
Wild Horses Can’t be Broken: Zebra Domestication Attempts (2014) - jkuria
https://thomsonsafaris.com/blog/taming-zebras-domestication-attempts/
======
gwern
A very silly argument. Breaking some zebras for a carriage proves nothing
about domestication.

You know what kind of creatures hate humans, snap and bite, have zero herd or
group instincts, are easily agitated, are smaller than their closest
comparable domesticated species, intensely paranoid because fragile, and lash
out when cornered? Russian foxes.

But it took less than a human lifetime to domesticate them
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_red_fox))
and now they're sold as pets and reportedly are even friendlier than most
cats.

 _That_ is what a proper breeding program, done systematically with a breeding
population of hundreds or thousands, with due attention to reliable
measurements, heritability, and constant stringent selection, can do over
several decades. (It would be even easier now with the advent of marker-
assisted selection as GWASes increasingly turn up the genetic signatures of
selection for domestication in cats/dogs/rabbit/foxes/etc.) A few small-scale
failures by some dilettantes back in the 1800s which aren't even described
can't be considered strong evidence.

If no one is doing it, that says more about priorities and the substitution of
automobiles and insecticides than about whether it is doable or not. (If maize
didn't already exist, would anyone bother trying to breed teosinte into corn,
rather than working more on wheat or soy or rice cultivars? The foxes were a
scientific research project, after all, no one actually _needed_ a dog
replacement...) A more interesting question to discuss might be why Africans
were never able to accidentally domesticate zebras as useful insect-resistant
beasts of burden when Europeans/Asians/Americans were accidentally
domesticating all sorts of species left and right, such as horses.

~~~
derefr
> even friendlier than most cats.

Given that "cats are assholes" is a common aphorism, this doesn't say much. (I
get that you mean that they're friendlier than cats _at their best_ , but few
cats friendly a majority of the time.)

Tangent: why hasn't there been a breeding program to make domestic cats...
_more_ domesticated (i.e. friendlier)?

~~~
toasterlovin
> why hasn't there been a breeding program to make domestic cats... more
> domesticated (i.e. friendlier)?

Not sure, but here are some thoughts: cats and dogs occupy different niches.
Feral cats are mostly not a problem because they don’t prey on animals that
humans depend on for food. I guess a cat could take down a chicken? It would
probably be dangerous, though. Chickens are big. Feral dogs, on the other hand
are a problem because they will eat animals that humans are raising for food.
After all, there’s a reason wolves have been exterminated throughout most of
Europe. So, that difference, combined with the fact that cats just aren’t very
useful (they don’t protect or herd livestock and they’re not useful for
hunting large game), means that there was never a historical reason to breed
them.

Now as to why there hasn’t been a concerted effort to breed them as companion
pets. I think the big reason here is that there is already an animal that is
the same size as a cat, but extremely domesticated: small dogs! Animals as
companions hasn’t been a widespread thing for very long. My guess is that,
when that started being a thing, smaller dogs were much closer in evolutionary
time than more dog-like cats. And I’m guessing the people who enjoy cats as
pets now probably appreciate that they are less emotionally needy than dogs.

~~~
dmckeon
For cats, consider that anyone who stores grain may be very happy to have a
few "barn" cats -- not pets, nearly feral -- to hunt small rodents who would
otherwise be eating grain, or spoiling it with excreta.

I can recommend "Veterinary Aspects of Feline Behavior" by Bonnie Beaver, DVM,
to people who keep cats.

~~~
toasterlovin
Right, but I'm not sure there would be a motivation to breed barn cats.
They're already pretty good at what you need them to do. Feral dogs, on the
other hand, can't herd or protect livestock, nor are they useful for hunting.

------
gweinberg
I think maybe you could if you bred from the most human-friendly zebras yo
could find for a century or so. But nobody has really tried that, people are
so impatient these days.

~~~
improbable22
How many centuries did it take us to donesticate horses? Probably quite a
few...

The only argument offered for the Why in the title is this one:

 _> Moreover, zebras have evolved alongside man, whereas European animals
mostly evolved in the absence of man (we didn’t migrate out of Africa until
relatively recently)._

Yet clearly we weren’t such a shock to the horse’s ancestors that we simply
ate them all... as we did everything in the Americas. Maybe because of earlier
proto-humans? So is this some kind of goldilocks argument?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Evidence is that horses were domesticated (on the Eurasian Steppe) for meat
and milk before they were ever ridden.

So you're probably right that the behaviours that made them docile enough to
ride emerged over quite a long time.

------
amarant
Interesting read, somehow reminds me a bit about that old Swedish king who
thought he'd train moose for his cavalry.. Didn't work out to well either, but
for different reasons.. Found a link about it, if anyone's interested:
[http://stockholm.headsaflamemedia.com/2014/03/08/in-
the-1700...](http://stockholm.headsaflamemedia.com/2014/03/08/in-
the-1700s-the-swedish-cavalry-experimented-with-moose/)

------
rectang
A horse is a massive mountain of muscle. It's thrilling to have one work with
you and for you because of their power, but when things go wrong (like a horse
falling on you), you will be caught up in something your comparatively weak
hairless ape body can't counter forcefully.

The idea of hitching such a monstrosity to a skittish and ornery
personality...

~~~
mlevental
>weak hairless ape body

lol i get your drift but i don't see what hair has to do with it (unless we're
all biblical samson)

~~~
pilsetnieks
I think he meant the phrase "hairless ape" to be parsed together, to indicate
human. Not a ((weak, hairless, ape) body) but a ((weak, hairless-ape) body)

~~~
mlevental
I get it but aren't there hairless apes that are very strong? I just meant
it's the wrong poetic flourish

~~~
pilsetnieks
The only references I can find to hairless apes (that aren't humans) are chimp
that are either shaved or have alopecia.

------
graycat
Okay: In the debate between nature and nurture, we tend to assume that
_behavior_ is mostly from nurture, not nature.

I've wondered about that assumption.

So, from the OP, quite deeply zebra behavior is from nature, that is,
genetics, "hard wired" as the OP says, and is quite solid since a lot of
nurture won't change it.

So, in the nature versus nurture debate, with zebras we have a good benchmark:
Deep parts of behavior can be from nature and beyond nurture. So, we need to
consider that possibility for species other than zebras. That is, even in
behavior, quite generally we need to question the efficacy of nurture.

~~~
dfaigonio
It's not at all controversial that there's a strong genetic component to
personality. There are people who like to pretend otherwise, but it's very
well-established science.

------
crunchlibrarian
I like how this page's auto-hiding header keeps jumping around and rescrolling
the page making it impossible to read the first two paragraphs.

How did the web get this bad?

~~~
Synaesthesia
On my iPhone it simply showed a picture which covered the text and refused to
move. Thankfully reader mode allowed me to read the article, thought the same
thing as you - how did we get to this point?

