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I 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
by kodah 5y ago
I 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 agoBy "evolutionarily ready," do you mean artificially selected for docility or other amenable characteristics? I think certain species are intractable and unable to be domesticated, while others seem to be much more pliable. It took only six generations [1] to domesticate silver foxes. 1. https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-018-0090-x https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118...
- kodah 5y agoAgreed, mostly. I do think it's possible that a species can gain traits through evolution that make them more compatible with domestication. Dogs, when we domesticated them, were not the dogs we know today. They were wolves with specific evolutionary advancements that made them less hostile to humans. Of course, we can speed that up too a bit arbitrarily through selective breeding. That was all "evolutionarily ready" meant to me.