Ape domestication

[The_Niply_Elder]

Well what I meant by domesticated is the long term genetic manipulation to obtain desirable behavioral traits.

Originally I was hoping to have somebody from a secret government lab spill the beans here… But I guess no such luck

[wheresmymind]

@Crazyhorse

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.

I think you’re confusing domestication with taming. You can tame a wolf
and keep it as a pet, but it won’t be as docile as a dog because it hasn’t been bred for 10,000 years to be cute and gentle (same with african wildcats and housecats, although it’s thought cats “domesticated themselves” to some extent).

Domestication has a fairly precise definition that involves selective breeding to produce offspring more docile and useful for humans. You don’t domesticate an individual. You can tame or “break” an individual, but you can only domesticate a population over a period of generations. A domesticated animal will be genetically different from it’s wild forbears. So while taming chimpanzees and keeping them as pets is probably a dangerous proposition, I see no reason why many generations of selective breeding couldn’t give you a “domesticated” ape.

However, as you pointed out the intelligence, social life, and dexterity of apes is a liability in a domestic animal, so they’d probably be the first things breeders would weed out. You’d be left with dumb, clumsy, bumbling chimps that looked cuter than normal chimps. Not very useful IMO.

[Crazyhorse]

@wheresmymind

I think you’re confusing domestication with taming.

I do understand the difference, I’m not confusing them. I am stating that because in this case we are talking about domesticating other primates the question is essentially the same as asking if one group of humans could be ‘domesticated’ by another group of humans. The fundamental traits and characteristics of an ape are, as you said, everything that we would have to breed out of them - they are primates and thus already almost at the top; they are just about ready to start domesticating their own animals(if they haven’t already). It would no longer be an ape if after generations of selective breeding we managed to undo everything that makes it an ape. The only way to have a semblance of a domestic ape is to “break” an individual (until as Cecil pointed out in the cited column above, he breaks you.)

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@wheresmymind

I think you’re confusing domestication with taming. You can tame a wolf
and keep it as a pet, but it won’t be as docile as a dog because it hasn’t been bred for 10,000 years to be cute and gentle (same with african wildcats and housecats, although it’s thought cats “domesticated themselves” to some extent).

If you had watched the Nova episode the OP referred to, You’ll see that some wolves domesticated themselves into dogs through selective breeding on their own. The process going from wolf to dog may in fact have occured in the span of one human lifetime.

Fascinating program.

[Sailboat]

@WhyNot

Where’s this number come from? Wikipedia’s list of domesticated animals includes 18 that are 100+ pounds (not including large dogs).

Sheep
Pig
Goat
Cow
Donkey
Water Buffalo
Horse
Dromedary
Llama
Reindeer
Bactrian Camel
Yak
Banteng
Gayal
Alpaca
Zebu
Asian Elephant
Fallow Deer

I’m guessing it came from Jared Diamond’s books, since that’s where I read it, although I haven’t searched to narrow it down between The Third Chimpanzee or Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Diamond does exclude animals we don’t breed in captivity from his list, and specifically mentions the elephant, which are still captured from the wild rather than bred in captivity. Maybe that’s why his list varies.

However, when I point out that 14 have been domesticated out of all the large species on earth, it’s something of a nitpick to say “no, it’s 18!” The point is, it’s still very few that have proved suitable.

[barndoor]

@Lemur866

We already have domesticated apes. They are called “humans”.

They are called taxpayers!

–

When I was a kid, I asked my mom to buy me one hundred zillion monkeys and one hundred zillion typewriters so I did not need to do homework.

If Shakespeare did not die, I would have asked my mom to buy him, instead of buying one hundred zillion stupid monkeys and one hundred zillion noisy typewriters.