Unlike us, they don’t get attached to their pain, letting it continually fester without ever allowing it to heal. I sincerely believe that many people want to stay mired in their various psychological wounds (having once been one myself). We could learn a lot from these creatures.
It’s possible. Or maybe they’re just stupid.
That seems unlikely - it’s hard enough to get even the domestic ones to be hand-tame.
The Syrian hamster was first bred (from one litter retrieved from the wild) as a research animal, but lab workers noticed how well Syrian hamster got along with humans and decided to try them as pets. Does that count?
We have had several hamsters and, despite the fact that we don’t “train” them, they generally accept human handling placidly and without struggle, even when they’re ill or in pain (at least in my experience).
Not terribly close relatives…while flies and mosquitoes are both in the order Diptera, bedbugs are in the order Hemiptera, so quite a few branches apart on the Insecta family tree.
Yeah, but they suck.
Some animals have taken in abandoned babies and raised them to be “feral children”. By that count, wolves, (half)wild dogs and monkeys liked a baby enough to go to considerable trouble for them.
Sometimes they remember, and take longer.
We had a rescued abused horse at our farm, who was deathly afraid of men. But she was fine with girls or women.
After a while, for men who were around the farm all the time, she came to recognize them and was just wary, rather than terrified of them. And eventually, she seemed to accept men that she recognized. But male strangers always made her nervous.
She eventually went to a widowed woman with 3 daughters. Last I heard, they were all getting along fine. But all the girls were too young for boyfriends or fiancees then.
Darwin wrote an account of his experiences with the marine iguanas in the Galapogos. They were completely unafraid of him, because they had never experienced land predators. In fact, they associated land with safety because all the danger they ever encountered was in the ocean. Darwin tested this instinct by picking up an iguana and throwing it in the ocean. The iguana realized something odd was going on, and immediately swam back to shore, where Darwin threw it back in the ocean. This repeated itself over and over and over again, and the iguana never did figure out that it was safer in the water.
The point being that “fear” and “tolerance” of humans is at least partially learned. Most animals on continental land have evolved around predators and have developed a healthy fear of unknown large animals like us.
I think Canada Geese are a good example of what the OP is thinking of. A completely wild animal that you can just walk right up to. I’ve walked through a big flock of them pecking at the ground and stood in the middle and they took no notice of me at all, just carried on pecking.
I think it was Darwin or a fellow visitor who wrote about the birds landing on a crewman’s arm and trying to drink from the jug when he was pouring a glass of water. Their"skittish" gene had turned off. Someone else described a child a decade or so later, with a branch, collecting dinner by whacking birds that approached a watering hole. By that time they needed a 4 foot stick.
Apparently after about 2 decades of this treatment the birds were as skittish as the ones on the mainland. Basically, you kill the ones whose “Beware!” indicator is set too low, and the remaining population is more wary.
One theory says that the much of large fauna of North America, like mastadons, went the way of the dodo since they had not learned to fear humans. Certainly a significant number went extinct about the time humans allegedly appeared.
The geese that fly down here for the winter will also cross the street right in front of traffic, in a long line. And everyone stops and waits.
Safer in the water? Being tossed by a human is safer than being eaten by a sand shark (or whatever the iguana’s natural predator is). If Darwin had taken a bite out of him the outcome might have been different.
It wasn’t. The ones of a size to be picked up and thrown can only stay in the water for a few minutes before they chill severely. It it chilled, it would have drowned.
The European robin, which has been mentioned a few times, in very interesting for this- it’s well known in the UK and Ireland as being a very ‘tame’ wild bird (we used to have one living in the garden that would come and scavenge scraps off you in the kitchen if you left the door open)- however, this is not the case in mainland Europe. Historically it was considered unlucky to harm a robin in Britain and Ireland, but they were commonly hunted along with all over small birds on the mainland. Even though in most European countries now, no-one’s actually going to hunt one (really, they’re tiny, there’s no meat on 'em) they still act differently in places they were historically hunted.
But here’s the twist- the species is actually semi-migratory. A lot stay all winter, but some that don’t get a good territory migrate, and are much more nervous of humans as soon as they make it over the Channel.
Incidently, a lot of New Zealand’s birdlife has very little fear of humans, and some actively seem humans out- I often got followed by fantails when picking apples there, they eat insects, and following large animals that disturb leaves and flush them out is a good strategy. Aren’t many other large animals but humans there… Fantails are adorably distracting little buggers by the way.
OK, fine. Poor choice of words. “Safer” in the sense that he would be “attacked” by this big land animal if he came back to land. The iguana could have swam away to some other stretch of beach or otherwise avoided Darwin, but didn’t even make the attempt.
I’ve noticed that mockingbirds are curious critters. They will follow me around and watch me in the back yard. Of course, it’s not like they are perching on my shoulder or anything, but they do seem to seek out interaction. (Or maybe they are just protecting a nest or waiting for me to uncover a worm or something. Who knows?)
Upthread, someone mentioned cows. Unless a calf was raised by humans or in close proximity with humans, the adult cow will be “skittish” around humans. It won’t let you walk right up and touch it. It will be easily spooked and will run away if you make any sudden move. In other words, cows behave like prey.
Weeeeeellll, in all the cases that can be investigated it’s simply not true, just poor handicapped bastards set loose by their parents when they got too tough to handle, and often used as carnival attractions.
And Kaspar Hauser doesn’t belong in a list of feral children. Neglected for part of his life? Sure. Stuck in a dungeon for a time? It’s a strong possibility, but not long enough to cause any of the expected disabilities. Unable to walk? First reports remarked on his too-small shoes. Unable to speak? No, he just spoke with a thick, hick accent at first. Uneducated? Before everybody latched onto the “raised in a dungeon” thing and made him the talk of the world he spoke of going to school for a time. Real son of the Grand Duke of Baden and spirited away by his father’s wicked stepmother so her son could inherit the title? I spoke with one of the people involved with the latest MtDNA tests and another forensic MtDNA expert and the tests show that there is a strong possibility there is something to that theory.
I’ve been saying it for more years than I can remember, but I really need to finish that Staff Report. 
What most of the previous posts refer to is simply learned behavior. Animals, just like humans, have a strong interest in learning what is dangerous or harmless, and also what has potential benefits (basically, food). Animals which evolved without land predators – either on islands or because they are too big to be attacked – have no natural innate pattern of keeping their distance. They either acquire it or are hunted to extinction, whichever comes first.
Some wild species have behaviors which tend to make them easier to get close to. That doesn’t make them tame.
Domestic animals have been selected for the inborn ability to become tame via interaction with humans when young. If you raise them without any human interaction, they are generally as frightened of human beings as any wild animal.
Many wild animals can be tamed in infancy but once they reach puberty are no longer reliably safe, especially non-castrated males.
:eek:
Yes, please do finish it! I didn’t know there was dna tests going on around the Hauser case.
However, in the other cases of feral children, animals did take up the care of an abandoned child as one of their own. I don’t find that very surprising: we do it too.
You’ve probably already seen this - The Perfect Master on feral children: Has a human child ever been raised by wolves or other animals? - The Straight Dope