Why do animals like lions and tigers sometimes “forget” about their previous owners but dogs don’t have that instinct to kill them?
In: Biology
It’s the difference between a “tame” animal and a domesticated one. A “tame” lion is really nothing more than a wild lion that has been raised around humans so it’s not scared and skittish around them. It still has all it’s lion instincts like attacking when threatened, an urge to hunt, and ultimately not being afraid of humans in a fight.
Dogs on the other hand are domesticated. This means that over the years we’ve bread the friendlier dogs and avoided breading (or killed) the aggressive ones. Over multiple generations this changes them both physically and physiologically. Physicals traits of domestication you can observe in dogs are floppy ears, more curled tails. Physiologically they become more docile, less easily spooked, and more comfortable around humans. These are genetic traits that have been deliberately bred into these animals.
Wild animals that are raised as pets or in sanctuaries are still wild at heart. They haven’t undergone any evolutionary change and are virtually identical to their wild counterparts. A dog is the domesticated wolf, a pet lion is still a still a lion.
There are some people around the world who are actively domesticating animals for various reasons. I know there was a russian(?) team working on domesticating foxes through breeding. I’m also pretty sure I’ve heard of some people who are actually trying to breed wolves into domestication and have been for a while. I think Radiolab might’ve done a piece on it.
Edit: The domestication of cats actually has a pretty interesting history since they kinda self domesticated. In looking into this I found a neat article that suggests leopards might’ve been briefly domesticated to an extent in Neolithic China.
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147295](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147295)
Latest Answers