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Why do we domesticate some animals but not others? It's all about the four Fs.

Here's the real reason why you can't ride a zebra.

Photo credit: Canva

Horses were domesticated over 5,000 years ago. Zebras, never.

Humans have domesticated several kinds of animals over the millennia, from trusty horses and mules to livestock for milk and meat to our favorite furry companions. But why those specific animals and not others? What is it that led us to those particular choices? Why can we ride horses but not zebras? Why don't we purposefully breed "war bears" to fight for us?

That last question comes straight from the always-interesting and often-hilarious CGP Grey, whose YouTube videos explore all kinds of things we wonder about but don't necessarily take the time to research. In the video "Why Some Animals Can't Be Domesticated," Grey explains the four main elements that make an animal a good candidate for domestication, which excludes bears (and many others) from the list.

Grey alliterated the four elements to make them easier to remember: Friendly, Feedable, Fecund, and Family-Friendly. Let's dig into what those mean.


- YouTube www.youtube.com

Domestication requirement #1: Friendly

This one is fairly self-explanatory, but basically an animal has to not post an inherent, immediate threat. We have to be able to catch them if we're going to domesticate them, so that eliminates all of the "carnivores whose day job is murder" as Grey puts it, as well as the large, nervous prey animals that are too afraid of us to let us get anywhere near them.

wild animals, domesticated animals, gazelle Good luck trying to catch a gazelle.Photo credit: Canva

Domestication requirement #2: Feedable

Every animal is feedable, of course, but that doesn't mean it's easy or cheap to feed them, especially in large numbers. This category pretty much eliminates pure carnivores and some omnivores, leaving mostly herbivores (and some unpicky omnivores) that are easy and cheap to feed. And that aren't dangerous (see #1).


wild animals, domesticated animals, chickens, chicken feed Chickens will eat just about anything.Photo credit: Canva

Domestication requirement #3: Fecund

This requirement is all about breeding and babies. Some animals are extremely slow to breed, like pandas and elephants, making them undesirable candidates for domestication. Animals that have mate frequently and have relatively short gestation times and/or large litters are more suited to domesticated life. They also need to grow up quickly, which also takes elephants out of the pool.

However, as Grey points out, humans can still tame other animals like elephants. But taming is not the same as domesticating. The basic rule is: If it's on a farm, it's domesticated. If it's in a circus, it's tamed.

Domestication requirement #4: Family-friendly

This is where the horses and zebras question comes in. Horses were domesticated in Eurasia, but if humans started in Africa, why weren't zebras domesticated first? Grey explains that while horses tend to live in hierarchical herds, zebras are more independent with no family structure. Humans can capture the lead male horse and get the rest of the herd to fall in line. Zebra herds are more of a free-for-all and they're kind of jerks to even one another.

While it would seem that horses we see in the United States today are indigenous, the North American horse species went extinct around 10,000 years ago. They were reintroduced to America by 16th-century European colonialists who spread them throughout the country through Native American trade routes.

horses, zebras, domesticated animals, wild animals There's actually a big difference between horses and zebras besides just the stripes.Photo credit: Canva

Barnyard animals have inherent family structures that humans have figured out how to fit into. These animals learn to see the humans who own them as a lead cow, top chicken, or whatever.

Way back in the hunter-gatherer age, when humans were just figuring out animal domestication, animals had to have all four of these requirements. Today, we have the ability and technology to domesticate more animals if we want to, but we also have less of a need to. Some breeds of foxes have recently been domesticated, bred to be friendly with humans. How fun would it be to have a pet fox? Foxes are incredibly cute but wildly intelligent. So good luck keeping one in your backyard for very long.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Technically, a lot more animals could be domesticated if people really wanted to put in multiple human lifetimes of time and effort, but why?

You can follow CGP Grey on YouTube for more fun and informative videos.

This article originally appeared in April.

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These impressive maps are helping to save farm animals from 22,000 miles above ground.

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Gates Foundation: The Story of Food

Ever look for something — for what seems like forever — only to never find it?

Your car keys, your wallet, your soulmate (jk!). It's so frustrating!

GIF from "South Park."

Try walking 14 miles to locate water and coming back with nothing.

That's not an extreme example. It happens often to pastoralists in Africa.

Over 250 million pastoralists (people who raise and care for livestock as their primary economic source) try to find grazing lands for their animals every year. It's their job to care and tend to them, after all.

But over the past few years, they've found it extra difficult to find green pastures for their livestock. El Niño has been in full force in the region and the extreme drought that's resulted from it has created unbearable conditions.

Image via Jeffrey Brown/Project Concern International. All images used with permission.

How do you feed your animals if you can't find food or water around? You keep looking.

Image via Jeffrey Brown/Project Concern International.

And looking.

Image via Jeffrey Brown/Project Concern International.

And looking.

Millions of pastoralists trek miles and miles with their herds looking for a sign of green pastures.

In the past, they've typically found them through word of mouth, from lessons learned in the past, or by sending people to scout out the areas in advance. But as resources are drying out and areas have already been consumed, these methods are becoming increasingly less reliable and livestock are dying from it.

Image via Jeffrey Brown/Project Concern International.

Fortunately, one organization is changing that. With space.

Image via Project Concern International/YouTube.

The global development org Project Concern International (PCI) has created an impressive solution to this problem.

They've launched the Satellite-Assisted Pastoral Resource Management program (say that 20 times fast), or SAPARM for short. It has helped to save the lives of livestock and the livelihoods of pastoralists from 22,000 miles away.

Here's how it works:

First, the organization teamed up with a pastoralist community in Ethiopia to understand and map out what the community's traditional grazing areas have looked like.

Then, they tapped into a satellite situated 22,000 miles above North Africa (that was already there doing satellite things) to record real-time images of those same areas. They layered the community's information with the satellite's and were able to create digitized maps that show real-time locations of the greenest areas around.

A generated SAPARM map example. Image via Project Concern International.

The maps are refreshed every 10 days and printed out and distributed to pastoralists to give them a better view of what the grazing lands look like in their area.

It shows them where the best vegetation (i.e., grass) is so they save time and money and make more informed decisions on where and when to migrate.

Findings have shown that the livestock mortality in the community has dropped by 47% since people started using the satellite maps.

It also showed that 80% of pastoralists in the area are using the maps, and almost half of them say that the maps are now the single most important resource when it comes to planning for their herds. What a shift.

If you're thinking, "Wow, that's a great idea, PCI. Good job," you're not the only one. The SAPARM program has a lot of support from USAID and the World Food Programme (to name a couple) and has even caught the eye of Google, where they are working together to expand access to these maps in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and beyond.

Image via Jeffrey Brown/Project Concern International.

As parts of Africa struggle through extreme drought and the effects of climate change, it's encouraging to see solutions that can make such an immediate impact.

It doesn't take a satellite from 22,000 miles above to see that the world is going in the right direction on this one.

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