7 ms·
I've been wondering for ages why we don't continue activally domesticating other species - what better way to protect them than to ensure we can integrate? It m
by simplesleeper 8y ago
I've been wondering for ages why we don't continue activally domesticating other species - what better way to protect them than to ensure we can integrate? It may take a while, bit we've managed it in the past with a fragment of our scientific knowledge
- kasey_junk 8y agoWe do continue to domesticate animals. The Russian red fox is an obvious example.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThat's the only one example I can think of. Are there any others?
- clouddrover 8y agoBudgerigars have been selectively breed for size and appearance for about 150 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budgerigar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budgerigar
- nn3 8y agoThere are lots of tamed wild animals around. For example tamed tasmanian devil's. Or tamed birds like parrots. But they haven't been especially bred for tameness, just they are naturally tameable.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI mentioned Tassie Devils in another comment. I'd hazard a guess most the Australian marsupials would make fairly okay pets fairly immediately. Kangaroos, wallabies, pademelons, tasmanian devils (I live here wooo!), quolls, all seem to get by okay in captivity, so that's half the battle won.
- Joakal 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals
- pvaldes 8y agoLots of fishes
- gwern 8y agoThe Russian fox program also apparently domesticated minks while they were at it. 'Fancy rats' (domesticated pet rats) are barely a century old. Ferrets are very big now and I get the impression they didn't use to be pets, although I don't know to what extent they are domesticated.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoA sibling comment linked this[1] Wikipedia entry which claims: Ferret - 1500BCE, although yeah I've heard there's been an explosion in popularity. But you're right, Mink 19th century; and Fancy rat and lab rat 19th century. Domesticated hedgehog 1980s! 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals
- remir 8y agoWouldn't this make these animals totally dependant on us for survival? This would be a massive and complex operation on a world already populated by billions of humans. If we want to protect these species, we should concentrate our effort in protecting the environment.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI don't think it has to be a binary choice. I've often thought Tasmanian Devils¹ would be a great candidate for domestication, at least while they're under threat from the facial tumour.² Tassie Devils live and breed in captivity fine, and they're super cute! 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_devil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_devil 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_facial_tumour_disease
- clouddrover 8y agoQuolls as another candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoll People keep sugar gliders as pets but I'm not sure you can ever toilet train them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_glider
- PhantomGremlin 8y agoTassie Devils live and breed in captivity fine, and they're super cute! Oh yeah, they're adorable. From Wiki: It is characterized by its stocky and muscular build, black fur, pungent odor, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, and ferocity when feeding. The Tasmanian devil's large head and neck allow it to generate among the strongest bites per unit body mass of any extant mammal land predator Just the type of pet one would want in an NYC apartment. /s Of course, one could say similar things about wolves, and yet people are crazy about dogs.
- pvaldes 8y agoThe problem is that they have a crushing bite to break bones and bad character. A extra powerful bite in a cute small animal is a complicated recipe for petting. Sharks have similar issues. They interact with other sharks biting even when they are trying to express romantic interest.
- barry-cotter 8y agoGwern wrote an essay masquerading as a book review suggesting that we should finish domesticating cats recently. https://www.gwern.net/Book-reviews#review-of-like-engendring-like-russell-1986 https://www.gwern.net/Book-reviews#review-of-like-engendring... The fact that you can make a serious case that cats are barely domesticated suggests there’s just not that much time or energy devoted to it. Domestication is the work of a career at best. If you wanted to domesticate macaques and you worked for 30 years you’d have ten generations to work with. The bigger the population the better because you have greater variation in the founding population. There’s just not a lot of demand there so there’s no money. Where there is demand breeding is very healthy, as in agricultural genetics generally, whether for increasing milk yield in cattle or in creating new types fruit trees as in apple varieties.
- woodandsteel 8y agoI have no expertise here, but I recall that Jarod Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel claims that almost all wild animals lack a certain set of characteristics that are essential for domestication. These include the ability to breed when living outside the wilderness (elephants lack this) and to be made tame so they don't attack humans and can be trained for useful work (zebras lack this). Also, it seems to me that people would not put the effort needed for domestication unless they thought the animal could fill some important niche that none of the present domesticated animals does.