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Re: diseases and immunity
Philip Deitiker (pdeitik@bcm.tmc.edu)
Sat, 06 Jul 1996 16:04:15 GMT
agdndmc@mizzou1.missouri.edu (Domingo Martinez-Castilla) wrote:
>Domestication of livestock is another issue that is usually raised, as
>in "indigenous Americans were not capable of domestication", or a
>little more politically correct "indigenous americans did not need to
>domesticate animals because they were plentiful". Both are wrong.
>Indigenous Americans domesticated what they could. In 500 years, the
>Europeans have not been able to add a single one indigenous domesticate
>of some significance to what they found. And they found the following
>six (five) species: turkeys, llamas, alpacas (allegedly the same, in two
>varieties, by some zoologists), dogs, guinea pigs, and a not-so-common
>species of dick in what is now Brazil. That was it. That still is it.
>Mr Deitiker is way, way, way, way (I cannot possibly overemphasize this)
>off mark here.
I really don't want to flame you but you set yourself so up bad it
aint even funny.
> I really do not know how wrong he can be. I dare him
>(and tene generations of his descendants) to domesticate all those
>species he mentions. Does he know that domesticates cannot survive by
>themselves in the wild? Is a tame deer is a domestic deer, Mr Deitiker?
>Does one individual animal make a domesticated species? Please go to
>any, any book on animal behavior and find out why there are domestic
>raindeer and not white tail deer; why you have domestic llamas and not
>vicunas, why domestic horses and burros and not zebras, etc?
Sir, as mentioned in the other post there are hundreds from the new
world. I have some in my own apartment, so much so that if I even
placed a young wildcaught Discus in with my 50 of 60 artificially
raised and color bred fish they'de all be dead by the end of the
month. This has happened repeatedly to many hobbiest. 2. the
artificial selection of many species has made them inappropriate for
return to the wild as they would not be competitive. Genetics is a
huge problem in many neo-domesticated species since the rate of
ascetic selection has interfered with maintanance of survival
selection traits. Thus one aspect of 'boosting' survival genetics is
to carefully treat and isolate wild caught animals for a period of
months, a month devoted soley to anti-parasitism, and the testing of
posttreatment infectiousness with test fish to ascertain which fish
are acceptably treated parental stock and which are not. Then one
begins the process of crossing and backcrossing to achieve the desired
color and surival characterisics.
To the degree that the survival/ reproductive characterisitcs in
these animals are jeopardized. Of the 24 brood stock animals which I
was working with, about 8 were relaibly fertile, fertility in males
was about 30%, none of the animals could naturally raise its fry. From
about 4 animals we were routinley producing an average of 200 eggs per
clutch with about a 60% hatching rate. From this about 60% survived
with a mendelian proportion of a number of 'unfortunate' recessive
traits. About 10% would have a chance in captivity of survival under
the same or better conditions as their parents. Reproduction rate was
expected to be much lower. The genetics of this particular group of
animals was so bad that all were discarded for new stock. Does this
fit your catagory for inability to survive in the wild? There are a
number of aother amazaon species which are now within the same
catagory of domestication (i.e. race to incorperate wild stock genes
before all the strains are 2 sick yet to breed anymore).
You so much don't even have a grasp of what's been domesicated
from your own backyard its not even funny.
>In common language, the terms "domestic" and "tame" may be allowed to be
>synonymous, but if we are talking about the history of agriculture, the
>meaning changes radically. A "domestic" species is one that
>usually cannot survive in the wild, that has all mating and food
>management controlled, that is used for human puposes. Note that we
>talk about "species". This is so much so that when some individuals of
>a domestic species revert to the wild in some isolated cases, they have
>their own adjective, as in "feral cattle".
Double talk!!! Horses, pigs sheep and goats are thus not domesitcated
animals, dogs and cats for that matter. Poodles, cocker spanials and
chihuahuas might not survive but a a german shepard or malimut or
artic sled dog might easily return native. BTW, doemsticated species
and feral animals both have genus species designations, while the
politics of labeling may not fit the general rules of genus species
labeling this in no way has any bearing on wether or not wild stocks
and dometicated stocks can interbreed. Cross breeding, inetrbreeding
with wild stocks is a general technique used for boosting problems
created by gentic drift in small highly inbred populations. I have
species of mice that are so immunologically deficient that to return
them to the wild would be cruel.
>Enough for now. I will try to read the rest of Mr Deitiker post, and
>react if there is anything new.
Go for it, just try to be more accurate in your responses. Seems to me
that U o Missuori needs to make a better effort on well-rounding its
student population.
Philip
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