It just feels like the same group of animals have been in the “domesticated animals” category for ever. Dogs, cats, guinea pigs…etc.
Why have we as a society decided to stop? I understand that some animals are aggressive and not well suited for domestic life; but surely not all wild animals make bad pets (Ex. Otters, Capybara).
TL/DR: Why aren’t we domesticating new “wild animals” as pets?
Comments
Interestingly, foxes are domesticating themselves in urban areas. Trying to get in on that easy pet dog life, basically.
No, we are not done.
Domestication takes generations (for the animals) there is no way to speed it up that much, we can select the traits we want but you still need to breed dozens if not 100s of generations to see the affects. And most mammals are going to have 1-2 generations a year.
But we have never stopped doing it. There is currently an ongoing effort to domesticate silver foxes, for example. But it’s slow and expensive.
Fancy rats (which I have as pets) were domesticated in the 1900s, and there’s a lot of other examples.
“Domestication” isn’t really an intentional process – it’s evolution and selection. Humans tend to keep less aggressive animals, so those animals have a greater chance to reproduce and pass on their “docile” genes.
You don’t notice the progress because evolution is a slow process.
Personally, having had a pet raccoon, I think all the animals that are 1. Well suited to domestic life and 2. Able to live happily in a house with humans were all domesticated thousands of years ago
It’s probably happening right now with certain species, but we won’t know the outcome in our lifetime. It takes generations to domesticate.
Because it takes generations of breeding to truly domesticate most animals which means that it is very hard to make truly domesticated animals out of most. Most of these animals are not useful enough to make it worth modifying them over generations to be able to comfortably keep as pets.
Oddly otters can be relatively easily kept as pets as they are social animals that can adapt to home life, but they also need care beyond say what a cat or dog would and have habits that would probably make them less than enjoyable for most people. Keep in mind here relatively means it probably won’t die, will actually interact with humans in a non violent manner, and can live with cats and dogs, not that it won’t smear its feces around your house.
We have generally been domesticating animals for a few main reasons: For labour/service (horses, oxen, hunting dogs, etc), resources (wool, silk, fur) or as food.
For labour and services, we have basically phased out the need for animals by introducing machines and vehicles. So theres no real need to domesticate anything new to carry out any new tasks, unless something incredibly niche arises in our future. The only one i can think of is us still requiring bees to pollinate our flowers, though I wouldnt be surprised if we develop certain technology to replicate that in the future.
On resources, I think we have generally harvested what we can from the animals we have domesticated. And there would likely be a pushback on the animal rights/environmentalist front to try and introduce yet another animal into our pool of animals we harvest from. Synthetic and plant based materials are also cheap and prevalent so theres no real push to find new animals to harvest from.
On food, its pretty much same as the above. I think most countries would generally be against domesticating yet another new type of animal just for food. I think even the most ardent carnivore would think twice about it. So again, no real push to domesticate anything new just to eat them.
Far from over, I’d say it’s really taking off we know a lot more about the process and can even observe it genetically. The animals we’ve domesticated so far were a combination of available and easy. We needed them as resources so we stopped when we got what we needed as there were risks to going further. Zebras, for example, are much more difficult to domesticate than the horse species we ended up domesticating.
Nowadays, humans live with more luxury and we can domesticated species we would just like to have. Foxes and skunks are on their way because people just want them and opened a market for it. Even animals previously domesticated for purpose, like ferrets, are repurposed as pets.
Domestication aside, would ethics play a role? Not ethics as in “good and evil” but how we relate to animals and the world around us.
I keep thinking of exotic pets for some reason: not just breeding animals to be pets or using tamed animals as circus attractions that detract from its ‘essential dignity’ (though I do not think a bear understands the concept of dignity, a person may feel sorry for one when it’s forced to wear a funny hat and balance on a wheel), but the potential environmental damage they would wreak if let loose as an invasive species.
Goldish (carp), Burmese pythons, hogs, and cats come to mind.
There have been many experiments, mostly successful, with domestication of various hoofed animals, in Africa and Russia, but no real demand has ever resulted. ostrich a nd alligator are extensively ranched for commercial purposes but their meat has never become mass-market