It is an occurrence that many of us have experienced: the day that we come into contact with the questionable pet. Perhaps we are at a someone's house who we do not know too well, and they decide to show us their boa constrictor. Or, in the background of your boss's zoom screen, you see a large cage filled with colorful tropical birds. Or maybe you are just scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, and you see a heartwarming video about a man and the raccoon that follows him around his farm. You enjoy seeing the creature scurry, slither, or flutter but something scratches in the back of your mind. Is it appropriate that this animal is kept as a pet? The animal seems calm and at ease, but does that mean it is domesticated? What exactly is a domesticated animal? How do we separate them from wild animals? The questionable pet brings up confusion about which animals are supposed to live with us or in our society, and which are better off being left in the wilds where we found them.
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| Is this a domesticated animal? Source: Wikipedia |
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| How about this one? Source: Flickr |
These questions are all valid ones because domestication is not a simple concept to wrap your head around. Determining exactly when a species becomes domesticated is a convoluted and difficult task. This may give you pause; we cannot tell domesticated and wild animals apart? You could glance at your dog, asleep in their fluffy bed after a difficult afternoon of eating kibble and barking at nothing, and you think, "Well, there would be no mistaking Harvey over there with a wolf. Why is there any confusion?" However, the dog has had thousands of years of change thanks to domestication, forming it's obvious differences from the wolf. But when exactly did the dog stop being wild and start being domestic? What exact traits had to change in order to precipitate this shift? Do all domesticated animals share these traits? These finer details are what this article hopes to explore.
