The shape of humanity's past,
present, and future is intertwined with nature. Our lives are directly shaped by
the animal world and vice versa. [male announcer] Many
thousands of years ago, our prehistoric ancestors were
forced to protect themselves against the larger animal.
Bees impact our food production. Bats control insect populations.
And without baby monkey going backwards on a pig,
I don't know where we'd be as a civilization.
[♪♪♪] Yet, it is a
special relationship with a few key species
that really allowed our species to takeoff.
This is domestication. [man] Probably food
was one of the first uses to which animals were put.
Hi, I'm Jess Keating, and you're watching
a wild speciesby selectively breeding favourable traits.
It's how we go from a hulking wolf to a chattering Chihuahua.
[man] Be careful there, fella. If you don't fold in those ears,
you're gonna takeoff in the breeze.
By selecting which specific animals can procreate,
you can fine tune different breeds
to look or behave a certain way. Have a rat problem?
Breed dogs that are prone to ratting.
Need a helping hand with your livestock?
Breed dogs that have strong predatory instincts
but don't treat cattle as prey. Need a cute gift for your kids?
Breed dogs with shorter, fatter, and uglier faces.
Domestication obviously isn't all dog,
but they do exemplify the extreme range of development
that can be accomplished via domestication,
which can often times be unethical.
[male announcer] Greyhounds have been breed for speed.
Alaskan huskies have the job of hauling heavily-loaded sleds.
The wire-haired fox terrier are quick as a flash on the getaway.
The collie's good temper
and disposition together with his size and strength
make him one of the best of all watchdogs for safety.
Domestication has had an irreversible effect,not only on the
species we domesticated, but on ourselves as well.
The rise of domestication through the world
saw a marked shift in human culture and society.
We moved away from hunter-gatherer
and nomadic lifestyles and instead became herders
and farmers. Before domestication,
hunter-gatherer peoples depended on species that were abundant
in their territory. Found a herd of buffalo!
At last, meat for supper. [Jess] In Europe, they
ate a lot of red deer. In the Middle East and Asia,
they ate gazelle. In North America,
they ate bison. And in Sub-Saharan Africa,
where species were more diverse and abundant,
they ate a wider range of prey.
Despite their popularity,
none of these species were successfully domesticated.
Of all the millions of species on earth,
we have only been able to domesticate a handful.
This is because there are six characteristicsthat an animal must have
in order to be successfully domesticated.
One, their food must be cheap, plentiful,
and ideally something we don't eat.
This is why herbivores are far and away
the most successful domesticated species,
while not many carnivorous species have been domesticated.
Two, they need to grow fast. Domestication is a game
of inputs and outputs. An animal that eats a lot
but doesn't give much meat, milk, or eggs
isn't a useful animal. Three, they have to be able to
reliably breed in captivity. This rules out a lot of species.
Four, they have to be calm and passive enough
that we're not fearful for our lives around them.
Five, they have to be comfortable enough around humans
that their flight-or-flight instinct doesn't kick in,
in stressful situations. And six,
they have to be social. Solitary species are much less
likely to accept humans as part of their group. These six characteristics
narrow down the millions of
species on the planet we've been able to domesticate.
[male announcer] Everyone who has and loves a dog
thinks that his dog is the best. [Jess] Dogs are not
only our best friends, but our oldest friends.
They were the first species that we domesticated.
The ancestors of dogs diverged from grey wolves
years ago. And we first
domesticated them Wolves made great candidates
for domestication because the hierarchical
structure of their pack mirrors human societies
quite well. Wolf packs have dominant
members and subservient members, and so a dominant human
could fit into this social order quite well, becoming the pack's
alpha member. Over time, the aggressive dogs
would be kicked out of our packs
and the helpful and more subservient ones
would be kept and allowed to breed.
And soon they were domesticated, developing floppy ears
and curly tails as domestication
syndrome kicked in. [woman] Come on, Jean, and play.
There now. Go away once and for all.
[Jess] Domestication syndrome is an interesting consequence
of domestication. In most domesticated animals,
the species will see a shift in appearance
as well as behavior. This includes things
like having shorter faces, smaller teeth, smaller brains,
colour changes, changes to ear and tail shape,
and more frequent breeding cycles.
Cats are one of our oldest companions, although we never
really domesticated them. They domesticated themselves.
[man] Well, here is mother cat
at the kitchen door. [woman] I suppose that
you're still hungry. [Cat meowing]
[Jess] Cats have been found in human grave sites
Stone Age cats have even been found in areas
to which they are not native, like Cyprus.
Meaning that we brought them there.
The variety of wild cat
from the Middle East,felis silvestris lybica is thought to be the origin
of all domestic cats. The main reason that cats
began to hang around with us lowly humans
was agriculture. As we started farming,
our grain-rich land began attracting rodents.The
wild cats were then attracted to the rodents
thinking, "I can haz rodent?" and like dogs, followed
the commensal path towards domestication.
They realize d that
they could get more food by sticking with us, and we found that we
could get help from them, killing rodents,
controlling pests, and eventually getting us fake
internet points with dank memes. While dogs were selectively bred
to be different shapes and sizes to accomplish particular tasks,
like ratting, herding, and hunting,
cats weren't. The cats that could tolerate
human environments basically selected themselves
to be the ones we kept. They allowed us to
keep them around. [man] The species which man
has domesticated is shown by this small cube.
Most of these were domes ticated
by man before history began. [Jess] Sheep and goats
were the first livestock to be successfully domesticated.
This happened followed by cattle and pigs
In South America, they had a much smaller
and a much cuter domesticated food source. In the mountains,
people domesticated a small, fat, and apparently delicious
rodent called the guinea pig. They were domesticated so well
that they are both an excellent food source and great as pets.
Around the same time in China, a large group of farmers
were able to turn mallards into domesticated ducks.
But it would be in South Asia where the king of domesticated
poultry would arise. The red jungle fowl is a species
of bird that was domesticated
simultaneously in different areas of Asia.
they had spread across Europe and Africa.
The chicken. [male announcer] Chickens are
specialists in meat production. Here is one dressed
and ready for cooking. [Jess] These birds
were so successful because they could survive
from their own foraging. [male announcer]
Chickens have no teeth, so they swallow
their food whole. [Jess] And supply humans
with both meat and eggs. They could also lay eggs
very frequently, and those chickens that
laid eggs the most often were selectively bred
for that characteristic. Domestication altered the course
of human civilization and there was no species
that was more important to us than the horse.
Horses have carried us through war,peace, feast and famine.
While they have been used for food,
it's as transport where they really hit their stride.
And until the train was invented,
the fastest way to traverse land was on horseback.
It was from a saddle that human
civilization became globalized. Horses were used to
transport the product of another domesticated species,
but this one isn't a mammal. The silk moth caterpillar.
These larval moths have been domesticated
and were used to fuel China's silk industry.
Unlike domesticated bees which aren't terribly
different from wild bees, silk moth caterpillars
have some striking differences from their wild counterparts.
First of all, they are bred to be silk-producing machines.
Domesticated silk moth caterpillars
produce ten times more silk than wild ones.
They also grow much faster, require less food, are less stressed by humans,
and are more comfortable in cramped spaces.
They have been purpose bred to be beneficial to us.
[male announcer] As spinning begins,
he expels fluid from each of his small glands to a tongue-like depositor
on his upper lip. This fluid,
upon contact with the air,forms a single filament, or a strand of silk.
[Jess] Unfortunately, like with a lot of domesticated species,
it's come at a cost. Adult domesticated silk moths
have lost th eir colouration, and they're completely
unable to fly. For every domesticated species,
there are thousands in which domestication didn't take.
Zebras are a good example of this.
While they may appear very similar to horses,
they have one key difference that makes them untenable
for domestication. They are ada pted for life in
highly dangerous habitats. They live in Sub-Saharan Africa,
a biome filled with large predators
always on the lookout for large prey,
and so the Zebra always has been much too skittish
for domestication to work. Easily the most disappointingly
undomesticated species is the moose. Many people have attempted
to domesticate moose over the years,
including King Carl XI of Sweden
and Stalin in an attempt to establish a moose cavalry.
But unfortunately for badassery everywhere,
they have always failed. This is because moose
don't fit the six requirements for domestication.
Like other deer, moose don't like
being approached. Their huge size makes them hard to handle
and dangerous to interact with. They're incredibly aggressive
during rutting season. And finally, at the slightest
hint of danger, they are uncontrollably panicky.
Which is too bad, because riding a moose
just might be the most intimidating thing you can do. It would take our Mounties
to the next level. Fortunately,
there's at least one badass instance of moose riding,
even if it is photoshopped. Though there is one species
that is flaunting the rules of domestication.The fox.
Rule number six is that the species has to be social
but foxes aren't. But a lab in
Novosibirsk, Russia, breeding red and silver foxes,
selecting for friendliness. And slowly,
the foxes have started showing domestication syndrome and
are definitely friendlier than their wild counterparts.
[male announcer] It is estimated that today
nearly four-fifths of the people of the earth,
as shown by the dark portions of the continents,
still depend upon the power of animals
Whatever, I'll figure it out.
Dogs and wolves make great candidates for domestication
because the hierarchical structure of their society
mirrors our-- What? [man]
Mirrors ours rather well. Mirrors ours.
Ours. Mir-- Mirrors ours.
[man] Mirrors ours. Try saying that.
It's hard. [man] Mirrors ours.
Mirrors ours. I can't say it without a weird like,like,
accent back in my neck here. Like a town crier.