Why havent deer been bred to horses or domesticated?
Not enough bang for the buck? They don’t have as much meat on them as cattle do, and they can’t perform tasks like horses do. In other countries which don’t have access to the U.S.'s huge tracts of land, they have domesticated reindeer, muledeer, and various other -deer creatures, but here, we had ideal conditions for growing cattle & horses and didn’t need to make crossbreeds with deer, if it’s even possible.
Too small, the antlers get in the way, and oh, yeah, they don’t produce offspring as far as I know. It might be amusing to watch for a little while, but it’s not inherently a spectator sport (except for some parts of the South-West or so I hear), so it’s rarely done.
I’m certain I’d be afraid of the doe that could take on a bull.
Though the buck that could take on a cow would be interesting to see!
Aside from being too unrelated, we’ve seen no need to even try. As for domestication, a big one only weighs about 250#, and they’re built for speed, not endurance.
They are mighty tastey though, and damn tough to find in NH woods.
They have, in a few small cases.
For example, in Park Rapids, MN, there is the Paul Bunyan Amusement Center, which includes a herd of tame deer that you can wander about in, and give them food pellets, which your parents can buy from vending machines. The deer are well aware that the humans have treats, and readily come up to people, follow them around, etc. Some of them are really pretty agressive beggars. Others check you out, and if you’re not generous with the treats, they ignore you and go to other people.
This has been going on for at least 30-40 years (I was there as a kid that long ago).
They breed these deer, and most of them have never known any other life for generations: their parents, grandparents, etc. were all in the Paul Bunyan deer park, and they have been there since birth. They probably had tourists looking in at them thru a window just a few hours after birth, and as soon as they are old enough to go out with the herd, they will be surrounded by kids wanting to pet them.
I’d say that those deer are clearly domesticated.
But, like people said, deer can’t compete with standard farm animals (cattle, pigs, chickens, etc.) in production, so not much effort has been put into domesticating them in a big way.
Also near Park Rapids, there is a Bison (Buffalo) Ranch, which you can tour. But these bison are nowhere near the domestication of the Paul Bunyan deer herd!
No…must…not…reply…
The tiny ones in the US are too useless for anything, but reindeer are herded by the northen tribals in europe and ridden and milked. Reindeer herding is actually kind of a weird job from what I hear - apperently all you do is follow the herd and let them do what they will until it comes time to milk or eat them.
D’oh!
While definitions vary, in general to be considered domesticated requires much more than that a group of animals has been bred in captivity for a while. If this were so, there would be thousands of species that could be considered to have been domesticated.
Animals need to show pronounced genetic and behavioral changes compared to wild populations to be considered really domesticated. This article describes some of the considerations.
The deer in your example are almost certainly not significantly different from wild deer. If you were to take a fawn from that herd and foster it to a wild herd, when it was grown it probably would not show any behavioral differences from a wild animal.
A deer.
And another thing - why has no one crossbred chickens with giraffes, dammit??!
Nobody eats the necks from the chickens we have now. It would be a pity to waste all the neck-meat from one of those birds.
I eat chicken necks, that and the heart are probably the best bits of a chicken.
Well, then you might be interested in that Giraffe crossbreeding project.
Well, considering that chickens do not mate “on the wing” so to speak, I’d think there would be a kind of “access” problem here.
This is not to say that love can not conquer all!
A female deer.
A female deer.
:smack:
Damn slow hamsters!
Deer are not even close relations to horses. Breeding between them is simply impossible.
As for domestication, it has probably been tried thousands of times in prehistory. It never worked. Why? Deer are too panicky. If you try to pen them in, they tend to go nuts and run into the sides of the inclosure, killing or injuring themselves.
Of course individual deer can be tamed, but the species is not a good candidate to be domesticated.
A couple of exceptions are Moose and Reindeer. Reindeer more of less domesticated themselves. This is based (remarkably enough) on a taste they have for human urine. They love the stuff, it might be the salt. Reindeer herds like to live near people just for the urine.
(Note, never kiss a reindeer on the mouth.)
There is an effort in Russia right not to domesticate moose (as we Americans call them) for meat and work in northern areas. I have no idea how its going. It would be way cool to ride a moose into town, however.
Deer are just rats with antlers.