Comment by somenameforme
12 days ago
Domestication is pretty poorly defined, but IMO it's more about a capacity rather than necessity. A domesticated dog isn't just instantly domesticated and raised outside of humans would still be wild and quite dangerous, but with training and the right environment can be just another family member.
By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be, no matter how you treat them. This is why you'll still have things like a cat just randomly attack you in weird circumstances and ways, but because they're tiny and relatively harmless it just makes them hilarious and weird. But it's also why people who miss out on this final nuance, and pick up lynx and similar animals as pets, often end up in the hospital.
"By contrast cats are not really domesticated and cannot be, no matter how you treat them"
Of course you can. A small tiger won't sleep on your couch and remembers not to make a mess in the house. And when a small tiger attacks you, it can still be dangerous. There are still wild cats around here (in europe) - and they would not get that tame so easily.
(Also you can teach cats some commands, it is just way more work and the commands won't work all the time)
I have a random stray living in my yard, in a major metropolitan city here in central Europe, who regularly displays immense affection for me (of course, I feed her) and is playful and engaged and interacts with me in what would be perceived, by humans, in a loving manner.
However, she has her limits, and will often give me a hefty bite if I do something she considers unacceptable, such as stop scratching her ears and instead try to pet her fur or clear it of nestles, which she seems to love collecting.
It is me, being domesticated. I wait for my ears to flop.
Isn't it the scientific consensus that humans also show signs of domestication?
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I'd love to be domesticated
Pet tigers are actually a thing. Like cats they sometimes attack their owner. Unlike cats, the amount of force they can use can easily kill a human, even when playing.
I would argue, with tigers they wanted to kill, when they did.
Humans don't die so easily.
Cats can in general play without (seriously) hurting one another or a human.
On the other hand, even a small cat could kill a human by going to the throat, which they could. But they don't. The house cat evolved to manipulate us instead to get what they want, instead of eating and killing us. Those cats that tried that, like tigers, got allmost extinct. And from what I know, there are bigger limits to what a tiger will do, instead of a house cat. And yes, they are bigger and any bad mood of them allways very dangerous.
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I've just figured out that cats are Semi-Domesticated
You are mixing up two concepts here, that of the domesticated species and the domesticated individual animal. The article talks about the former. The latter means taming an individual of a species. Dogs are by definition domesticated wolves and depend on humans for survival in general.
>Horses may have been domesticated twice
When I read the title, I was thinking I like a horse that's been domesticated the whole time :)
Former or latter, I don't want to actually participate in the full rodeo experience.
Plenty of dogs live wild mostly off the waste stream of humans, but they are not domesticated. Lets call them coyotes.
Let’s not. A feral dog is behaviorally very different than a coyote or a wolf.
A wolf pup raised by humans won’t be anything like a tame dog.
People whose animal experiences are limited to pets and zoos have many wrong ideas about how real wild animals are.
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I pay attention to my cats. They don't bite me without me knowing in advance. Even people who've had cats for decades get bit more than I do. I don't understand why people don't pay that much attention to other people or pets. There's a lot going on that you can be aware of if you make an effort.
I find it easier to read cats than people most of the time. Cats are obvious. But I think a lot of people get surprises simply because they don't care about whether an animal consents to their treatment or not, and a cat has a short fuse if you overstep.
The countless people that have been mauled and killed by their pet chimps, big cats, and so on also felt the exact same, or obviously they would not have had those sorts of animals as pets.
"people must have ... or else they would have" isn't usually an attempt at a statement of fact. It might be better to paraphrase to make your point. It's possible to know a lot in many situations, be fooled or harmed much less than others, be right most of the time, and still be fooled or harmed. Animals that can be dangerous to humans are a safety issue, not a statistics or awareness issues—you can only be badly wrong once to suffer serious harm.
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Dogs can not be trusted : never leave an infant/toddler alone with them.
If you read this and think "would be fine with my dog", I say the same, but remember the kid can mess with the dog and the dog will defend itself. Do you know for sure what the dog will do if the kid pokes it in the eye? The dangerous part is more what the kid will do.
From what I understood the dog can go beserk like elephants do, no need to blame it on the victim. I mean, what can an infant do except make noise?
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It's the same as saying humans can't be trusted. Of course you can trust some humans, and of course you can trust some dogs. Just first make sure... my dog took so much "torture" from my kids, and yet they were inseparable. Would I trust some random dog on the street? Of course not...
I got bit by a dog a few years ago and it was a real wake up call. It wasn't that I wasn't aware that a dog will bite under the right circumstances - I knew that.
I had believed that I understood when a dog was unhappy. The dog that bit me gave zero indication that I could see. I walked past it and it attacked. I have no doubt that someone very perceptive might have seen it coming but my policy now is to treat all dogs as if they're unhappy until I get super clear sense that that's not the case.
To be fair, the same thing can be said about humans. Sometimes one will attack a person for no apparent reason and with no warning.
Dogs have instincts, and that's the problem. Apparently you can trigger one of those by approaching a dog from behind and put your hand on the dog's shoulder. At least that's the explanation I've seen for when a kind dog out of the blue attack a child reflexively. Obviously this is not something I'm willing to try out myself.
From my other comment, quotes from Wikipedia :
A dog killed an infant as it slept in bed with its parents. The baby's father awoke during the attack, saw the injuries to the child, and immediately killed the dog.
The family dog killed two-month-old Julius who was in her infant bouncer while her father was sleeping. Julius was taken to the hospital where she was declared dead
An eight-month-old girl in a bouncy chair was attacked by the family pet while in the care of her grandmother. Fire and rescue declared her dead at the scene.
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I really wonder people who say these things ever owned a cat. I cannot see how cats are "less capable of living with humans albeit they're less dangerous". My anecdotes show:
* Cats absolutely can be obedient with training. I've been clicker training my cat for years and he can do any trick a dog can do. He also understands his name. I tested this many many times by yelling random words, seeing him continue sleeping, then yelling his name, causing him to jump and run towards me.
* Cats can be trained not to attack at hands like dogs. This is called "cat inhibition" and it's standard practice for cat owners, all good cat owners must know and practice inhibition training.
* Cats clearly prefer sitting next to humans and sleep close to them. If you never experienced this you never lived with a cat long term. It's actually fascinating, when a cat is "sleeping" they're actually not sleeping in a human sense, it's a particularly light sleep. They're still ready to hunt. What most cat owners will see is that when your cat is sleeping next to you, and you suddenly change the room to clean dishes or use the bathroom, your cat will get up and sleep somewhere close to you. Although a human interprets this as cat being lazy, they're exhibiting hypersocial behavior for their species.
* Cats are not weak. Have you ever fought a cat? I did. I'm a full sized human male who weight trains regularly and my cat can barely overpower me if he puts all his power. Go watch some feral cat vet videos, you'll see cats require a strongman sized vet to be fully seized (and rarely some still get away). An adult cat will have no problem overpowering a human female. If you think "cats are attacking their owners" you seriously have no idea how incredibly powerful these creatures are. When a cat slaps you or whatever they're merely warning you in a "polite" way (and, as explained before this is a sort of behavior that can usually be curbed with training)
individual members of a species are individuals, that you can have individual cats that are aggressive does no invalidate the domestication of the entire species.
also attacking in play is different than attacking, so that should be considered.