# Have any animals been domesticated in recent, historical times? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 25, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338 "2010-04-25T21:38:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/1 "2010-04-25T21:38:55Z")
The [wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals) is not very helpful. It claims that: > [@](#): > > To be considered domesticated, a population of animals must have their behavior, life cycle, or physiology systemically altered as a result of being under human control for many generations. Animals included in this list that do not fully meet this criterion are designated “captive-bred” or “semi-domesticated”. But none on the list is designated thusly. “Hamster” is on the list, but is the hamster I buy in the pet shop really different from its wild kin? I’m just wondering if we know how to domesticate animals, or if the process is a “natural” one in which happens all by itself (as animals evolve to live in close proximity to humans), and is too complex for us to reproduce on purpose. I know about the Russian Fox experiments-- the so-called Domesticated Silver Fox-- but is that really a viable population? Has it stood the test of time? ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/2 "2010-04-25T21:44:54Z")
How about pet ferrets? The kind you buy don’t exist in the wild at all because the pet kind are (probably) a [hybrid of two other types](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Polecat#Other_species). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/3 "2010-04-25T21:56:24Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > How about pet ferrets? The kind you buy don’t exist in the wild at all because the pet kind are (probably) a [hybrid of two other types](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Polecat#Other_species). Just being a hybrid doesn’t make it domesticated. Is it actually considered a domesticated animal? The wikipedia link doesn’t give any detail. My wikipedia link gives a date of 1500BC in Europe, which I wouldn’t consider “recent, historical times”. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/4 "2010-04-25T22:10:51Z")
According to the Wikipedia article on domestication, hamsters were first domesticated in the 1930s, and some more dubious species domesticated more recently (ball python, hissing cockroach, red deer, sugar glider, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/5 "2010-04-25T22:31:53Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > The [wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domesticated_animals) is not very helpful. Another species that’s not on the list is the domesticated House Mouse _Mus musculus._ They’re certainly as domesticated as Lab Rats, which are on the list. I’m not sure when they were brought into domestication. > [@](#): > > I’m just wondering if we know how to domesticate animals, or if the process is a “natural” one in which happens all by itself (as animals evolve to live in close proximity to humans), and is too complex for us to reproduce on purpose. My former colleague Nick Smythe, through selective breeding, was able to produce a domesticated strain of the Paca, a large tropical forest rodent that is favored for food in Latin America. They have different behavior than wild pacas, but don’t look different physically. See [here.](http://www.cababstractsplus.org/Abstracts/Abstract.aspx?AcNo=19950105394) ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/6 "2010-04-25T22:49:21Z")
Edit: NM, missed seeing the silver fox on the list. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/7 "2010-04-26T01:36:53Z")
The lab rat, about a century ago. The hamster, as mentioned above. The Soviets were messing around with moose, IIRC. The salmon, now being farmed on a huge scale. Probably the shrimp for the same reason. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/8 "2010-04-26T02:03:03Z")
Foxes? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/9 "2010-04-26T04:01:23Z")
There is also the ["African Black Ostrich,"](http://www.ostrich.com/livestock/livestockindex.html)a hybrid domestic variety developed from cross-breeding wild subspecies in South Africa starting in the late 19th Century. [African Black Ostrich.](http://en.agrosoyuz.ua/i/pages/000/74.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/10 "2010-04-26T11:27:09Z")
Re: the Russian Silver Foxes: They just took wild foxes and bred the friendly ones and very quickly they had a set of foxes which you could have in the home. I saw a very good BBC documentary about dogs recently and they filmed a family who were asked to care for wild fox cubs to see if they could train them to be domesticated but the foxes were having none of it, eventually they had to stop the experiment because the foxes got too dangerous to live with as they grew bigger. You could easily live with these bred Silver foxes though - they were very affectionate and people already keep them as pets. Incidentally, from the same stock they also interbred the foxes that showed anti-social traits and you couldn’t even approach them before they started trying to attack you. [http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/807641/posts](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/807641/posts) > **[Domesticated silver fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox)** > > The domesticated silver fox (Vulpes vulpes forma amicus) is a form of the silver fox that has been to some extent domesticated under laboratory conditions. The silver fox is a melanistic form of the wild red fox. Domesticated silver foxes are the result of an experiment designed to demonstrate the power of selective breeding to transform species, as described by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species. The experiment at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Siberia explored In... ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-any-animals-been-domesticated-in-recent-historical-times/537338/11 "2010-04-26T13:15:20Z")
> [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](#): > > Incidentally, from the same stock they also interbred the foxes that showed anti-social traits and you couldn’t even approach them before they started trying to attack you. In Russia, fox hunt YOU!