I’ve seen many wild animals living in people’s houses so what’s the real difference
In: Biology
The definition of domestication is actually pretty vague, with the generally accepted definition being that the creatures offspring are not aggressive towards humans.
which means that we’ve domesticated dogs, technically domesticated ferrets, and are sorta-kinda working on cats.
indeed, cats are about the only animal that we have evidence of “self domestication”. they turned up around the time we started being farmers, we didn’t mind that they ate things that ate the stuff we were farming, and didn’t mind that we’d look after their kittens whilst they went off and killed stuff.
Reduced aggression levels is what matters most in this. The there’s a very low probability that a domestic animal would attack its owner. The probability for a wild animal kept at home to attack someone is considerably higher.
A domestic animal is just any animal that people routinely keep in an area. In the west this usually refers to animals that humans have bred for a specific purpose over the past few thousand years, but that isn’t a requirement for what constitutes a domestic animal and is more a reflection of the historically advanced state of animal husbandry in Europe/the west compared to the rest of the world.
Within the west cats are considered a domestic animal even though they don’t meet any of the objective qualifications that are normally applied to domestic animals (IE, cats have not been selectively bred and are genetically and behaviorally identical to their “wild” ancestor, the African Wild Cat).
Outside of the west there are plenty of animals that are considered “domesticated” in the context of a specific country, even though they would be considered wild if imported into a western country. For example, no one would consider an elephant to be a wild animal if it was in South East Asia, but it would be considered a wild animal if imported into the US.
Likewise, monkeys would be considered domestic animals in certain parts of Africa, but no one would consider a monkey to be a domestic animal if you imported one into the US.
Or take dogs – dogs are considered a domestic animal everywhere on Earth, except in Australia. Dingos are dogs that were bred by humans for a specific purpose, aren’t generally aggressive towards humans, and are easily handled by humans if raised from birth. Despite that, they are not routinely kept as pets and, as a result, no one considers them to be domestic animals.
Domestication is basically changing a species to better suit it for human use. That’s why things in which we’ve made actual genetic changes are domesticated like dogs, cats, sheeps, horses. We have after many years favoured and help ensure the gene that survives suits us.
Wild animals are not that way. They aren’t genetically modified for our needs or wants. We did not selectively breed them (for millions of years). But we might be able to. There’s currently a research going in order to domesticate fox species through selective breeding.
Domestication is a weird and iffy definition.
Some say it’s an animal that is completely adapted behaviourally to live alongside humans, while other say it’s an animal that humans have genetically modified through breeding to be distinct from its wild ancestors. Some would define it as an animal that poses no aggression or danger to humans, but plenty of people are gored by bulls, crushed by horses, and mauled by dogs every year, so that one really doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Basically it’s so broad and varied as to be effectively meaningless. Some people might demand that it only include dogs/cats or farm animals, while some dictionary definitions would include things like albino pythons or farm raised emu.
What really matters is how well suited an animal is to adapting to human life, how well they bond with humans and/or how easy it is for us to meet their needs properly in order to care for them. Some shocking examples of animals that can bond very closely with humans when raised in certain ways include owls, pigeons, and even alligators.
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