>From:    Edward Lipinski <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Domestication Defined ?
>With regard to the above two definintions, I must confess that our ferret
>appears to be a trained animal rather than a domesticated animal.  For
>example, don't we strive to direct the growth of the ferret and don't we
>try always to train the ferret to accomplish our desires foremost, rather
>than let the ferret have his own way?
 
OKay...  Domestic ferrets come in a large variety of colors.  Thos colors
may exist in wild polecats but not at such intensity.  One adaption in the
ferrets domestication is the 'breeding' for specific colors.
 
Domestic ferrets tend to be at least somewhat social.  Wild polecats are
extremely solitary.  For the purpose of using ferrets for pest control it
was better if more than one or two could be kept together.  Exterminators
would use far more than a single or pair so ferrets were bred to be more
social.  How you do that is pick the ones that don't fight as much to
breed.
 
>It would seem that the current ferret propagation practices are pressuring
>the ferrets more strongly toward extinction rather than training or
>domestication (?).
 
You haven't let go of that yet?  No ferrets are NOT on the road to
extinction.  Quite the contrary, their population is still growing as well
as variation in the species.  Your idea is fiction.  It is not rational.
You should most definitely rethink that as it is wrong.  Not a difference
of opinion as your expressed concern is wrong.  Breeding into domestication
is a process where most example animals are NOT allowed to reproduce.
 
>The definition of *RATE* is: a fixed ratio between two things, such as a
>quantity, amount, or degree of something measured per unit of something
>else.  I simply have great difficulty in accepting the term *RATE* as not
>being time related, such as velocity in terms of distance covered per unit
>of time, as, for example, 35 miles per hour speed.
 
Bob Church was referring to rate as a ratio of changes over time.  What
he was pointing out was that some animals such as dogs got bred to many
specialized tasks and as such many breeds were created.  Ferrets were bred
for only a very small number of tasks and no morphological changes into
breeds were needed for those tasks.  He was pointing out that the amount
of change in domesticated animals isn't constant over time for the same
species or constant between species.  That means morphological changes into
breeds can't be used to determine length of time since domestication.
 
A further point is that dogs and cats were pets and had a fancy long before
ferrets so careful breeding for show standards has been done far longer for
dogs and cats than for ferrets.
 
-bill
--
bill and diane killian
zen and the art of ferrets
http://www.zenferret.com/
mailto:[log in to unmask]
[Posted in FML issue 2556]