Hi all, medium-term lurker here. I watched a Nova episode I think dealing with the domestication of dogs, which is thought to have begun about 15000 years ago. The entire episode was truly fascinating. They also covered a program started in Siberia back in the 60’s to domesticate foxes. It’s amazing that in less than 50 years they were able to coax these furry fellers to behave around humans much like dogs.
Ok so here goes my question: is there, or has there ever been a program to domesticate any species of apes? I was also wondering the same question about monkeys although with less interest. Actually this should probably be moved to GD eventually. I guess that I’m fascinated about the implications if somebody did start a long-term project to domesticate orangutans, gorillas, or chimps… How long would such a project need to see any significant level of behavioral differentiation such that it would be ok for a non-specialist to own, or make an ape part of the “family”? How long would it take to coax linguistic skills similar to humans, if it’s even possible? Well I guess that I have a bunch of questions related to this topic, but I guess I’ll leave them for later depending on how this thread evolves. Thanks all
I mean, we domesticated dogs so they’d bark and tell us when another tribe was coming to murder us in our beds. And to watch over our sheep.
We domesticated sheep to eat them and use their wool and drink their milk (probably not in that order).
We domesticated horses to carry us so we don’t have to walk, pull plows and carriages.
We domesticated oxen and cows and water buffalo to help us pull heavy things. And give us milk.
What could we possibly do with a large population of domesticated apes that we couldn’t do easier and more safely with humans (ie, slaves or hired help or cooperation)? Humans at least generally aren’t so strong as to kill their owners/employers with their bare hands in a fit of pique, and they’re easier to communicate with and cheaper to feed.
IIRC, no ape has the necessary vocal equipment to master human speech. Sign language might be possible, but I think that the experiments to date are less than conclusive (see Koko).
Longer gestational periods and age at sexual maturity for apes vs dogs would make such a project very long term.
Dogs and cats worked equally with us to domesticate themselves. They found there were benefits to hanging around with us, and we found there were benefits to keeping them around. Other primates like apes and monkeys do not benefit from any association with us. It can only rob them of something they already have for our benefit of something we don’t need. They do not like our habitats, our food, or our lifestyles. They will never become ‘part of the family’ they are already our wild cousins - at best a ‘domesticated’ ape or chimp is a captive pet who has learned it is more beneficial to cooperate with their captors than fight them.
[moderating]
Since it’s hard to imagine how we could come up with factual and definitive answers to these questions, I’ve moved the thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
[/moderating]
Not that it matters much (or maybe it does) for this question but there is a group of alcoholic Vervet monkeys on the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean that loves the human lifestyle in that party animal kind of way. They are a big nuisance there and raid bars and steal drinks from the beach. That isn’t domestication but they have learned to be codependent on humans to support their lifestyle as well.
Shagnasty,
Thanks for the drunk monkeys.
Elder,
One obstacle I can see is that many apes are potentially very violent and unruly. It may not be worth the time and risks to tame them. They are smart enough to plan and cooperate with each other, strong enough to kill people easily if close enough and they’re still wild animals. I see little possibility of safely taming them until Magiver perfects his Super Double Punch.
Jared Diamond talks about the preferred characteristics of domesticable animals in The Third Chimpanzee.
social, herd-living, so that human keepers can act as the dominant individuals
non-territorial, non-“flighty”, so that human keepers can get close enough to manage them
willingness to breed in captivity, so that human keepers don’t have to constantly go out and chase down new stock
I’d guess that most large apes, monkeys, and smaller primates fail #2. I don’t know enough about their behavior to answer #3. As for #1, primates are social animals, but establishing yourself as the pack leader of a bunch of gorillas or orangs sounds difficult to me.
Dr. Zira, I must caution you. Experimental brain surgery on these creatures is one thing, and I’m all in favor of it. But your behavior studies are another matter. To suggest that we can learn anything about the simian nature from a study of man is sheer nonsense. Why, man is a nuisance. He eats up his food supply in the forest, then migrates to our green belts and ravages our crops. The sooner he is exterminated, the better. It’s a question of simian survival.
This would be a perfect example of how other primates only stand to lose in any association with us. They are certainly able to get addicted to most of the same things we are if we expose them to them frequently but I don’t consider this an example of symbiotic relationship.
Username aside, it’s a valid question. Animals we’ve domesticated (or, like cats, who seem to have domesticated themselves when humans are around) all serve a purpose. I love apes, I respect apes, I see their similarities to humans, don’t get me wrong (my SO took an awesome picture of two mountain gorillas snuggling in their sleep last night after hours at the zoo, because I told him they reminded me of us) but I also think they’d be pretty useless to us as domesticated beasts. And surely when we as groups were struggling with the lower levels of Maslow’s heirarchy, long enough ago when domestication of animals began, usefulness was the primary rubric by which animals were chosen for domestication.
Now, a few people do indeed try to keep chimps as pets, often with disastrous results. But they’re not considered “domesticated” by most experts, because they retain the traits of their wild brethren to a greater degree than dogs and cows and the rest.
Thanks for all the responses. I guess I was wondering whether there is any discussion amongst zookeepers/biologists on the effects on the ape genome due to breeding in captivity, regardless of intentional human selection or not. I mean, zoos must obviously have some sort of internal policy on how the captive apes will reproduce. Are the aggressive ones allowed to mate equally as the normal ones or do they get banished to their own cages/environments? Or are the aggressive ones allowed to rule over the submissive ones such that their genes do not pass on to the next generation? If so, are biologists prognosticating what the effect on the species could be, let’s say 500 years from now?
As to the reason of why we would ever want to domesticate apes, it would be for eating their sweet BRAINSSS!! Ok just kidding.
The purpose of domesticating apes would not serve any direct societal need, but purely for the purpose of understanding human evolution better (hopefully). I guess I’m envisioning a planet of the apes, but one where peaceful coexistence between humans and apes is a reality by breeding out the need of an alpha member ( or at least diminish the need to near human levels). does anybody know how many generations it took to breed out the aggressive genes out of the foxes? can a linear extrapolation be applied to the ape genome to predict how long it would take?
Diamond makes an additional point in his book – we don’t actually get to choose what’s domesticable. And very few animal species are. Only 14 large species (100+ pounds) have ever been domesticated in human history, and extensive efforts to domesticate some familiar species have utterly failed (zebras, for example).
The gorillas at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, at least, are on hormonal birth control to limit the breeding of captive gorillas to numbers that zoos can handle. The breeding is selective and planned by an inter-zoo consortium of some sort. This information is on a sign in the ape house. What standards are used to determine which gorillas are bred with which other apes wasn’t specified.
And did I mention they snuggle while they sleep?
Where’s this number come from? Wikipedia’s list of domesticated animals includes 18 that are 100+ pounds (not including large dogs).
The term ‘domesticated’ can be used to describe any species that we captured, imprisoned and trained or otherwise forced to yield some result that we wanted until the fight was just not in them anymore and they lost almost all connection to the natural instincts their wild ancestors once might have had. But I took the OP’s use of the term to mean something more like a domestic pet, friend and companion, and not just a captive food source or trained circus performer (both of which apes have been whether we call that domesticated or not). In the case of the former almost any creature that walks, flies or swims on the face of the earth has in some way been trapped, eaten, or exploited by man in some way or another (or we just haven’t found them yet). In the case of the latter, we have to remember great apes and chimps and even new and old world monkeys are literally almost human in their intelligence and emotional makeup.They are primates not large beasts of burden, Yaks or Camels. They not only are greater than 100 lbs in the case of apes and chimps,but they also think and act and fight very much like human beings - they know how to use weapons, take apart machines, use their dexterous fingers to manipulate their environment, they can predict outcomes based on past experiences, learn weaknesses of their captors, etc. To debate whether or not they could be domesticated by us is something like asking if a given group of humans could be domesticated by another group of humans. They could be enslaved and coerced - but they are primates, they can never be ‘domesticated’ in this sense of the word. Its either freedom or slavery.
