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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Peter Loring Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 28 Mar 2015 16:53:10 -0400
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Domestication is not a clean-cut concept, and the word is difficult to
define. I have become lost in this semantic bog before, and so avoid the
morass now. The truth is that all situations are known to occur, from the
free-living "wild" animals and plants, through such cases as animals of
zoos and circuses (animals which often breed in captivity under conditions
of controlled mating), to semidomestic or recently domestic species
(white rats, "domestic" cats), to the typical domestic plants and animals
(barleys, wheats, oats, rye, millets, etc.; sheep, goats, cattle (sensu lato),
pigs, horses, guinea pigs, camels, llamas, etc.), to those forms which
cannot survive without the assistance of man (maize, Ancon sheep,
numerous toy dogs). These and any other categories, however, always
have multiple exceptions. And additionally, one is always faced, at the
one extreme, with the relative ease of taming some "wild" animals (American
bighorn sheep, wolves, pigs), and at the other, with tht: ease with
which many, but not all, of our well-established "domestic" animals (pigs,
dogs, horses, water buffaloes) become successfully and even fiercely feral.

Each population of plant and animal that we call domestic - each of
the many kinds involved in the topic agriculture - is a subject of its own.

Reed, Charles A. (1977). The origins of agriculture: Prologue. 
In Origins of agriculture (pp. 9-22). Mouton Publ The Hague.

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