing - take domestic cats out forever, and the niche would be taken eitheir by ferrets, or terriers style dogs...

There's some evidence for the use of Beech Martens (alias 'Stone Martens') in ancient Greece before cats were introduced.
Elsewhere, also, several species of mongooses and genets seem to have been at least semi-domesticated IOTL as 'verminators'...