I have an unpopular opinion. I don't think we should domestic so many different species of the same genus.
For example when it comes to dogs, 99% it's canius domestius or it's super similar canius lupus
Or for cats it's just the house cat.
But for birds there's like 12 in the running, rodents and rodent look alikes it's like 6, and what are there like 20 different species of snake, and 20 misc reptiles and reptile look alikes.
Fish and insects are the only exceptions for a number of abstract and logistical reasons.
I'll counter with my own super unpopular opinion. Nearly every animal we don't domesticate is fucked in the long run. We will destroy their habitat until they no longer exist. The only animals that will survive will be those that can adapt to urban and suburban habitats, everything else will die.
>morphaggot pretending he hasn't already overwhelmed the hobby
fuck off. disingenuous
I'm actually Anya poster
Python and boa have different head shapes, and corn snakes are the perfect small sized snake for domestication.
what are you even suggesting then? a ball python or corn snake is already good enough for enough of the population, and then it's mostly enthusiasts and people with an ego issue who want some flashy dangerous thing who seek something else. A leopard or crested gecko, or bearded dragon satisfies most lizard enjoyers, and you hardly meet someone with even an ackie monitor unless you're deeply in the herpzone.
I suggest maybe we discourage people from having those exotic animals. That maybe we should put all our eggs into three baskets. A small species, a medium species, a large species.
Maybe we shouldn't have 7 types of parrot. Maybe we shouldn't domesticate foxes.
responsible domestication is possible. people shouldn't have threatened-endangered animals for non-conservation reasons, and maybe the average fucker shouldn't have venomous snakes as an outlet for their ego. but other than those stipulations you aren't making a logical argument about it. You're gonna complain over shit labeled Least Concern.
I'm all for responsible domestication. Just not of the something identical to something we already have domesticated. Don't domesticate cotton tails because we already have old world rabbits.
For the example I'm for domestication of tigers because they're already on the way there. There's more tigers in America then in the wild.
That's really stupid. Don't try to domesticate the fucking tigers.
>Why domesticate cows? We already have goat milk.
>Why domesticate alpacas? We already have sheep wool.
>Why should we domesticate ducks? We already have chicken eggs.
>Why should silk exist at all? Why did we bother learning how to exploit silkworms? It's just another textile.
There's no rule of redundancy when it comes to keeping animals, quit coping like there should be.
We're already half there tho.
we are not "half there" just because we have a lot of them in captivity.
Bro we're half way there because there's been a ton of generations of captive breed tigers who belonged to rich idiots who go in their cages like the tiger king.
You're mistaking socialization for domestication. I doubt there's enough rich egotistical wackos in the world to have a robust enough breeding stock of tigers to do blind genetic experimentation on for many generations until they can be considered domesticated in the least bit.
Oh, on the flipside of this, there IS a robust enough captive asian water monitor population to have establishments like New England Reptile attempting to breed them for optimal friendliness, which is a step towards domestication.
Nah, the tigers who couldn't be socialized got put in places where they can't breed. Although I fear that tigers will stop being breed my rich wackos due to a number of factors. I hope that's not the case.
Remember it only took a few generations to domestic foxes.
The russian silver fox experiment took 30 generations of increasingly precise selective breeding standards that rich quack tiger breeders wish they could replicate actually i consider that more than a few generations. and they weren't fully domesticated, just a little more easily sociable than the average wild fox. "less likely to try to kill you or fuck off than a wild specimen" is not the definition of domestication. wolves weren't "domesticated" the moment they accepted human food and slept among humans.
I thought i read somewhere that it was 8-10 or 6 years.
Although I consider it a shame rich wackos didn't take to lions instead. Would be easier to domesticate, and they're really horny.
you read stupid shit because you have stupid ideas that attract you to stupid content
Um okay. I thought it was the Russian experiments that showed how short it could be.
It depends on the species. But I don't consider keeping a breeding population in the zoo as the same as domestication.
the russian experiment also picked its stock from pelt farms which already did some of the preliminary work for them. Turning wild-caught red foxes into russian silvers would undoubtedly have taken more time.
Fair enough.
Hey do you think it's possible roman tigers didn't all die out? That maybe a few of their ancestors are still alive?
It'd be pretty cool if their lineage was still alive in captivity to this day.
also those russian silver experiment descendants are still closer to domestication than any red fox you can get anywhere else
Why?
We got so much verity out of wolves, house cats, and ball pythons. Why do we need to condem another species down this road when we can easily make a morph/breed out of a ball python.
I view this is the same way I view domestic foxes. They'll eventually either be so inbred you won't want them and want a wild fox instead, or they'll be never able to pass on their genes due to scarcity of domestic foxes and how similar they'll be to dogs, as to be nearly indistinguishable.
I'm against the selfish nature of man saying we want to collect them all, with no thought of the long term outcome.
Look at this. 17 different species of snake that can't breed with each other. This is a case of spreading yourself out too thin.
Breeding and domesticating pet species doesn't eliminate the original, natural species.
> look at wolves
They are still there, alongside super inbred snub nose pugs
It's not about that, it's that this is a fucking stupid cycle that'll leave more animals neglected. The idea that there's nothing you can gain by domesticating foxes because dogs can be breed to look and at the same way.
this dumb nigga doesn't know the difference between a python and a boa, or why someone would keep a corn snake over anything else