Dead-end domestications?

I am not sure if this should be in this section or the "Help-feedback" one, but...I just made this post on a differnt thresd:

"reading up on the Reindeer/Caribou development have made me think that the domesticable/not domesticable distinction is a false one.

To me, there simply seem to be varying...effort tresholds in domestication.

Few animals are so easily domesticated as to justify the initial effort.
However, under exceptional circumstances, I suppose unusual domestications may occur, and once the initial investments have been made, there could be a lot of payoff."

And I started wondering: Does anyone know about any unusual domestications that failed to take off? Or ones that just nearly made it, and could have been big with a bit more effort/luck?

Bright day
Foxes? They are dometicated OTL, just the breed is extremely small and they don't have any advantage to dogs. Oaks? Acorns taste pretty good when fried, you get shitload of the stuff and they are not big on maintaince.

Hyenas, they had everything going for them that wolves had. Human just decided to not domesticate them en masse. I remember a bunch of stories out of Ethiopia and Kenya about herders who raised hyenas to guard their flocks.

What does this prove?

That a hyena raised from birth can and will live rather comfortably with people. So give it a few hundred or hundred thousand generations, the huge advantage that dogs have had, and you could easily find hyenas being "Man's Best Friend 2.0"

- Swamp Cat (Felis chaus), domesticated in Ancient Egypt for bird hunting and pest control. Replaced by cheetah and domestic cat.
- Onager (Equus hemionus), domesticated by Sumerians to pull chariots, later replaced by horse.
- Desert Baboon (Papio hamadryas), domesticated in Ancient Egypt to take fruit from trees and sometimes sheepherding (!).
- Egyptian Aurochs (Bos taurus aegyptiacus), replaced by zebus and now extinct.
- Kouprey (Bos sauveli). Some people even don't recognize it as an independent species. Possibly domesticated by the Khmers in Indochina and abandoned to the wild at the end of the Middle Ages.

By the way, people who read Michael Chrichton's Congo know a very bizarre and interesting possibility.

If you haven't, read "Guns Germs and Steel" by Diamond. It has a very good chapter on domestication and why it works for some critters and not others.

The onager was never really domesticated. All the early accounts talk of it as vicious nasty kicking and biting. They were dropped in favor of horses for all these reasons. Oddly enough though, once they had horses, they still had a use for onagers... mainly, they would stake out mares in wild onager territory so that onagers would breed with them and produce mules...

The egyptian aurochs... same as the European one? If so, it was an ancestor of modern cattle, so it's hardly surprising they were domesticated...

Guns Germs and Steel has a short section on oaks and acorns... they've never been domesticated because you can't selectively breed for the oaks that produce edible acorns (most oaks don't have them)... too many factors involved...

baboons (and most primates) can be tamed when young, but nearly all of them have the problem in that they become nasty and vicious when they hit sexual maturity... a result of the tight social groups they live in, and the intense competition they live in...

You can add antelopes to the list. The Egyptians tried it but it never took off.

Didn't Diamond say that everything which can be domesticated has been? Or was that someone else?

My point is, a number of those creatures were simply too troublesome to finish domesticating, especially as easier alternatives sometimes became available. Onagers are a good example. If the horses had not become an alternative, they could well have been bred for docility untill they were very useful.
Same thing with Baboons. Although I doubt they would have been economically viable.

That is why I am using the term "effort treshold" in relation to domestication. Some things just require an extremely high investment in time and resources before you get them bred to something that gives you a return on your investment.

In practice, they could therefore be refered to as "undomesticable".

But this is where I feel that the terminology of Diamond and this site needs to part company.

Because by the nature of ATLs, we can consider developments of lower probablility, where unusual circumstances led to the investment being made in domesticating something unusual. Like the horse, which seems to be a fairly low-probablility domestication.

Also, a number of creatures with a very high effort treshold could also have a high payoff.

I still wonder about a militaristic society managing to domesticate and breed Mamoths.

Some apes are also used to get coconuts from the trees.

Yes, and Comorants for diving

Derek Jackson said:

I still wonder about a militaristic society managing to domesticate and breed Mamoths.

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Yes...or, as has been pointed out, War Gorillas.

Mail Empire, domesticators of the Lions? Various extinct Pleistocene fauna that may have survived in an ATL? Or more ASB, San! people riding relic Pterodactyls or Quetzalcoatlus.

Taming and domestication are different things, many animals can be individually tamed, elephants are a prime example. Domestic animals enter into a partnership with people, and the animals which do this are very rare. Domesitcable animals are all social with a leadership hierachy, fast breeders and many other things which make them unique. Diamond is close to correct when he says that all the best animals have been domesticated for millenia.

That is a very hard hypothesis to prove. I would say that a number of tamable animals are also domesticable, it is just a question of more time and effort than it is reasonable to spend.

From Diamonds point of view, that would define an animal as undomesticable. From our viewpoint, not so. Here, we can postulate unusual conditions which resulted in the effort treshold for domesticating a high-investment species being passed.

And once that happens...who knows how useful a domesticated Hyena/Baboon/Gorilla could be?

A gorilla takes too long to mature to be useful, what do you do with a useless young gorilla for 5-10 years? I don't uncritically accept Diamond, I don't believe that a few thousand Aboriginies or Amerindians ate vast herds of mammoth and diprotodon. But his criteria for domesticable animals makes sense.

About the same as you do with an Elephant that takes 13 years to marture, I expect.

What does Diamond say about a the domesticability of Propleopus Oscillans? OK; I admit that sounded snarky, but I am trying to illustrate the point that we deal with a wider range of specimens and possibilities here.

You don't breed elephants for training, you capture wild ones when they are young and train them individually. Since this is the case you don't wait 13 years, you get them as 10 years olds (for example) and train them through their teen years, without wasting a decade on their childhood. Domestication implies selective breeding for the qualities that people want and changes in the animals behaviour, neotony (staying youthful) is what they call it I think, in order for them to accept people as herd/pack leaders. Elephants live too long, matue and breed too slow to be a good candidate for domestication. Incedently kangaroos aren't much good either, they mature at 6 years, breed every 3rd year, live until 30 and are too flighty/stupid to be herded, not a patch on a sheep, goat or cow.

Breeding for neoteny can be a good initial step in the process. (It is not exactly staying youthful, but the retention of traits from youth. Humans are considered an example)
You only really want to retain the prepubescent trust and lack of aggression displayed by many animals, but you often get other side effects.

Good call on the capturing of elephants. The fact that elephants take too long to mature, though, just means that breeding them is more effort. Not that it is impossible.

Once again, under normal circumstances, the animal will not be domesticated. We may postulate a region of abnormal circumstances.

What would it take to domesticate non-human primates?

Riain said:

You don't breed elephants for training, you capture wild ones when they are young and train them individually.

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Wasn't there a domesticated breed in ancient times?

Dave Howery said:

Guns Germs and Steel has a short section on oaks and acorns... they've never been domesticated because you can't selectively breed for the oaks that produce edible acorns (most oaks don't have them)... too many factors involved...

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All acorns are edible, must of them are just untasty.


Which has made me realize something. Most of you guys don't eat any mushrooms, but here in my country we eat lot of the stuff, most people have over a dozen of breeds they gather for eating, and there are hundreds of breeds that are edible, but they are not much raised on farms...

Umbral said:

Once again, under normal circumstances, the animal will not be domesticated. We may postulate a region of abnormal circumstances.

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But if you don't set a limit on what is unreasonable, then anything is possible and then there's no discussion. Domestic Aardvarks through Zebras and your done.

While War-Elephants, War-Grizzlies, and War-Gorillas (given their essentially peaceful nature, highly unlikely) may have a 'cool' factor, I also dispute that it would be worth the effort and expense to domesticate, train and maintain these animals since they have little multi-functionality. Horses are draft and transport creatures as well as tools of war. Dogs are hunters, protectors and companions as well as tools of war. While people have fought a lot of wars, it's not what we do most of the time, nor have we maintained standing armies of soldiers (I include animals in this term because of the expense of ongoing training, housing, etc. as opposed to inanimate tools that can be stockpiled) for more than a couple fo centuries because of the expense.

Lastly, if you're going to add a new domesticated species, you'll need to come up with a reason, an unfilled need for that species. Yes, a zebra might be domesticatable, but why bother when you already have the horse? Same with buffalo and cattle, weasels and cats, pirmates and children.

mojojojo said:

What would it take to domesticate non-human primates?

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No children around to do the chores instead.