Slides for a public lecture that I presented in Leiden for the 'Biology on Tap' evening of June 3rd, 2019.

1. Anna Karenina on hooves
What makes an animal fit for domestication?
Rutger Vos
@rvosa

7. Domestication of large animals provided a lot of useful things
• Food - meat, dairy
• Materials - fibre, leather, horn, bone
• Intensive agriculture - manure, draught, ploughing
• Transport - pack animals, inhospitable areas, warfare
• Social stratification, division of labour, technology development

8. “Be fruitful, and multiply.
Replenish the earth, and subdue it.
Have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing
that moveth upon the earth.
Have extra hard dominion
over these super specific
Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla.
Not the whales, tho.”

9. • The domestication of very specific
animals was vitally important for the rise
of civilizations
• Societies with more, different,
domesticated species have tended to
dominate those with fewer, upon contact
• This was not just because of the greater
technological development (steel, guns),
but also due to zoonoses
If these animals are so important, why
didn’t everyone use them?

11. “Domesticable animals are all alike”
Are their habitats alike?
• 154 species of terrestrial Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla (“ungulates”)
• 29,707 GPS-coded observations in the wild
• 41 GIS layers on climate, soil type, and topography
• Weeks of number crunching

12. “Domesticable animals are all alike”

13. “Riding zebras looked boss but was not chill at all”
https://mashable.com/2015/08/12/riding-zebras

14. Thank you!
Questions?
@rvosa
@rvosa