So I was driving to work last night, and almost ran into a group (family? herd?) of raccoons that were crossing the street (about 5 of them). And a question just popped into myhead: How long would it take man to ‘domesticate’ the raccoon (or any other species of animal)?
This can’t be answered directly as different animals (or plants for that matter) would be domesticated at different rates. Some species, like dogs, are particularly adaptable to domestication by man. A dogs natural tendency to pack life, following a pack leader, not crapping where they live, etc., made them very suitable for domestication. I’d imagine with some concerted breeding wild dogs (i.e. wolves) could be domesticated in a few tens of their generations.
Essentially the process of domestication is a process of artificial selection for traits (genes) that suit humans. All animals have recessive traits that humans can tap into via selective breeding. Dogs didn’t need much of a nudge to get them domesticated. Most of their natural traits we liked and just selected for obedience and a few other traits. Now, for example, take a badger and try domesticating it. It has a lot of traits humans wouldn’t find desirable in a domesticated animal. So, if you selectively bred the badger to a point where we might consider it domesticated, you’ll probably end up with something that doen’t seem much like a badger anymore. If it could be done at all it’d probably take a few hundreds of generations to produce the animal you want. (Note: Don’t confuse ‘tame’ with domesticated)
So, given different breeding speeds of various species and given how many traits you want to select in or out you could be anywhere from several years to several decades to get the animal you wanted.
What do you mean?
Just about any individual animal is “tameable,” with difficulty increasing in direct proportion to the animal’s age when you begin taming it, and in indirect proportion to the animal’s “intelligence.” Keep in mind that even cats and dogs are not born any “tamer” than lynxes and wolves (leaving aside for now the small differences in temperament brought about by centuries of inbreeding). One of the scariest animals to come face to face with is a “domestic” cat that is alley born and raised.
Or do you mean, how long would it take for a species to be known primarily as a domestic animal, like dogs and cows? Cows, horses, chickens, dogs, cats, domestic ducks, etc., have been living with man for so long that there is a distinct separation between the domestic population and the wild population. Some of these animals are extinct in the wild; some of them are hybridized and have more than one wild ancestor, but no direct wild forebears. If that’s what you mean, there are two answers:[ul][]Obviously, this takes many, many generations. With the acceleration provided by carefully managed husbandry, I would imagine it would still take a minimum of 10-20 (WAG) generations for distinct differences to become established. []This is not likely to happen with any more animal species, in my opinion. We as a species have been, for the last century or so, moving away from our dependence upon animals except as a food source. Even as regards food animals, there are an increasing number of alternatives. I can’t imagine an animal that will suddenly become so universally beneficial to man (an animal that until now has not been so) that its existence will become so interdependent with man’s as to come to be considered “domesticated.”[/ul]All of this is the wildest speculation, in keeping with the spirit of the OP.
Ask my wife.
She’s been working on me for 15 years with no sign of success.