7 ms·
The domestication if animals has far more to do with the humans domesticating them than the animals.
by RecycledEle 3y ago
The domestication if animals has far more to do with the humans domesticating them than the animals.
- lolinder 3y agoYou're going to need to elaborate on what exactly you mean if you make an incendiary claim like that. Jared Diamond's argument is that for an animal to be domesticated it needs to have a very specific collection of traits—tameability and ability to breed in captivity being two important ones—and that there weren't any sufficiently good candidates for domestication in the Americas, Africa, or Australia (besides the llama in South America, which they did domesticate). With which part of this argument do you disagree? What candidates would you propose for domestication in non-Eurasian continents?
- polski-g 3y agoThe only thing it needs is breedability in captivity. You can selectively breed for "tameability" over time.
- ducttapecrown 3y agoThat's not always true.
- andrewflnr 3y agoTechnically, perhaps, but maybe it takes more time than a low-tech society can afford. That's close enough to untameable for practical purposes.
- darkerside 3y agoWhy could a low tech society not afford time?
- lmm 3y agoA low tech society may not have the surplus to run a wild animal breeding programme for multiple generations without interruption.
- andrewflnr 3y agoYes, thank you, that's more precisely put.
- darkerside 3y agoI think in this theory, it wouldn't be a program so much as it is people leaving scraps behind, animals learning that humans are a beneficial food source, and a symbiotic relationship naturally developing over time (measured in centuries).
- lmm 3y agoThat's very much an example of having the animal become tameable before breeding them in captivity.
- epivosism 3y agohow long they live before reproduction, reproduction rate, edibility (while you're waiting for them to be tame), in-captivity behavior, what they eat, etc matter a lot since they are the variables going into the equation for how many 100s or thousands of years you're going to have to devote to this. Also, if they are basically useless now, most groups won't even realize there's a point to starting to tame them.
- darkerside 3y agoIt seems obvious that selection for affinity to humans would occur naturally over time, with humans being a good food source (trash, if nothing else), and animals that were proximate to humans but non threatening becoming very successful over time.
- JackFr 3y agoDoes the Norwegian rat count as having been domesticated?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoYes, people keep them as pets, play with them, etc. There are also large wild populations.
- sethammons 3y agoNot all rats are good at being pets. If they were, the bushy tailed wood rat would be in every pet store
- thaumasiotes 3y agoI can't argue with that, but the question was about Norwegian rats. The bushy-tailed wood rat isn't even in the same taxonomic family. It's just called a rat.
- int_19h 3y agoThere are many animals who have such affinity with humans, but most of them have not been successfully domesticated, so it's not that simple. And it does seem rather obvious on its face that animals exhibiting certain kinds of social behavior, for example, would more readily adapt to a symbiotic relationship with humans than others.
- runarberg 3y agoBut what about Turkeys, dogs, ducks and guinea pigs. They were also domesticated in the Americas, do they not count as well? Also why the focus on animals, some of the very best crops we have today (e.g. the potato) were originally bread in the Americas for thousands of years before contact.
- mr_toad 3y agoNone of them can pull a plow or carry a soldier.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Sakos 3y agoMy god, reading some of these comments is like pulling teeth. "But what about...", how about some of these people stop and think about their arguments first before just randomly throwing them into the open? I don't understand this form of discussion or what they hope to achieve with these ridiculously weak "aha" arguments that simply don't hold water. Is it bad faith? Bad education? Lack of self-reflection?
- somenameforme 3y agoWell I think it's safe to say that near 0% of people have read his book, and the hypothesis put forward is far from intuitive. It's also easy to see it as probably being motivated by ideology, as it falls right in line with certain social trends. So this is going to have a pretty polarizing effect. People who adopt to said ideology are going to be inclined to accept it with minimal questioning, and vice versa people who challenge said ideology are probably just going to eye roll and completely dismiss it with about as much consideration as the equal but opposite group gave it. So it would probably help if somebody compellingly laid out his hypothesis, at least as it relates to animals, while making some reasonable effort to account for the countless self evident arguments against it.
- 3y ago
- scubadude 3y agoGo domesticate a tiger shark ...