#tame animals

Domesticated mammals and birds

These collages are something I’ve wanted to make for a long time, but I only got around to making them yesterday and today.

The reason being, I was reading around on why some animals could be domesticated, and others not, and I am rather frustrated at the lack of knowledge displayed by most people writing about this.

Most seem to just copy+paste what they have heard others say. Some may have more knowledge on history and people, but seem to be ignorant on how animals actually work, and on how many animal species we have actually domesticated, which is why I made these two collages above.

I was being rather selective here, as there are many more small animals that can be seen as domesticated or partly domesticated. I did not include any rodents other than guinea pigs (which have been bred for thousands of years in Peru and are a completely different animal from the wild cavy), and I did not include animals like small parrots, finches or minks. While bred for a long time, they have only been modified slightly from their wild ancestor (and in the case of minks, only for fur and size, not temperament).

The Siberian fox experiment is also not included, because it’s such a small, recent experiment, the fox did not become a full-on domestic animal, basically only restricted to the experimental farms (and their suitability as pets may have been greatly exaggerated).

I also excluded fish and invertebrates, because that kind of domestication does not really apply in the same way as these animals above, which are basically all livestock or work animals in their foundation.

A list, then, to clarify the collages:

• Dog
• Domestic coyote † (not really proven, but it seems feasible)
• Fuegian dog/domestic Culpeo fox †
  
• Cat (yes, whatever some people say, cats are definitely domesticated)
• Ferret
• Horse
• Donkey
• Goat
• Sheep
• Cattle
• Zebu (domesticated from a separate subspecies of aurochs)
• Yak
• Domestic banteng
• Gayal (domestic gaur)
• Marsh buffalo
• River buffalo (while typically treated as the same species, these two different buffaloes were domesticated separately and have a different number of chromosomes)
• Reindeer
• Dromedary camel
• Bactrian camel
• Llama
• Alpaca
• Pig
• Rabbit
• Guinea pig

• Chicken
• Turkey
• Japanese/Coturnix quail
• Guinea fowl
• Duck
• Muscovy duck
• Goose
• Chinese goose
• Pigeon
• Barbary dove

You may notice that, for fun, I went out of my way to find animals that look very close to their wild ancestors (husky for the dog, konik for the horse, heck cattle for the cattle, etc.).