- #51
- 180
- 1
Oh? They do, do they?
Animals are amoral; they have no inherent sense of right or wrong. Left to themselves, they merely do what their genetic programming tells them to.
They also know what pleases or displeases themselves, and nearly all animals in domestication or training have days where they tell their trainers to take a hike.
I've encountered (face to face, requiring some interaction) wolves, bears, cougars, deer, coyotes, elk, and countless others in the wild. I've owned all sorts of animals in captivity, including wild ones (the smaller ones), but of course dogs and cats. I've never been bit by a wolf, either in the wild or in captivity or domestication, but I've been nipped by fully domesticated dogs with normally good temperaments and with good owners. And cats. And birds. And just about everything else.
Tens or hundreds of thousands of years of selective breeding has not made for animals to be more compatible with human cohabitation for one simple thing: we humans have not been selectively breeding them for more compatibility!
Instead, we've been breeding then to perform various functions. Sometimes that beefing up a thick fur coat, or looking a certain way, or encouraging certain behaviors such as the ability to viciously guard a door or post, to the death if necessary, something no animal in the wild is going to do when death is all they'll get out of it.
No, my friend - domesticated animals are full of traits which, we often see in the wild, I would rarely expect to encounter in the wild, but which appear all to readily in our "domesticated" little furry friends.
Only recently have animals been bread to be more compatible with human cohabitation. I would consider ones which have been for good temperament, interactivity, and relative docility to be most compatible with human companionship.
That and small, as big dogs eat a LOT of expensive food!