Why was it easier for humans to tame wolves (and it’s still relatively easier to co-exist close to them compared to lions)?
In: Biology
Hmm this is a very big and nuanced question – but it all comes down to the way that the family groups work, and the time period we’ve got to work with.
Wolves and Lions are very different animals – both in size, dynamics, and who they do and do not consider prey. Thousands of years ago, a pack of wolves would not have considered a mid-large group of humans prey. They dare not come into our camps to try and pick us off one by one without great risk to their own health. Single humans are a different story, but definitely not groups. What they did notice however, is that we left around a lot of prey and remains.
Over time, this reliance on us led to comfortability between both species. This is similar to say, coyotes in the modern day. Many many years ago, seeing a coyote in a human settlement would be something to freak out about, but now they come by more often and go after our scraps and food. They’re learning not to fear us, and we’re learning not to fear them. They’re also not really in a position to hurt us when we’re in our homes (like wolves were back then).
Eventually, this led to evolutionary success – wolves that didn’t fear people got more food from people, and thus had more children who too did not fear people. **Humans also realized the usefulness of wolves** – *and this made them drastically different from a lion pack*.
Wolves, Horses, Cows – these big animals that we’ve domesticated share a common social structure known as “pack hierarchy”; which made them drastically easy to control and domesticate in the field. Wolf families do not infight (typically speaking) and have a level of respect for the leader. Humans were able to exploit this (just like the other animals I mentioned), by becoming the leader. Your dog looks up to you because you are its parent, its group leader. If the wolf pack leader looks up to you, you are now **the wolf pack leader and you tell them what to do**. This made the domestication part easy.
Sometimes a species will be close to humans, but not have this family structure we can utilize to buff their domestication stat. You can imagine a squirrel for this example – they’re not family pack animals and thus even though they effectively did what wolves do in the scavenging department; they’re not really easily domesticatable.
**Now let’s get into lions**.
Lions and humans have *ALWAYS* had issues. Remember how I mentioned that wolf packs do not consider a mid – large size group of humans prey animals? **Lions do**. A lion pride has no problem going up against a group of humans and picking off a few of us for the taking. Historically, we’ve got tons of references and mentions of this rivalry going back centuries. We were always prey animals to these creatures (until very recently).
Lion cohabitation with humans is simply too risky of an endeavor for us to have ever gotten behind. A wolf can come close to camp and be somewhat friendly – but a lion? Even today, you are not comfortable around such a big cat (regardless of what the owner says).
Lion prides are also not the typical pack hierarchy. Lions do not respect elder pack leaders, and this is not how they operate. A lion pride is a constant show of force; males will exhibit controlling behavior and do not have a hierarchy amongst themselves. When a male lion grows old, a younger male will enter the pride – either kill or fight him off – and take his mates/pride.
You simply could not control the “pack leader” like you can with wolves. The pride head does not take kindly to subordinate behavior and is instinctively pushed to either fight you for dominance or leave. A wolf pup that you raise will always look to you as a parent and stay with you for life – even if it gains its own pack. A male lion cub is instinctively driven to leave you once it reaches maturity, or fight you for control. It just doesn’t happen.
In Africa today, lions do exist in a sort of co-habitance with humans, but this isn’t because they see benefit in us. They’ve learned to avoid us because of the advent of guns. We can kill them quite easily. However, this relationship is and always will be on edge because a lion will always be able to consider you prey.
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