5 ms·
Monkeys' cosy alliance with wolves looks like domestication (2015)
- choeger 5y agoTIL that there are grazing monkeys.
- aj3 5y agoIsn't that just symbiotic relationship though? Article does not explain what monkeys get from this relationship with wolves and whether any species is changing another's behavior.
- FartyMcFarter 5y agoThey don't get eaten by wolves. I bet the feral dogs mentioned in the article will think twice before going near wolf/monkey groups too, since both dogs and wolves are usually territorial.
- joosters 5y ago"However, the geladas don’t seem to get anything from the relationship, since the wolves are unlikely to deter other predators such as leopards or feral dogs, he says."
- Angostura 5y agoBit too loose for symbiotic. How about commensal relationship?
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y agoOr mutualism?
- secondcoming 5y agoDon't babboons steal puppies and raise them to become their guard dogs?
- srean 5y agohttp://www.thenaturalistsnotebook.com/our-blog/do-baboons-keep-dogs-as-pets http://www.thenaturalistsnotebook.com/our-blog/do-baboons-ke...
- elliekelly 5y agoMaybe they benefit from a reduced rodent population in some way? Less disease or maybe even competition for food since this particular type of monkey grazes?
- papito 5y agoThere are only a few species that are generically predisposed to domestication. We have domesticated pretty much all of them - and the rest failed, despite multiple attempts across thousands of years. Zebras, for example, not "eligible". It looks like a nice horsy but the things are totally wild, and happen to be the number one source of zoo injuries because people are fooled by the harmless striped pony.
- qnsi 5y agoare foxes eligible for domestication? because they havent been domesticated in premodern times, but have been succesfully domesticated in laboratory
- dredmorbius 5y agoThrough highly intentional selective breeding. Mind that the domestication of dogs also presumably resulted from artificial selection, though with a far weaker understanding of principles involved.
- xen2xen1 5y agoI believe a Russian man did domesticate them. IIRC it only took 30 generations to be very very doglike. I'm sure it Googles.
- kodah 5y agoI somewhat doubt this is the way to look at it. Dogs took between 11,000 and 40,000 years to domesticate. That all started with dogs using up more of a carcass than humans would after a hunt and the humans just didn't care. Eventually, humans found that dogs can and would do more. If my read is right it, any species could be tamed as long as they're evolutionarily ready to. Not all members of that species may be ready to either, as the writing points out a wolf did attempt to grab a baby gelada, was drove out, and was not allowed to return. Interestingly, they did not apply this logic broadly.
- ABraidotti 5y ago