I ask because I recently visited the Boston (Franklin Park) Zoo. In talking to the keepers, it seems that a lot of the animals have come to like (or at least interact) with their human keepers. For example, their anteater (a solitary creature) seems to like the keeper-he told me that the animal liked being petted and scratched. Whether this is because the animal associates the human with food is probably a valid question.
But another guy told me that the wildebeests (who are naturally wild and wary of humans) now nuzzle up to the keepers, and sometimes even lick them.
So do zoo animals become almost domesticated with time?
Not domesticated, habituated.
No wild animal can be truly domesticated. Even dogs can turn on their owners.
The answer is no. They do not become domesticated, because they still have every characteristic of their species, except for behavior towards humans. Domestication comes with physiological changes. This friendly behavior towards humans in a particular individual is called being tame.
On the flip side, free roaming mustang horses are all domesticated stock. They are not wild horses. They are feral.
Right - tamed, not domesticated. Many, many animals can be tamed to the point where they are handleable. Relatively few can be fully domesticated.
The classic example I and others always bring up in these threads is the cheetah - very easily tamed for big cats and kept as pets/hunting animals by assorted royals for millenia. But never domesticated despite their clear utility as working and companion animals because they simply could not be bred in captivity until recently and even today it is no easy feat.
How do you define domesticated?
Wiki’s definition will serve well enough:
Zoo animals may be tamed, but they are not domesticated. Domestication is a population process, and is not a trait of individuals.
The OP left room in his question to allow for " a population process",
Anyway, the definition is domestication is not about a single animal, but yes zoo animals may become domesticated over time, given enough generations.
He appears to me to be asking about individual animals. His question seems to be based mainly on a misunderstanding of what “domestication” means.
To the best of my knowledge, no species has ever been subjected to selection in zoos to a degree that amounts to domestication. This requires strong artificial selection for specific traits.
Do you have a cite that any zoo population has become domesticated?
I would think the White Tiger fits that description. Bred for color purely for human amusement and almost exclusively found in captivity. The breeding process for this rare trait has resulted in numerous health problems among the white tiger population.
This is fascinating, about cheetahs.
How tame are they really? Not to open the tedious pit bull debate, but I have a lovely pit/mutt who allows my small daughter to egregiously abuse her. I would rather her be alone with our dog than with most of the human monsters in her school. Are tamed cheetahs THAT tame–i.e., a civilian and not an animal trainer could own one?
Is the difficulty in breeding them to do with the genetic bottleneck?
Have advances in genetics and animal husbandry made it possible to try to domesticate them? I suppose there’s no great need for domesticated cheetahs, but could it be done?
I’m not sure that they are behaviorally different enough from normal tigers for that to constitute domestication. In any case, most zoos these days avoid deliberately breeding such varieties, and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums has adopted a policy that members should no longer breed them.
That’s part of it. If I recall correctly, mating in the wild involves pursuit of the female over considerable distances as well, distances hard to replicate in a zoo or other confinement, which may also impact successful breeding.
Despite several thousand years of taming cheetahs (the Ancient Egyptians routinely used tame cheetahs for hunting) it wasn’t until the 20th Century people convinced any of them to breed in captivity. Given how quickly our common domestic animals were convinced to breed in captivity that emphasizes how hard it is to breed cheetahs under human care.