Comment by cjbgkagh
12 days ago
Breaking-in is the traditional approach. Horse whisperer style is more effective and takes better advantage of the horses domestic nature.
It’s a spectrum, some cattle breeds are pretty wild. Dogs are special.
One good measure of domestication would be to compare with zebras which are considered relatively untamable - as in unlike horses they’ll always maintain a violent streak. Ponies tend to be more violent than horses.
Zebras have a tendency to bite the face and not let go. Definitely not ideal for domestication.
And wolves are ideal?
This isn't dead reckoning: there have been multiple attempts to domesticate zebras and dogs, and it's worked twice with dogs and zero times with zebras, thus, yes, one can say that wolves are approximately ideal. It just turns out that what we think of as necessary qualities are potentially wrong. There have been lots of attempts to domesticate zebras because they're so similar to horses and donkeys.
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Wolves are much more social than zebras, which is advantageous in domestication. Zebras live in herds but it's much more free for all than a wolf pack.
Yes, wolves are pretty intelligent and social compared to zebras.
They understood the core concept of ‘do not bite the hand that feeds you’ instinctively.
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Wolves are more aggressive than dogs, but can be successfully domesticated and kept as pets... can actually be quite friendly with humans, especially female wolfs as they're a lot less competitive/aggressive than males.
There is more than one breed of dog/wolf (just like there are horses). And I think the evidence is pretty clear that, yes, they are ideal.
Weird comment.
On that note, 17th century Sweden can report that moose make for very poor cavalry steeds.