Episode 205 - Animals With Jobs (How Domestication Works)

Anna saddles up to lead Amber on a faunal adventure! We’ll discuss the changes that happen when humans start influencing animal breeding. We’ll also cover the origin stories of a few of the most prevalent domesticated species. But don't worry, we cover some examples of "non-typical" domestication too, plus a case of animal coworkers. We’ll even tackle the question… have we humans domesticated OURSELVES??

Links

• Domesticated animals, explained (National Geographic)

• Whence the Domestic Horse? (Science)

• Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas (PNAS)

• DNA traces cattle back to a small herd domesticated around 10,500 years ago (UCL)

• How Sheep Became Livestock (Science)

• Understanding the origins of European domestic pigs (Natural History Museum)

• The Domestication of Pigs: Sus Scrofa's Two Distinct Histories (ThoughtCo)

• Ancient Egyptians may have given cats the personality to conquer the world (Science)

• Ancient DNA reveals the lost domestication history of South American camelids in Northern Chile and across the Andes (eLife)

• Early Holocene chicken domestication in northern China (PNAS)

• The earliest farmers of northwest China exploited grain-fed pheasants not chickens (Nature Scientific Reports)

• Buried with Snails (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute)

• Insects: The Disregarded Domestication Histories (Animal Domestication)

• On Horseback Among the Eagle Hunters and Herders of the Mongolian Altai (New York Times)