Domestication is a term often used to categorise animals in law or ethics, based on how we see them and how we manage their care. Referring to an animal as being “domesticated” typically suggests that it is adapted and amenable to life around or directly within the domains of people.
Once “domesticated”, a species’ former wild and mostly different life is more or less irrelevant and consigned to history. One can give the species less nature and it won’t notice! Essentially, such interpretations have long been arbitrarily floated and, worse, applied without any scientific or ethical foundation.
What does domestication mean?
The Latin origin of “domestication” – “domesticus” – basically translates to “belonging to the house”, and its somewhat mercurial use has led to its abuse. At its most practical, the term may, perhaps, be taken to represent animals that are traditionally or commonly kept and bred for largely human purposes. That said, what is traditional in one region may not be so in another, and a house or home cannot be called a commercial farm, field or factory. Already, the term has started to break down.
Merely labelling an animal as ‘domesticated’ because it may express an occasional preference to co-occupy a human habitat or because it has been modified through captive breeding falls flat in the face of scientific scrutiny
Then there’s the school of thought that domestication involves some species becoming biologically adapted to life in close quarters with humans, whether naturally by habit or via manipulation, such as selective breeding and genetic engineering. Here again, merely labelling an animal as “domesticated” because it may express an occasional preference to co-occupy a human habitat or because it has been modified through captive breeding falls flat in the face of scientific scrutiny.
So, how might we start thinking about all this?
The biology of domestication
For decades, scientists have struggled to decisively define domestication and determine the biological and practical features it might encompass or require. Foundational work emphasises that alongside highly specific environmental conditions, a raft of complex characteristics must be inherent in a species in order to set the groundwork for domestication (Price, 1984). Inherent characteristics include strong adaptive traits, gregarious natural sociality, affiliative attributes, genetic soft wiring and more.
Essentially, animals must possess certain genetic states and psycho-behavioural traits that pre-adapt them to atypical conditions. In theory, a combination of the right genetic stuff and a specific selection of trends should, over time, result in changes to life expectations that accept the lower stimulation of captivity and human dependence – akin to maintaining animals as part-juvenile for their entire lives.
For decades, scientists have struggled to decisively define domestication and determine the biological and practical features it might encompass or require
Some of the strongest prerequisites for domestication can be misleading. Affiliative behaviours can be weak or strong across or within species, and animals voluntarily sharing a human home for their own benefit can mean little. A wild gecko or spider that enters a house to obtain prey or shelter is merely using resources within its territory, whether they revert to outside life afterwards or not. An animal may become as habituated or desensitised to human activities within a house as they might a swaying branch. Symbiotic and mutualistic species naturally share shelters. Domestication plays no part in any of these examples.
Some species, notably canines, appear to have the necessary attributes for domestication, but there are few others. Indeed, almost all other species seem to lack the vital characteristics. For example, there are no scientific reports of domesticated invertebrates, fishes, amphibians or reptiles. While species in these classes can have highly social lives, they lack other elements, such as strongly dependent juvenile traits, and worse, possess too much of the wrong stuff (Décory, 2019), for example hard-wired behaviours and poor adaptability to atypical conditions.
Are any animals truly domesticated?
If we take domestication to imply changing animals to fit into our way of life, then we ought to mean changing them to the point where their life preferences and ours match – anything less would merely be suppression and deprivation.
If we take domestication to imply changing animals to fit into our way of life, then we ought to mean changing them to the point where their life preferences and ours match
Even taking the term somewhat loosely, what are our most domesticated animals? Horses? Chickens? Cattle? Swine? Dogs? Not only can all of these animals show signs of stress when held under entirely human-centred conditions, but all will also revert to natural behaviours and self-survival when released. If one removed all humans from the planet, would chickens, cattle and swine survive? Probably. If aliens arrived on Earth to find cattle grazing, would they be obviously identifiable as a domesticated species? Probably not.
Dogs will most definitely opt-in to human life-sharing, including reminding their caretakers, lead in mouth, that it’s walk time. Yet, released dogs also become feral – which is regarded as reversed domestication. Changes brought about in animals through supposed domestication are likely impermanent and quickly shed when allowed the options of natural life. Worse, if inherent – presumably positive – life-sharing between humans and other species is a benchmark of domestication, then one can argue that dogs and cats do not fully benefit here either. What about the many welfare issues relating to dog and cat breeding and selling and the myriad physical, psychological and behavioural problems arising from selective breeding and common husbandry?
Changes brought about in animals through supposed domestication are likely impermanent and quickly shed when allowed the options of natural life
Accordingly, common claims of domestication that follow from an animal being multi-generational captive-bred, docile or a new “colour-morph” are clearly simplistic, irrelevant and false – terms bizarrely propagandised by sellers and keepers of what are manifestly wild or exotic species.
Defining and using the term “domestication”
Contemporary scientific evidence and the increasing need for modern classification infer that the paradigm of domestication requires a more careful definition and, at most, highly limited use. We need to steer well away from casual referencing of domestication to define animals and instead ground any and all determinations on new scientific categorisation.
We need to steer well away from casual referencing of domestication to define animals and instead ground any and all determinations on new scientific categorisation.
At present, such categorisation may defensibly allow only regular dogs and cats to be loosely considered domesticated. But even here, in these most humanised of species, domestication should not be taken to undervalue the wildness of the animal within.
