Eli5: Why can’t you make a pet out of a wolf, a bear or a lion?
In: Biology
Going to need more information on what you mean by “can’t.”
One answer would be that it’s against the law to do so, and that this law was put in place to protect both the animals from abuse, and the owner and community from potential danger.
One answer would be that they are not domesticated, and thus need breeding to make them into “pets” rather than wild animals you have trapped in your house.
Another answer could be that they do not show the social interest that other animals like dogs and cats show in humans.
Or I could answer that you can, that doing so is called owning an “exotic pet.”
Dogs and cats are not merely *trained*, they are *domesticated*. That means they have been bred to be friendlier to humans, to be easier to handle, and to be less aggressive in general. That does not mean that any individual *must* be friendly to all humans, but just that there is a genetic disposition to be. Pick out a random stray dog and it will be less fearful of humans *on average* and more willing to be handled and trained by a human.
Any animal can be *trained*. That means changing the behavior of one individual through rewards and punishments, but those changes don’t affect that animal’s offspring. Train a bear all you want, its cubs will be just as wild as the parent was before training. It may be a lot easier to train just because it’s grown up around humans, but that’s still not domestication, just kind of used to being around us.
With domestication, you take the individuals that are the friendliest, easiest to handle, etc. and breed them together. Over generations, the offspring aren’t just used to humans being around, they *want* humans to be around, even if they’ve never met one. Wolves have been domesticated into dogs. Wild wolves are not domesticated, though. Bears and lions are not domesticated.
You *could* domesticate them, but…why? They’re big, aggressive, dangerous, and expensive to house and to feed. There’s no point in domesticating them and handling wild ones is, in a word, *difficult*. Good luck with that.
I think you are talking about the domestication side. Domestication is breeded into the animal. This is general, but a long time ago wolves hung out and killed our ancestors. In general, wolves were wild animals with traits that humans did not like because it tended to kill. However, *some* wolves had a disposition for calmness and less aggression in conjunction with the wolves sociability. Those wolves probably hung out around where people lived and people came to like *those* specific wolves. If you have a couple of those kinds of wolves, they would breed and pass on those genetic traits (calmness, less aggressive) and over time that became *THE* dominant trait. The descendants of those wolves changed into the precursor of the dog. The wolf was domesticated from a small sample of essentially less aggressive wolves.
Bears and lions….while they can be trained, they aren’t domesticated for a few reasons…lack of sociability, the raw power they posses, and lack of need to domesticate them. I am sure overtime you could breed a more domesticated version of them as a pet, but what if that pet accidently does something playfully to you but at the same time is highly dangerous and injurious to you. Its not something pet owners would really want to have in a pet.
Domestication takes a long time over several generations. Iirc there have been attempts to domesticate foxes, but that’s a process that requires selective breeding to get the kind of animal you want.
Sure you could make a pet out of a bear in the sense that you take care of it and benefit from it some how, but is still a bear. I had some neighbors who wanted to rehab raccoons, and bless their bleeding hearts they loved those animals, but they were still wild creatures that tore up their house and ended up causing serious issues with the neighbors. They treated their raccoons like pets, but they weren’t really… Pets.
Some people claim you can get a wolf to trust you, but it isn’t a pet and master thing. If you tried to breed that behavior into the wolves, you’d get dogs.
Lions and bears are smart, large, and no matter how much you love or teach it affection, it will never truly accept the idea that you aren’t a standby meal.
You should watch some documentaries about how dogs and cats came to be. It will give you a greater understanding as to you can’t make a pet out of a wild animal.
Well, you can. But I believe the consensus is that without the benefit of thousands of years of selective breeding to enhance domestication (as with dogs) or the benefit of the species half-domesticating itself (as with housecats), it’s significantly riskier.
And the risk to public safety if your wolf/bear/lion/chimpanzee goes berserk is significantly greater than with most dog breeds and the like.
I think [Siegfried and Roy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_%26_Roy#2003_tiger_incident)’s tiger accident is a good example for why not. Even if acclimated to humans, the animals are so powerful that one short nip can kill you.
Erm you can make a pet out of a wolf that’s called a dog 😆. Basically because they are so wild and have such a strong prey drive. If you bred the most dosile bear and lion over and over again for Manny years you could have a half domesticated pet but again they are too wild they could never be around children or anyone who is not known and trusted. All it takes is doe you to Miss a meal and they might decide they don’t need to keep you sweet anymore and choose u as their meal lol.
> bear
This reminds me of an amusing story where a purely libertarian town was created (with extra freedom) but it was utterly doomed because their society basically failed – but the one hilarious thing is how a couple people used FREEDOM to feed bears, so bears ended up overrunning the town. Hey Boo boo.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling
Latest Answers