Animal domestication musings

So, just recently I’ve been reading much of science writing and been watching far too-a high brow television programming for even for my own tastes.

And just recently something has occurred to me. No matter where in the world you look there is something so common place that you don’t even realise that it’s there. Something that is independent of creed, colour, nation or social standing.

So what is it exactly that I’m talking about that unites the world. Something that is unique amongst species on this planet. Well dear reader, what I refer to is the domestication of other species.

All over the world humanity is living with, and sustaining a whole menagerie of exotic species.

On the face of it, it doesn’t seem odd at all, even desirable, perhaps because it is so engrained in humanity, but upon further inspection it makes little sense. No other mammal adopts members of a different species; badgers do not take rabbits for walks, dogs do not care for squirrels and the whale doesn’t look out for the dolphin.

When the ultimate goal of evolution is to pass on your genes to further generations, where is the incentive to maintain another species, it’s detrimental. Every mouthful of food that goes to the animal is a mouthful from one’s own mouth or that of one’s family. Ever ounce of energy spent keeping the animal warm (or cool) and safe from harm could be spent on one’s self.

Even if pets provide physical love, companionship and loyalty, these alone do not explain how wild animals moved from being just that to the cuddly creatures we love.

Like most things to do with the evolution of humanity, I believe the answer likely comes from the plains of Africa and draws from, in not directly influenced some of the very fundamentals of humanity; that of tool-making, language and domestication.

So if we go back right to the very start of modern day humanity. One of the very first things that separated humanity from just another beast was that of the invention of stone tools. This in itself is no mean feat. Creating tools requires the imagination and realisation that an object can be fashioned, and it’s physical properties changed into something else. Something more useful.

As soon as you have crafted a sharp cutting tool, you can hunt other animals and butcher the carcass that much more efficiently.

Until the point where humans could effectively hunt and butcher, we remained largely vegetarian upright apes. With the ability to hunt, evolution would normally take us down a path of developing swift movement, sharp claws, teeth, increased body strength, eye sight, hearing, the list goes on and on. However, with tools most of these evolutionary adaptations become irrelevant. In many ways humanity jumped straight from being nothing special to a formidable predator, an evolutionary shortcut.

The consequences of this shortcut are numerous and not necessarily all positive. With eating meat, it means the diet is now full of nutritious and high energy protein and fat. This extra energy allows for an increase in brain size, linked to further intelligence and in turn better tools. Moreover, meat tends to come in large packages and so it takes a lot less time to get the same amount of nutrition as gathering and consuming fruit, roots, vegetables and seeds. This extra time allows for more social interaction, more invention.

However, by becoming a predator you are instantly putting yourself in direct competition with other predators within the ecosystem. Whilst tools will get you so far, what use are pointed sticks and other tools against a pack of lions / hyenas / sabertooth-tigers (yes I’m aware tigers are solitary hunters), having another trick up the sleeve in the shape of animal accomplices certainly would be useful.

The fossil records seem to suggest at around 1.7 million years ago, soon after humanity gained tools that two large carnivores went extinct, presumably by being out-competed or hunted out themselves. But how did a non-specialist predator out compete millions of years of evolution in the form of specialist predators that had presumably until that point co-existed in their ecological niche for generations.

Well being social creatures and being able to communicate certainly must have helped, by hyenas and lions do the same. Tools would have allowed for quick butchering of a carcass and removal of meat to a safe location before other predators arrived on the scene.

But most significantly with the ever increasing brain size and as such intelligence, allowed for the observation, understanding and adoption of new tactics against both predators and prey.

However, becoming a predator has a drastic effect upon the population. Prey species are common and often live in great number, predators however need large territories in which to hunt otherwise they quickly exhaust their food supply. This means that for the species to continue to survive and thrive then we had to spread. And spread we did. In the most amazing anthropological way.

For 4 – 5 million years humanity existed only in a small corner in Africa, then approximately 2 million years we spread all across Africa and into Eurasia, colonising Indonesia and China in only 200,000 years. A remarkable feat, considering this wasn’t migration but every generation building a new village just-down-the-road from the last.

Throughout this time there must have been a massive shift in lifestyle as a result of ecology and geography. The transference of knowledge of food stuffs, gathering techniques, hunting, shelter making becoming more and more advantageous. But crucially, our knowledge of animals must have increased just as our ability to converse did.

Monkeys crucially have different calls for the approach of different predators, so they can differentiate between “EAGLE” and “SNAKE”. However, there is no way that they can ask “Do you know what ate Dave last week?”. They can share information, but without a full language the information does not become knowledge. And a full language requires not only vocabulary but a complex series of grammatical rules which can be recombined in an infinite number of combinations to convey a whole spectrum of understanding.

It could only have been at this point in our evolution did the domestication of animals occur. Domestication is typically considered to be linked with farming with the keeping of stock animals that allow for an economic and sociality shift in the population from simple hunter/gatherer to something greater. Most domestic animals can be considered to be a walking food store. Something that either produces food stuffs or can be killed at a moments notice for food. Ultimately, what this gives you is food security.

However the process in which you come to this is initially counter-intuitive. In order to achieve domestication requires the setting aside of “food now” for the trade off of “food later”. Something that most predator species do not have the luxury of, even if they had the intelligence to think of it. The idea seems simple now; in the way that a farmer has to put aside seed, a valuable food stuff, so that they have a crop for the next year but how do you sell the idea of saving food for next year to hungry people?

The first domestic animal would appear to be the ever faithful dog, to which fossil records have dated our co-existence to some 32,000 years. Which at first glance seems to be an odd connection, the domestic dog is descended from the wolf, a dangerous pack animal, which worse still they eat meat, some 2 kilos of the stuff a day. So, if the objective of domestication is meat then why associate with a dangerous carnivore?

We could conclude from this that the not eating all of animals immediately in front of you only becomes logical when the animal in question has already been part domesticated.

But this means for an animal species to have become domesticated that it must have already spent generations around humanity, with some amount of human input in selective breeding. But, what person plans a few generations in advance for a meal?

This poses a problem. What advantage is there to tending to a domestic animal, ensuring that it remains fit and healthy and reproduces before being slaughtered, exerting all of that time and energy if the hunting of wild animals. Such a system would not be food security, but a domestic burden.

So why do it? Well all domesticated and semi-domesticated animals offer a wealth of renewable resources for as long as they are alive whether that be food stuffs in the form of eggs or milk, power for hauling heavy items, wool or fur for warmth and clothing, manure for fertiliser, fuel, building, protection, hunting aids, a mobile source of wealth.

And that is if we ignore the one thing that animals do provide, that defies all logic and sense. The number one reason that any pet owner would give you if you asked them today. The sense of love that animals seem to instil in there owner.

All the time, the further domestication progressed, the better our understanding of the animals themselves and their needs. And from this could grow a reciprocal relationship in which further animals could be tamed, genomes adapted to enhance certain features whilst diminishing others.

The great benefit to the people was a continual supply of resources that enabled the continuation of the population spreading through environments that would otherwise be uninhabitable. This allowed the next step in human evolution with the accumulation of more knowledge, better communication and ultimately our success.

And if you’ve got to the end of my musings, then you’re obviously bored, tenacious, or just really interested. Either way, give yourself a gold star.

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?