Talk:Domestication of vertebrates

Assessment

Assessed for Wikiproject:Dogs William Harris • WikiProject Dogs • talk • 09:10, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Assessed for Wikiproject:Mammals William Harris • WikiProject Mammals • talk • 09:10, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Neat article

Nice article. I've been working on the equine articles for years and there is a lot of very rapidly changing stuff out there. You may find some good sources not only at Domestication of the horse, but also History of horse domestication theories, and some real interesting stuff on coat color at Leopard complex, primitive markings and some of the other coat color articles such as dun gene. What is also interesting about horses is that the gene flow between wild and domestic animals is a little different with horses; there is evidence that there may have been only a single Y-DNA progenitor (or at the most, a handful) of all domesticated horses. Mind-boggling. Montanabw^(talk) 23:35, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry about the undo, my apologies I misunderstood, now fixed. It would appear that the researchers did not include the original colourings in their musings. Each single mutation that makes one thing different from another is based on a single parent, the rest is the result of cascading generation-after-generation descendents passing on that gene across a population. The interesting stuff will come out of Ancient DNA, when we start analysing sequences from long extinct specimens. We now have whole-genome DNA from a 35,000 YBP wolf (Skoglund 2015) and mDNA from a 200,000 YBP wolf (Lee 2015) as we search for the dog's ancestor. Similar technology will be applied to other species, and its reach will go further back in time. Anyhow, I foresee a cross-pollination across the domestication-related articles over the next few years and we will be working closer together - I will keep my eye out for anything horse-related of interest. Regards, William Harris • talk • 02:17, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

The horse colors can't be as easily linked to domestication, other than gray and some forms of white and white spotting -- but leopard is ancient and found in wild ancestors. I have craploads of peer-reviewed articles on various aspects of breed development, coat color genetics and domestication history. See also Horse genome and Horses in the United States for even more fossil history and sources. Montanabw^(talk) 03:29, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks. I find it interesting that "Domestication of the horse" and "Evolution of the horse" are separate articles, and that DOH touches on the horse in human culture. I have much to do with the Origin of the domestic dog which I have structured the material there under 2 main chapters of Dog Evolution and Dog Domestication. This is because other editors criticize the size of it so I structured it around 2 spinoff articles, but when the time came for a decision the view was to keep it as is. The link to human culture is often criticized that it is just about the early relationship between wolves and humans and their cultural link, and not dogs. My response is how can you have an article on the origin of the dog that does not involve the relationship between wolves and humans? I think the direction horse-kind has gone is the correct one, and I would recommend that dog-kind follow their example. Regards, William Harris • talk • 20:27, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! I agree. A lot of people fail to understand that all domestic animals HAD to have been tamed from wild ancestors. I don't really see how you can avoid dealing with the early interactions. Montanabw^(talk) 04:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I totally agree. Domestication of the Dog is a tautology - the new article should really be called Domestication of the Wolf! Regards, William Harris • talk • 08:13, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello Montanabw, you horsefolk might be interested in this - Horses can read human emotions, refer- doi:10.1038/530385a Regards, William Harris • talk • 09:44, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Taxonomic range

There's quite a mismatch between the title, whether 'animals' or 'vertebrates' and the content of this article, which is currently almost exclusively about mammals. Both birds (largely but not exclusively poultry, should also consider cagebirds, fishing cormorants, ...) and reptiles (pets, farmed crocs though whether they're 'domestic' is perhaps doubtful) are also vertebrates to be considered. Birds currently get a very brief mention (the chicken), and it's unclear whether the rest of the text's claims actually apply to birds, though we may guess that talk of docility and improved yields do generalize to them, guess being the operative word.

If the scope is to be 'animals' then invertebrates including molluscs (edible snails, farmed seafood, research models like the octopus, ...) and insects (the honey bee and the silkworm are the big ones, but they're not alone) would also come into the picture. Even the parent article on domestication is extremely narrow, I'm working on it.

I suggest that there's not much point trying to widen this particular article beyond the vertebrates (and perhaps even beyond the mammals), as a) the discussion of 'general' principles (reduction of jaws, etc) seems to be based entirely on thinking about mammals - it really doesn't apply to, say, domesticated silkworms or farmed snails at all; and b) the more general points can be made easily enough at Domestication. There is clearly scope for a family of articles if anyone wants to look into topics like the domestication of invertebrates in more detail. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:32, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

I hold the opposite view; until there is domestication of insects or domestication of mollusks or whatever, no reason to make an unnecessarily narrow article title. This one is intended as an overview, split off from Domestication because, I presume, we have split the plant and animal kingdoms. I think that here WP:CONCISE applies. And we could add a paragraph on bees or whatever…Montanabw^(talk) 08:26, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

OK, then we will need to add a) paragraphs or sections on insects, molluscs, birds (domesticated phyla also include Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Annelida, Mollusca, Arthropoda, Echinodermata); and b) carefully generalize the text to ensure that it applies to all of these. With the "Universal features" section starting "The zoomass of wild vertebrates" I suspect this may prove ... an interesting challenge.

I also wonder why the article begins by stating this is about a theory, rather than a demonstrably global practice with a history of many thousand years. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:41, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Because domestication is a theory and we don't yet know how it works. You have confused domestication with selective breeding - something that needs to be kept entirely separate. (How do you selectively breed a wild wolf? It needs to be domesticated first, and there are genetic changes that signal domestication that are clearly separate from selective breeding. Even the plant people know that. Now to stretch your mind further: it would appear that the dog diverged from the wolf 40,000 years ago. Then it was domesticated around 14,000 years ago. Then it was selectively bred from around 10,000 years ago.) Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 10:20, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Your edits are working for me so far. The big thing is that this is the overview article until we have adequate spinoffs or appropriate forks. Montanabw^(talk) 02:33, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid that after more than 6 years, nothing has moved on the non-mammalian front. "Domestication of vertebrates" would fit the current article perfectly, and it appears to be, ahem, rather stable in that regard. The generalisations about traits are vertebrate- if not mammal-specific (floppy ears, etc) and obviously can't apply to bees and snails. The parent Domestication article covers vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and so on; it will be quite happy with a more specifically-focused subsidiary article (vertebrates only); and this article will work perfectly with the more specific title. There is supposed to be a match between article titles and their contents, so we should now get this done, after a very long and unproductive hiatus. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:52, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Leaning toward Montanabw's interpretation. We need a Domestication of animals (with addition of bees and such) before we need a narrower Domestication of vertebrates, because we lack corresponding drill-down articles on insects, etc., and there is no reason to split up or narrow an animals article until such time as it get too long and needs a split for length reasons. Also agree most of the substantive changes have been improvements (but not some much with all of the style twiddling, e.g. MOS:DLIST issues). It's also important not to mix in farmed populations of wild species just because someone somewhere likes to think of them as "domesticated". That term has a narrow scientific meaning, and farmed alligators and salmon are not it. Trying to include them is going to trip all over WP:NOR. But some paragraph that distinguishes such populations from actual domesticates is probably going to be useful.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:51, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Commonly domesticated?

“ Some of the most commonly domesticated animals are cats and dogs.” The plain reading of this sentence (at the end of the intro section) says to me that dogs and cats had more domestication events historically than other animals. I doubt this - cattle, e.g, had multiple domestication events. Is it trying to say “common” instead of “commonly” — that domesticated dogs and cats are numerous and widespread? Lynn Ami (talk) 04:23, 10 June 2024 (UTC)