Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Raccoons are cool. They seem to be in the early stages of self-domestication, which is probably how we got cats.
There was a video being shared by someone who studies raccoons.
The tl;dr was they are too smart and tend to hold grudges to become domestic.
Still, they would be cool pets.
Even better, if after their domestication they were still smart and resistant enough to not fall into the hands of owners that treat them like toys.
you just described cats
Ha. True! I do have one revenge-seeker living under my roof!
This argument is always so silly. Domestication is the process of changing animals so they become more suitable to living with humans. The fact that wild animals aren't domesticated and therefore have traits that are problematic for that is tautological.
2 points:
Quolls, in Australia, are apparently about the same smarts as raccoons: you have to childproof EVERYTHING in a house they're living-in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoll ( the article I'd read pointed-out that they're endangered BECAUSE people can't have them as pets, whereas cats aren't endangered & are pets )
grudge-holding may not be amendable, through breeding-program.
_ /\ _
Pretty much any behavioral trait is changeable through natural or artificial selection. That includes intelligence. Actually it's pretty clear that part of domestication for dogs was making them less intelligent.
Some species may take longer, and it's generally a slow process. I doubt these animals will be domesticated during our lifetimes but in the future who knows?
Had a Mastiff. Can confirm.
There was a scientific study run in the US comparing the behavior of wolves and dogs.
Within 2 days, the scientists had to add a lock to the door of the wolf enclosure because the wolves had learned by watching them how to open the door and escaped. The dogs kept the same simple door latch throughout the entire experiment and never escaped.
So our beloved man's best friend are just derived from the dumbest of the wolves?
Kind of...
The domestication of dogs brought out a lot of neoteny traits -- juvenile traits retained into adulthood. Our beloved man's best friend are derived from wolves that never fully grew up and instead remained puppy-like for their entire lives. This makes them smaller, friendlier, more submissive, and easier to train (among other things) ... but it also does make them a bit stupider.
They can be very cat like too. Super chill one minute, total asshats the next
I looked into this a while back and it seems that keeping one as a pet is a full day job.
Right. They are not yet domesticated to the level of companion animals and trying to keep one as a pet now is a bad idea.
Yeah, my grandfather raised one when I was a kid. It was fine until it was grown, then it got bitey and he turned I loose on his property.
It only takes one day? Sign me up!
I personally get freaked out by animals with human like hands.