"Domesticate" is a funny word. When an animal trainer gets eaten by a tiger
in front of a large audience-I guess that proves it wasn't a domestic
animal. An hour before the performance the cat would have answered well in
most of the tests we can think of for being domesticated, and for years
before. I've heard it said that cats can't be domesticated. They merely go
where the food is.  Cattle are definitely domesticated Right? Try being on a
flat piece of pasture at night, without a tree in sight, and hearing a
stampede of range cattle thundering at you. (I assumed a fox or a bear
startled them.) I've seen a herd of Buffalo do exactly the same thing. If
you take wild elk and capture them and raise calves from them, those born in
captivity will be tame. They aren't domesticated. It is their nature to act
this way. 

    Aha! The dog you say. There's a domestic animal. The dog is a pack
animal. Born in captivity and "imprinted" on a human being at or before the
15th day of life, the dog acts like a member of a pack. Its master is the
alpha male. My son has a black lab that likes to sleep on the carpet. When
the "boss" comes in he scurries into the kitchen like a shot. When I come in
he hardly looks at me. We didn't change much with the dog. We merely "bent"
his existing instincts and used them. Sheep dogs are raised with sheep from
day one. They have the herd instinct plus the protective one. Six Great
Pyrenees http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/greatpyrenees.htm  amid a thousand
sheep is a group you would be unlikely to think of as "tame." 

    So. Are the bees domesticated? If you consider that very little else is,
I'd put them last on the potential list.  

 

Dick Marron

     


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