Eli5: Why can’t you make a pet out of a wolf, a bear or a lion?
In: Biology
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.
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