Domestication

Abstract

Domestication has been defined by Rattner and Boice (1975) as the removal of organisms from some natural selective pressures over generations. However this definition is not entirely satisfactory for it could as easily apply to certain zoo animals as to animals that are conventionally considered to be domesticated. The latter fulfil a variety of functions for man and it is the conscious genetic selection for adaptation to these functions that today largely distinguishes domestic animals from the inmates of a modern zoo, which are also being protected from some pressures of natural selection that would operate in their natural habitats. Additionally most domestic animals are more docile than most zoo animals. However domestication must be distinguished from tameness, which is defined as the elimination of the tendency to flee in the presence of man. Tameness may be learnt through early association with man, e.g. imprinting of young animals on to man, or it might occur through lack of contact with man. Several species of animals on the Galapagos Islands do not flee from man, probably due to the fact that they have not been hunted. Furthermore, domestication can involve many different sorts of relationships with man, from the intimate relationship between a pet dog and its owner to the loose association found, say, on an ostrich farm or extensive sheep farm. In either event the species concerned is able to fulfil the goal desired by the owner and to breed successfully in the environment supplied by man. In some cases reproductive success is now completely dependent on man’s intervention, as in the case of the bulldog, the non-broody strains of fowl, and some broad breasted strains of turkeys in which the males are unable to copulate successfully.