4 ms·
Not quite true. Some livestock animals do ok in the wild: hogs and, in some warmer climates, cattle. There are feral goats in the Caribbean. But the climate has
by GlenTheMachine 8y ago
Not quite true. Some livestock animals do ok in the wild: hogs and, in some warmer climates, cattle. There are feral goats in the Caribbean. But the climate has to be right. You don't see feral goats in Maine. Or even Ohio.
Domesticated chickens, OTOH, are toast anywhere there are predators. There are feral chickens in Hawaii. Nowhere else that I know of. There are also few feral sheep, as they need to be sheared.
Domesticated horses also tend to not do well. They've been selectively bred for traits that make them somewhat fragile without specific care.
As for crops: most domesticated food crops don't tend to become invasive. Every once in a while you'll see volunteer corn left over from last years' crop. and volunteer tomatoes are practically ubiquitous in backyard gardens. But more and more, the seeds from food crops are not fertile, they're hybrids. And even in backyard gardens of "heritage" crops, without human intervention the weeds almost always win out in the end. The only vegetable I've ever seen that persisted long after the gardener was gone was, oddly, rhubarb.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoThat's a far cry from OP's comment that livestock animals are "pretty much unable to survive in the wild." I agree with you that crop plants are much more fragile and unable to compete without watering and fertilization. Tomatoes bred to make big 1 lb bags of water for their seeds will have a rough time compared to the tiny tomatoes made by the wild ancestor of tomatoes. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-wild-tiny-pimp-tomato-so-important-180955911/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-wild-tiny-pimp-tom...
- GlenTheMachine 8y agoI'd argue that this is partly a philosophical argument: what do we mean when we say “the wild”? None of the feral animals listed, with the possible exception of feral pigs, could survive if humans hadn't killed off the major predator species. There are wild cattle where I grew up, cows that escaped one of the local farms. But there are no wolves or mountain lions, which in a true natural state would, I suspect, would take them down in short order. So to be generous to the OP, he might have a point.