The turkey . . .

Happy thanksgiving everyone. And while I’m at it, did you know that the turkey was the only domesticated animal in North America before the Europeans arrived to conquer? The llama was it for South America. Meantime, Europe had a bunch: the horse, camel, cattle, sheep, goat, pigs and dogs, to name a few. Sorry Dundee, none in Australia. The horse of course was here before men got here, but disappeared during the first millennia. Many, including me, think that was not a coincidence. Luckily, they are wanderers, and migrated back to Europe using the same land bridge men used to get here, and did not become extinct, like many other megafauna originally here, but no more: think mastodons, dire wolf, american cheetah, camels.

I’ve been studying what makes an animal domesticated as opposed to just tame, and there is no clear answer. The best that I can come up with, so far, is that it’s a process, and animals undergo domestication slowly. I expect it takes years and years, same as a married man. Try to ride a tame zebra and if you live, you will have something exciting to tell the grandchildren.

Nobody knows how long it took for the wolf to become the Chihuahua, but you can bet it didn’t happen overnight. My guess is that took several thousand generations. There is a fellow in Russia that wanted to domesticate foxes so one could take one for a walk in the park, and after fifty some generations, the experiment began to fail. He started out by going to fox breeders (for fur) and buying the friendliest ones, the ones that didn’t cower when he showed up, the ones that were simply curious and came up to him with no intention of snatching part of his hand. These he bred successfully, always being careful to select the friendliest ones, etc., just like at the beginning, but no luck. After only fifty generations, the foxes were more and more looking like dogs: shorter snout, shorter tails, different fur, not as intelligent and not the same bark, as the original foxes. His conclusion was that in the process of selection, he bred the wild out of them.

Nature of course has an advantage. It has time on its side, and maybe we can get foxes that we can call Br’er, in a million years. In the meantime, it’s fun to find out and talk about it. More this Saturday at El Chap,