Well?
It seems as if they would have been. There’s lots of “riding” animals out there, but zebras don’t seem to have made that leap.
Aside: Did you know that there are SIX different threads out there asking if Mr Ed was a zebra?
Not many critters have been domesticated, and only a handful of big ones. People have tried, but apparently zebras can’t be tamed. It seems they remain vicious stripey bastards. If you are interested in what can and can’t be domesticated and why, try chapter 9 of Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. A quick summary of what it takes for domestication can be found here.
Simple … because they clash with the decor.
Because they do not have the appropriate characteristics.
For a good general public discussion see Jared Diamond Guns Germs and Steel, wherin he discusses generally what is know about the history of domestications. In addition there was just a recent paper published on cattle domestication and the genetic evidence for the history of such.
I can’t find the cite right now, however the implications from the research (indicating two seperate domestication events somewhere in Middle East/North East Africa and India, then subsequent cross breeding in North East Africa) suggest along with other evidence that domesticated species have particular genetic characteristics and the reason why non-domesticates were not domesticated is that they simply can’t be, within reasonable limits of course.
It is my understanding that our domesticated animals had to be bred for tameness, i.e. in order to try to tame zebras you’d have to try to find the tamemest in a herd, capture them, breed them, then choose the tamemest ofsprings in that generation and breed those. After many generations you’d probably get tame zebras.
Not quite, they had to have latent characteristics in that area to begin with.
Further, they had to have a degree of approachability to make the taming process something less-than-fatal on a relatively regular basis. Something of a cost-benefit analysis.
No, what you get is a lot of maimed people and a still ornery population of zebras, or that is what the evidence suggests. See Diamond who cites to much relevant literature. In addition, as I noted, genetic research has tended to confirm Diamond’s work. I would love to provide the cites here, but can’t seem to get the citation search engine working properly here.
OK, please explain wolves to dogs and wild cats to cats then. As carnivores I would think they would have the least latent characteristics. Remember that our horses came from wild horses.
Incidentally I have Diamond’s book, but it’s not the bible, it has it’s detractors.
Sigh, I would think its somewhat obvious in re dogs. Insertion into social hierarchy, step-wise domestication beginning with ‘friendlier’ doggies hanging 'round humans for scraps (self-selection), eventual human insertion into pack structure. Cats is less obvious, although certianly they present less threat.
In re horses, well, yes indeed the argument would be that pre-domesticate horses had such characteristics as would lead to them being amenable to domestication. Approaching tautology, true, but as I mentioned, the genetic evidence on domestication events supports the hypothesis.
I am well aware it is not “the bible” but its the best general book on the issue. Further, I might add, his general observations are supported by the genetic literature emerging. Ergo, his story, while not air-tight both matches the historical and genetic data on domestication. Insofar as this is a general question and insofar as the data to date support his hypothesis. I don’t know of others out there that work.
They do not!!!
[sub]Oh, wait…never mind…[/sub]
On a less serious note, this website indicates that another factor is their less than stellar endurance: horses have more stamina, and are thus more valuable when domesticated–can do more work, etc.
There’s probably a certain “technological selection” involved, as well as a genetic one.
The llama is not a riding animal; it cannot support a man’s weight. Neither could the horse, though, if the tarpan, Przewalski’s horse, and skeletal remains at Mesolithic and early Neolithic campsites are anything to go on. The horse could be used as a draft animal, though, pulling carts and chariots (the actual progression seems to have been ox->donkey->horse), being bred to be larger and stronger in the back until, about 700 BCE or so, some Assyrian got the idea of eliminating the chariot and actualy the riding the horse. Why didn’t the llama go the same route? Well, unlike Mesopotamia, the Andes were poor wheel country; the whole process would have been short-circuited at the beginning.
Why didn’t Bantu and Khoisan cattle-herders domesticate the zebra? Because, it seems, there was no perceived benefit to trying.
Can someone define ‘domesticated’ (and not the Merriam-Webster definition)?
Specifically…where does a tame animal leave off and a domesticated one begin? We can tame lions and zebras and what not but not consider them domesitcated. However, horses are domesticated but a wild horse (or feral dog or cat or pig) is still dangerous and we would not call that particular animal domesticated…
So, we have a tame dog and it is domesticated but if we have a tame zebra we only have a tame zebra (not domesticated).
About the only animal that I can truly see as domesticated is a cow which is relatively harmless wild or ‘tame’ and has been so thoroughly changed by breeding over the centuries that I doubt it could survive for long in the wild.
Actually, wolves are fairly approachable (and, in turn, are known to approach humans). Even today there are ongoing “contact” even with wolves that remain wild. The wolf appears to be the one canine of which this is true (there might be one or two others) since most canines–e.g., foxes, coyotes, dingoes, etc.–have not been domesticated and continue to avoid human contact.
Similarly, domestic cats are thought to have arisen from one species of Northern African cats, not lynxes, bobcats, pumas, etc.
I’m not sure that being a carnivore argues against domestication in any way. To the extent that any carnivore might be a scavenger, hanging around human habitations seems like a good way to find food. Even cats, who generally eat only live prey, are going to find a group (such as the Egyptians) who store grain to be a good bait shop for rodents that eat grain.
ongoing “contact” even
should have been
ongoing “contact” events
Who was it that said “dogs are just two meals away from being wolves”?
In answer to the wolves/cats question:
As mentioned before, wolves…and even Foxes and coyotes approach us. But, wolves are social, and live in packs, so there was but a short step to get them to see us as pack mates. Foxes and coyotes are fairly solitary, so they may approach us, they don’t accept us.
Cats on the other hand…I am not convinced they are all that domesticated. They seem to, in general, see us as a means to an end. I think the main reason we accept them as pets is because they are cute, and not big enough to be life threatening. I have seen how “tame” lions and tigers act, and they act like BIG house cats, except that if Tabby decides to swipe you with his claws, you lose an arm.
As to the OP issue, I do believe Horses are better designed for what we domesticated them for than Zebras.
Re domesticating zebras, found this.
http://www.horse-country.com/faqs/zebras.html
To summarize, they’re easy to tame.
My WAG as to whether they were never domesticated the same way horses were would be because the humans who lived in conjunction with them never thought of it. Why was gunpowder invented in China instead of Europe? Why was anything invented or discovered in one place instead of another? Why did one side of the world have the wheel and the other didn’t? It was my understanding that Native Americans, both North and South, did not have the wheel.
http://www.comptons.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/0175/01944832_A.html
They did have llamas, and evidently llamas can be trained to drive.
http://members.aol.com/Nubin1/drivingharness.html
So I would guess that the reason the Incas never trained llamas to drive would be because they didn’t have The Wheel. I think you’d have to have the cart first, pulled by humans, before it would occur to you to train an animal to pull the cart instead.
Hmm. Interesting stuff. It looks like there have been attempts to do it just recently (past couple 100 years).
I’m going to have to get that book. (Guns, Germs and Steel)
DDG:
With all due respect, taming is not domestication. Per the literature I’ve read in the past, there are issues with Zebras as domesticates, so I am less than willing to accept the characterization as easy per se. The Quagga tamings never played out into domestication, even with well-developed European breeding science of the day, and they went extinct (yes indeed through overhunting). Experimental taming attempts throughout the colonial period for other Zebras also have never played out into domestication, again despite some, relative, significant resources.
That seems unlikely as Zebras were extent all the way up through North East Africa and the folks there were well aware of domestication. (Contra Akatsumi, that would include non-hunter gatherers) Rather it would appear that Zebras were more trouble in the long term than they were worth as potential domesticates, given the stage of economic development.
No, I believe in fact Central Americans did know of the wheel, they just did not apply it.
Comptons is wrong here.
First of all, an earlier poster asked about wild horses, I believe there are four categories to describe animals: Domestic, meaning genetically bred by humans to be tame; Feral, meaning animals bred by humans that have escaped into the wild and developed ‘wild’ characteristics; Wild, which means no breeding and very little human contact; and finally Tame, which means no breeding but trained to live relatively peacefully with humans.
This list may not be accepted as a valid way to group animals by everyone but I think it reflects actual scientific thinking on the matter.
Anyway, I also had a question about breeding foxes. I seem to recall a Discover Magazine article about Russian breeders who were trying to domesticate foxes in order to have an easy supply of fox pelts. They managed to make the foxes pretty docile, but their pelts became patchwork like the coats of some dogs. In other words, by breeding foxes to become more docile they inadvertantly changed some other characteristics as well.
By the way, has anyone else heard that in terms of behavior domestic dogs are basically wolves that have been forced into a child-like (or cub-like) state by breeding?
Youve not been around the same cows I have, have you?
Have you ever been charged by a cow? Harmless my ass. My grandfather had a couple of cows, and a bull or two that were none to fond of humans. They generally left him alone, cuz he fed them. Luckily, I was smart enough to stay near fences that I could get over, or near the truck. I don’t think they would have too much problem surviving in the wild.