More domesticated animals
- Thread starter Siberian Tiger
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Deleted member 114175
Domesticated Nile Crocodiles could be interesting. The difficulty of domesticating them could be offset by being present in one of the oldest cradles of civilization, giving plenty of time for the domestication to occur. Though crocodiles would have to be fed meat, they require much less energy in the first place due to being cold-blooded.
Do they have the mental capacity for the sorts of jobs that they would perform?
What exactly do you want crocodiles to do, exactly? You can farm them for meat and leather without having to domesticate them - just provide the environment and sufficient food.
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Various kinds of otter perhaps?
I saw a documentary about a place in India or Bangladesh that trains otters to herd fish into nets. It doubled their catch, even with needing to feed some of the fish to the otters.
Foxes, it's been done so no reason it couldn't happen in nature much earlier.
Cheetahs, the were kept as hunting animals and pets but they wouldn't really breed in captivity.
Tasmanian tiger, stories from settlers paint captured ones as becoming very friendly very quickly. Make use of that instead of killing them off.
I saw a documentary about a place in India or Bangladesh that trains otters to herd fish into nets. It doubled their catch, even with needing to feed some of the fish to the otters.
Foxes, it's been done so no reason it couldn't happen in nature much earlier.
Cheetahs, the were kept as hunting animals and pets but they wouldn't really breed in captivity.
Tasmanian tiger, stories from settlers paint captured ones as becoming very friendly very quickly. Make use of that instead of killing them off.
Deleted member 114175
They likely do. Even a goldfish can be trained with signal and food, but crocodiles are actually pretty smart, even using tools to hunt birds. Crocodilians also have interesting observation and navigation abilities, cooperative hunting, and maternal behavior.
That being said, domestic crocodiles would mainly be raised for meat and leather. Which may be the limit due to their aggressive instincts, and obviously being dangerous animals limits the ways they can be trained. However, artificial selection over millennia might lead to crocodiles with reduced aggression, and this could permit other kinds of training later on.
Mostly as livestock for farming, but if that started circa 3000-2000 BC then it would leave plenty of time for domestication pressures. Much later (think medieval after 3000+ years of domestication), trained crocodiles could be used to hunt fish or wild game, especially larger slower game.
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Kaushlendra pratap singh
Banned
Ghorpade, which is known in English as Bengal giant monitor lizard is domesticated in India to use in the scaling of the fort. Most important use in 1670 a Maratha commander Tanaji Malusare use Ghorpade named Yashwanti to scale the western steep wall of 300 metres in the night and kill the mughal garrison present in fort.
A Repentant Heretic
Banned
How about muskox? Qiviut, meat, and possibly milk could be farmed from them, kind of like a sheep-cattle hybrid.
From what I can tell, the cultures of the area the muskox lived were at the utter fringe of things so they had no real need to domesticate the muskox and instead just hunted them. But they could be huge to the Nenets and relatives on the Taymyr peninsula (where they were hunted to extinction 2,000 years ago). Of course, the Inuit would benefit hugely from muskox, and I could see pastoralism spreading with the Thule culture throughout the High Arctic which included muskox herding. Although I think this might require the caribou be tamed to the same degree Old World reindeer are by groups like the Chukchi or Koryaks, which could be possible in the New World although may be done by Athabaskan groups in addition to any Thule group.
This accelerates the Thule spread through the Arctic and will have some impact on the Norse. In Helluland and Markland the Norse will find these strange oxen raised by the Skraelings. If they can utilise qiviut, they'll have an important trade good to acquire from the Skraelings, although it won't necessarily mean "successful Vinland" since Greenland will have nearby Inuit settlements to trade with. So I think the result is wealthier Iceland before the Little Ice Age sets in, Greenland surviving, and early Scandinavian colonisation of the New World which will be undertaken by Denmark-Norway and Germans led by explorers like Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst. If Sweden is united under them (like OTL) then they have access to the Forest Finns who were notably very hardy settlers and very suited for New World colonisation. Perhaps TTL we have a revived Vinland in North America.
Domesticated zebras would have been awesome.
What about domesticated dholes? Probably not because a dhole is to a dog what a horse is to a zebra.
Domesticated African wild dogs would be cool too.
Also if aurochs were still around I wonder what their meat would have tasted like. Super lean like venison or supper fatty like kobe cows?
What about training them as "watchcrocodiles"?
"Trespassers will be eaten"
They are still around. What do you think cows are? They are domesticated aurochs.