Yes, I read that and now I am reading a book he wrote before those two, The Third Chimpanzee
Based on the previous two, do you recommend it?
G.
Sidebar: about 4 years ago for the Halloween Hunt I use white acrylic paint to make stripes and turn my solid dark, mahogany bay Connemara into a zebra. She looked really good!!! Got home from the hunt and turned her out in a paddock for the afternoon and curried off the paint at supper time.
A few days later I was talking on the phone to a neighbor who lives across the hayfield from me. She said “Don said he saw a zebra at your place the other day. Did you get a zebra??” 
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i don’t think we should mess with zebras. My POINT is, should we desire, modern genetics and breeding selection could result in domestication in a LOT less than thousands of years. There is nothing magical about horses and dogs, it is a historical and biological coincidence they coevolved to domesticate.
I think there is a fairly large camp in science that does not share this approach, but rather not just any animal lends itself to domestication, and it isn’t some happy accident that we picked the ancestor of the modern dog or horse over something like the African Wild dog or the zebra or a wildebeast or wheat or rice. So many hunter gatherers were co-evolving all over the planet, all with access to some form or another of these species, but this domestication of plants/animals really only happened selectively (for instance in the South America the alpaca was domesticated, but the bison was emphatically not, corn was domesticated but not the breadth of grains in Mesopotamia). I do think it was a happy accident that those h/g populations happened to be geographically located with plants and animals that co-selected for domestication (it appears there was mutual benefit in domestication, even for plants).
I’m not sure modern knowledge of genetics could selectively alter the outcome of other animal species that previously failed the test, mostly because I do not think that we are that good yet. We’d breed in one desirable trait and then discover the unintended consequences of 10 others. But I think of domestication as something more comprehensive than can safely be kept near humans and successfully breeds in captivity. Also if you think about it, plant domestication is from a generational improvement process, far more within our scientific grasp. But how many truly new grains/seed/fruits have we domesticated? Sure we have massively altered the original grains/seeds, but I don’t believe we have significantly added to the original group, and there is a lot more incentive to do that, than mess with foxes (or other wild animals, with or without stripes).
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So far I’m kind of … meh. The premise is moderately interesting (our evolutionary similarities to chimpanzees might reasonably reclassify homo sapiens) but either his writing improved considerably after that book or he got a far better editor (or both) before GG&S was published.
Thank you.
G.
Maybe the zebra killed her?
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I’m not disagreeing: just wanted to point out that it takes more than simply being “bred in captivity” to develop a domesticated version. Traits must be selected for - or against.
I understand selective breeding and am familiar with the fox experiment. :yes:
Wasn’t it Diamond who wrote that aliens would think that grasses were the ones who domesticated us? That it is a sort of quid pro quo, that domestication benifits both parties?
I did not mean to imply you did not understand: it was more for the benefit of some others who might not.
No sweat. It’s difficult, communicating online compared to actual “in person” discussion.
As far as breeding for selected traits: First, those traits have to exist to be selected.
Our understanding of just how the brain works is still rather primitive, relatively speaking. I’m not sure we have nailed down exactly what and how to breed for a calm, sweet, cooperative zebra. Breeding the “calm ones” might not be as successful as hoped as there are so many non-genetic reasons that one zebra might appear to be “calmer” than another, at least to the humans doing the selecting. And of course there are all the unintended side consequences that have not always worked out well in the animal species that we have selectively bred.
Re zebra aggressiveness, have heard they have a ferocious bite … Who is hunting who in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbKuTU1Gah0
From what I’ve read about the zorse, it seems to be a reflection of the intractable zebra temperament, only slightly mollified by the cross with a horse or pony. In spite of the proliferation of interest in ‘collectable’ breeding (Georgian Grande, Spanish Norman, etc. hobby breeds) the zorse seems not to have taken hold because it is not fun, behaviorally. Apparently the zorse is fairly limited to remote areas in Africa, and the only reason people put up with it there is its resistance to the native diseases that kill horses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid
If anyone wants to derail a bit into selective breeding of zebras, how about this project to recreate the quagga from zebras? If that’s genetically possible? As someone was quoted in the article, just because someone looks like Napoleon doesn’t make him Napoleon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine/can-you-revive-an-extinct-animal.html
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I worked for a rich lady who owned a zebra. We used a chain over the nose and stout stick at all times. One time, he got upset or something (it was over 10 years ago) when I was moving him from the paddock to the stall and bit me…well…bit my jeans and ripped the inner seam completely out. Another time, the barn manager let him out while we were driving the mules in a big field. She let me out by the barn claiming the zebra would follow her…he didn’t…I was NOT happy.
They tried to keep a mule with him for company (she had a lot of driving mules and retired driving mules), but they couldn’t get the mule out for farrier work and the like because he became so attached and defensive - he would attack anyone that tried to take the mule out.
That gelding zebra was the worst thing about working there.
Every once in a while the assistant trainer where I am now brings up buying a zebra hybrid and I’m adamant about not dealing with it at all.
It does not seem right for us to think we can tame every lliving thing … just because.
I hate to see captured birds, or other wild creatures.
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I don’t know anything about it but I think they trained a zebra to ride for the movie Racing Stripes.
