Domestication: The Decline of Environmental Appreciation

About this book

A unified approach to the study of domestic animals is an important step in achieving a proper understanding of the nature of domestication. In this book, the author has successfully brought together data from many different fields. It emphasises the importance of domestic animals to the development of human civilization and demonstrates how human control of domestication may result in the planned production of distinct kinds of domestic animals, bred specifically to improve food production, build up alternative methods of land use or provide new laboratory animals for use in scientific research. The text concentrates on the importance of changes in animal behaviour to the process of domestication and describes how one of the characteristics of domesticated animals is a lack of the same kind of perception of their surrounding environment as is shown by wild animals. New results and ideas are presented and the book demonstrates how the practical application of a theoretical strategy for domestication resulted in the production of the first primitive, but truly domestic, fallow deer.

Contents

Preface to the German edition; Preface to the English edition; 1. Why are domestic animals kept?; 2. Diversity of appearance; 3. The origins of domestic animals; 4. Changes in behaviour; 5. Stress; 6. Acquisition and processing of information; 7. Transmitter substances for information processing; 8. Coat colour and behaviour; 9. Coat colour selection; 10. Limits of endurance; 11. Taming and return to the wild; 12. New domestications; 13. Domestication and evolution; 14. Overall synopsis; Selected reading; List of photographs taken by the author in public zoos and animals parks; Index.

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