Animal Domestication

Animal domestication is a tremendously intricate practice. It refers to the hereditary transformation of wild animals into domestic forms correspondent to people’s interests; once wild animals are nurtured by human beings away from the jungle for the purposes of providing human needs such as food. It starts with a person capturing a wild animal, confining it in the home and finally nurturing it. There are two phases to this practice, animal keeping and animal breeding phases. Animal keeping describes the primitive stage of domestication where the mission was accomplished without controlled feeding and decisive selection whereas animal breeding represents the advanced stage characterized by controlled quality and well as the quantity feeding.

The essence of animal domestication entails as taming of wild animals of specific behavioural characteristics for profits. The first cases of domestication are traced back to the Mesolithic Period where hunters made attempts to rear sheep, goats and dogs. Initially, the animals were tamed exclusively for food and hide but with time the reasons for domestication diversified to transportation, cleansing and sport. Donkeys and camels were responsible for towing of chariots and carts ferrying people and goods from one place to another whereas cockfighting and making sacrifices to the gods was performed using cocks. Although people domesticated bees for honey that played an enormous role in ancient people’s nutrition, bees were slightly used in warfare serving the purpose of dispersing opponent troops.

Currently, the domestication practice is advanced to the level of zero-grazing and cross-breeding and stretches to keeping animals to serve as pets. Animal feeds are now commercially produced to feed domesticated animals. Benefits realized from such ideas compared to those enjoyed during the primitive period propel these ideas and development. First, there has been improved disease resistance between the cross-bred animals. Second, productivity of animals has significantly increased, for example, the Friesian cow produces more milk than the cow anciently domesticated by ancient people.

In summary domestication was practiced for a number of reasons, initially for food and hides only, then transportation. Currently, the practice has immensely developed with some people commercially practicing it with the help of commercially produced feeds. Increasingly, resources and efforts are being directed to improving the practice further, for example, more colleges and universities are offering veterinary courses that provide skills for maintaining animals’ health. The primitive domestication never involved commercial feeds. Also, primitive domestication never involved trained veterinaries.