The Importance Of Domestic Animal Diversity

Livestock

But the true domestic animals have by way of man’s artifices broadly diverged genetically from their wild ancestor, whereas the domesticated elephant has never been selectively bred and thus both genetically and behaviorally stays a wild elephant. Too many conservationists intellectually well aware of this distinction persist in drawing a basic however false division between wild and domesticated Asian elephants. Facing the identical linguistic dilemma, Van Gelder phrases Clutton-Brock’s ‘man-made animals’ as ‘home animals’ – a word usually utilized to elephants – and defines home animals, oversimplifying considerably, as populations which might be biologically or behaviorally completely different from their wild ancestors. Biologically, elephants have never been topic to centuries, much less millennia, of selective breeding and genetic manipulation as have water buffalo, cattle, and so on.

Reproduction In Domestic Animals

While home canines and water buffalo, for example, have usually been moved at the hands of man and some have maybe then bred with their wild progenitors on the new location, the moved dogs and buffalo had been usually long-domesticated lineages. Wild elephants had been moved by man 1000’s of kilometers, sometimes to mate with local wild elephants and perhaps even with a special subspecies.

Behaviorally, even when born in captivity, and even when born of two captive-born parents, elephants stay wild animals. Van Gelder denotes Clutton-Brock’s ‘exploited captives’ to be ‘domesticated’ and stresses that being ‘domesticated’ is a process undergone by teams or by a population. The Northern Chinese (who are just like Tibetans and Nepalese) overran … Read More