Your challenge is pretty much what the title says: save a domesticated life form from extinction.
AHC: Save an extinct domesticate
- Thread starter Mort the Reaper
- Start date
Dodo birds evolve feathers with toxins so powerful even inhaling the wind after brushing against them a kilometer away causes painful death over two weeks with bleeding out of every orifice starting less than 20 minutes after exposure. Don't ask what happens if you actually touch them, or worse if they spit on you. No one goes near their habitat until the late 1970s at which time the conservation movement is already underway.
The Fuegians have a little better luck and they and their "dogs" (actually a domesticated form of the culpeo) appear at a "human zoo" type exhibit, where the dogs attract some attention. Some Fuegian dogs are brought to the US or Britain where a breeding population is established and some eccentrics end up owning them. Meanwhile, the Fuegians themselves discover the popularity of their dogs, and team up with a businessman at their missions to breed and sell their dogs as "authentic Indian dogs" to the upper classes of Santiago and Buenos Aires as well as any ships passing by Cape Horn.
there's a bunch of extinct dog breeds that could theoretically have survived somehow. i've been meaning to look into alot of them to see if any could plausibly have survived for practical reasons, but some could stick around for novelty purposes. a good example of the latter could be the Hawaiian poi dog--it had some ritual significance in pre-contact Hawaiian religion but, more importantly, was used as a source of food 
I am confused. Is the 'domesticated life' already extinct? --- If so I can't think of one to save, maybe "Dino"?
If it applies to preventing a current domesticated life from going extinct then we are already moving in that direction. Genetically alter the house cat so it is one third its current size, make its eyes larger; enhance the meow, and increase the volume of the purring, i.e make it permanently a kitten.
It will never go extinct; your ten year old daughter would make your life miserable.
I.e. make any animal cuter.
If it applies to preventing a current domesticated life from going extinct then we are already moving in that direction. Genetically alter the house cat so it is one third its current size, make its eyes larger; enhance the meow, and increase the volume of the purring, i.e make it permanently a kitten.
It will never go extinct; your ten year old daughter would make your life miserable.
I.e. make any animal cuter.
I believe Hanibal crossed the alps using North African Elepgants. Would that count as domesticated?
Worth noting that elephants aren't domesticated but tamed.
Domesticated means having complete control over breeding and raising.
Domesticated means having complete control over breeding and raising.
In this case what domesticates have gone extinct? I can think of the fuegian dog (which is actually a fox), as mentioned, and aurochs.
I believe there was also a type of Asian cat that was at some point domesticated but replaced by the European domesticate... and I can assume one or two species/lineages of horses could be included.
A bit vague, though. My idea was a more serious concept of "dodos imported overseas and bred" but this seems to be about extinct breeds of dogs/cats/cattle/etc?
There had been a plant famous for Roman food, which had been gone extinct.
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Silphium. But it went extinct BECAUSE it couldn't be cultivated.
In terms of domesticated species proper, the only three I can really think of are the Fuegian dogs (who as suggested earlier would likely only be saved by way of novelty), the now-extinct variety of domestic leopard cat originating in ancient China (very difficult to speculate around due to the absence of material regarding their existence), and this population of foxes in Bronze Age Iberia that appear to have been in the early stages of domestication. These have a similar issue to the ancient Chinese leopard cat strains in that we don't really know enough about the stressors directly causing their extinction to make concrete guesses as to how to prevent that, though we can infer a theoretical cause for them being abandoned as a domesticate. Given that they were found in small number alongside working dogs they can be presumed as more of a "pet" animal than a working stock animal (such as the dogs); as such, the practice of keeping foxes would be more likely to be abandoned in the event of long-term disaster, while dogs would be maintained due to their utility. Therefore, one can presume that the development of a large, stable nation/culture that had pet foxes would lead to the practice always surviving catastrophic conditions in at least some of its range, thereby allowing its survival further into the future (and perhaps the present).
If we can open the pool to extinct breeds and types of still-extant domestics, than this becomes substantially easier. Over the past seventy years a massive proportion of the world's breeds and landraces of livestock (particularly chickens, turkeys, ducks, and pigs) have gone extinct due to becoming invalidated with the creation of vastly more productive strains used in high-intensity factory agriculture. A lot of these remain threatened even to this day; this list by The Livestock Conservancy has a limited selection, but there are dozens of other types unmentioned here (particularly in Europe, which in many regions has had extinction rates of >50%) that are still obscure and moribund. Saving any number of these would not be difficult, and may as well be treated as a matter of luck regarding which ones happen to have one or two devoted keepers up to the present as opposed to being phased out entirely. Single herds or flocks have often been used as the nucleus for successfully rescuing an entire breed, as was the case with the Mulefoot hog (restored using the herd of R.M. Holliday, the last in existence).
A lot of these extinctions happened post-1900, though, thus putting them outside the range of this question. To that end, one candidate from the late 1800's (though probably lingering into the early 1900's) is the Niata, a dwarf breed of cattle from the Platine region of South America with a shortened muzzle reminiscent of a bulldog. They seem to have gone extinct for the same reason as a lot of the modern livestock extinctions (being rendered obsolete by livestock improvement programs and the advent of more efficient stock), so their survival would likely hinge on an isolated community or family keeping them out of tradition.
If we can open the pool to extinct breeds and types of still-extant domestics, than this becomes substantially easier. Over the past seventy years a massive proportion of the world's breeds and landraces of livestock (particularly chickens, turkeys, ducks, and pigs) have gone extinct due to becoming invalidated with the creation of vastly more productive strains used in high-intensity factory agriculture. A lot of these remain threatened even to this day; this list by The Livestock Conservancy has a limited selection, but there are dozens of other types unmentioned here (particularly in Europe, which in many regions has had extinction rates of >50%) that are still obscure and moribund. Saving any number of these would not be difficult, and may as well be treated as a matter of luck regarding which ones happen to have one or two devoted keepers up to the present as opposed to being phased out entirely. Single herds or flocks have often been used as the nucleus for successfully rescuing an entire breed, as was the case with the Mulefoot hog (restored using the herd of R.M. Holliday, the last in existence).
A lot of these extinctions happened post-1900, though, thus putting them outside the range of this question. To that end, one candidate from the late 1800's (though probably lingering into the early 1900's) is the Niata, a dwarf breed of cattle from the Platine region of South America with a shortened muzzle reminiscent of a bulldog. They seem to have gone extinct for the same reason as a lot of the modern livestock extinctions (being rendered obsolete by livestock improvement programs and the advent of more efficient stock), so their survival would likely hinge on an isolated community or family keeping them out of tradition.
Probably, if 100 species were tried to be domesticated during prehistory, only 10 finally succeed; the problem is that we have little information about all the attempts which failed at their early stages.
One of my favourite cases of failed attempt of domestication is the Myotragus goat from Majorca:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myotragus
This was an odd species of goat with some sheep traits which lived in the Mediterranean island of Majorca until the Neolithic, when, along with the other endemic megafauna, vanished shortly after the human settlement of the Mediterranean islands.
Only in recent times it was discovered that the Myotragus was tried to be domesticated by the first human groups who settled Majorca during the Neolithic: many bones were unearthed in caves where human groupes lived and some of the antlers had been artificially modified, probably by these same humans, indicating an attempt to keeping them within the caves and make them less dangerous.
However, these attempts failed and Myotragus went extinct. This is not clear why this happened but there is an hypothesis related to similar phenomena detected in other islands of the planet (i.e. wild pigs in Philippines or several species of land birds in Madagascar or New Zealand): the first waves of human settlers try to domesticate some endemic species (in some cases, as proxies of already domesticated species they knew from their original land in the continent) which are finally discarded in favour of imported domesticated forms brought by later waves of settlers.
In the case of Majorca, it is possible that later waves of human settlers already brought domestic goats to the islands which replaced the semi-domesticated Myotragus, even in the wild (Majorca is home of many feral goats since Roman times).
In order to make domestic Myotragus to survive, maybe a delay in new human waves with imported livestock could have given them enough time to develop into a more strong form of livestock able to coexist with the domestic goat from the continent.
One of my favourite cases of failed attempt of domestication is the Myotragus goat from Majorca:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myotragus
This was an odd species of goat with some sheep traits which lived in the Mediterranean island of Majorca until the Neolithic, when, along with the other endemic megafauna, vanished shortly after the human settlement of the Mediterranean islands.
Only in recent times it was discovered that the Myotragus was tried to be domesticated by the first human groups who settled Majorca during the Neolithic: many bones were unearthed in caves where human groupes lived and some of the antlers had been artificially modified, probably by these same humans, indicating an attempt to keeping them within the caves and make them less dangerous.
However, these attempts failed and Myotragus went extinct. This is not clear why this happened but there is an hypothesis related to similar phenomena detected in other islands of the planet (i.e. wild pigs in Philippines or several species of land birds in Madagascar or New Zealand): the first waves of human settlers try to domesticate some endemic species (in some cases, as proxies of already domesticated species they knew from their original land in the continent) which are finally discarded in favour of imported domesticated forms brought by later waves of settlers.
In the case of Majorca, it is possible that later waves of human settlers already brought domestic goats to the islands which replaced the semi-domesticated Myotragus, even in the wild (Majorca is home of many feral goats since Roman times).
In order to make domestic Myotragus to survive, maybe a delay in new human waves with imported livestock could have given them enough time to develop into a more strong form of livestock able to coexist with the domestic goat from the continent.
