Why not moose or bison?

Why didnt Australian aboriginals develop pack and riding kangaroos?

I don't think that either moose or bison are docile animals. They would probably have more potential for pack animals and riding stock than mountain lions or grizzly bears, but this doesn't make them cooperative.

Irregularities in pace leading to disarrangement of packed items and friction and seasickness problems for prospective riders.

I would have thought bison, and maybe moose, met those criteria, at least as well as sheep, cattle and horses.


It's interesting.


I can see why forest and "salmon" tribes of native Americans did not domesticate, but plains folk would seem to have been living in conditions which were similar to those of European and African people who did domesticate.


Maybe the plenty of the American prairies, and the love of hunting, made a difference?

Deb, There are bison ranches. Although the animals aren't exactly tame, they're domesticated.

Moose are a whole other thing. Deer and members of the deer family are rarely domesticated. (Reindeer are the only ones I can think of.) Too easily spooked? More territorial than leader-oriented in their social structure? Don't know. Too many factors involved. Why are horses domesticatable and zebras aren't? Same family.

I'll see if I can find more info on this.

Zayrina, Welcome to a2k. This is a toughy.

Um, you also don't domesticate what you eat.

I was gonna walk away, but figured I better explain.

Cows, pihs, etc are raised for food. They are loosely kept, but you certainly wouldn't (most of us) bring them in the house like a cat or dog.

Horses are faster and more agile than bison or moose. They are also easier to straddle. Can you imagine a cowboys walk after riding the plains on a bison? And, they have a little hump at their wither that would have been irritating to the loin cloth area.

Moose - Antlers would get in the way of the bow / gun when hunting.

Just a few thoughts on the differences.

Sheep and cattle are considered domesticated, Squinney. Not as intensely as dogs and cats...but the distinction you are making does not apply to the question being asked here. I do not think.


Also..take a look at the horns on African cattle! And Texas longhorns...and reindeer.

That's nonsense--horses were hunted for food before they were domesticated. Sheep and cattle were both hunted for food before they were domesticated.

One thing which is also being missed here is that horses have a unified hoof.



Even fossilized ancient horse hooves are unitary.



This is not true of the hoof of a moose.



This is not true of the hoof of a caribou.



(I was unable to find an image of the hooves of bison and elk.)

The hoof of a horse is capable of supporting a great deal of weight at a variety of gaits, far more weight than the body weight of the horse. Combined with a broad back, the horse is ideal for riding. Bison have large "shoulders," with a hump, and relatively small pelvises. Moose are huge animals, and fossil remains show even larger moose and bison than exist today. The thought of domesticating animals doesn't seem to have occurred to the Amerindians, and justifiably so. They did use llamas for beasts of burdens, but those are hardly suitable for being ridden by people.

The first horses were much smaller than modern horses. It was likely much easier to domesticate and then ride early horses. All the equid species (horses and horse-like animals) have the unitary hoof and broad backs--even so, disposition must play a part. Horses and asses have been domesticated, but zebras and quagas have not.

I suspect that it didn't even occur to the Amerindians to attempt to domesticate an animal for riding. When the Spanish first landed in Mexico, the locals were dismayed when they saw men riding horses, and thought it was a single, diabolic animal. They quickly learned that it was a man on the back of an animal, but they "didn't get" the concept right away. About a generation after the Spanish "conquered" what we call Peru, the Amerindians rebelled against then. One aspect of that rebellion which was unique in the annals of Amerindian warfare against the Europeans was that the Peruvians used horses in that rebellion. The rebellion failed, but for reasons other than whether or not they rode horses. Americans and Canadians only encountered mounted Amerindians well after the aboriginals had become accustomed to domesticated horses. Terrain may have played a part, as well. Wars between Amerindians and Europeans north of Mexico originally took place in eastern forests, and not on the plains, until well into the 19th century.

The Wabbit's objections to the use of kangaroos as beasts of burdens apply to many other animals also. Even when cattle are used as beasts of burden, they are used to pull carts or wagons, they are not ridden, and they don't have loads packed on their backs. Disposition may matter, too. The cattle which are used as beasts of burden are oxen--gelded bulls. Anyone familiar with domesticated bovines will know that even domesticated, a bull is nobody to mess with.

Camels hooves are "cloven" as are the hooves of most other large animals.



However, you'll note that the entire profile of the hoof as it rests on the ground is spatulate--flat and broad. Additionally, they were originally domesticated for use in sand and soft soils--attempts to introduce the camel in the American plains and in Australia were less than resounding successes. I suspect, though, that this had as much to do with the prevelence of the horse as it did with any deficiency in using camels in a role for which they have already proven useful.

The equid species are uniquely qualified for this role. As for the Amerindians, they didn't domesticate any animals, with the exception of the llama, and the dog, which i believe it is correct to say they brought with them from Asia. (I don't believe there is any evidence that the Solutrians who are now thought to have arrived in North America thousands of years before the ancestors of the Amerindians who came from Asia brought any domestic animals with them, if in fact they did arrive when it is thought they did. On that topic, there is good inferential evidence that stone age people from Europe did arrive in North America. Since the Solutreans were gone by 15,000 years ago, when the Asiatic migrations to North America are thought to have begun, it would imply that the Solutreans reached North America before the Asiatics did. The basis for the claim is a significant non-Asiatic genetic component in Amerindian genotypes--3% overall, but about 25% in eastern Canadian tribes. The DNA markers are very ancient, and the possibility that it came by way of migrations east from Europe to eastern Asia, and then into North America is remote, since that DNA marker is missing from the tribal people of northeast Asia today.)

All in all, i'd simply observe that apart from camels, no animal is as suitable for riding as equid species, and that the Amerindians probably didn't even think of it until they saw Europeans on horse back.

Beg to differ there boss. At least on the Australian side. Ferral camels are a bit of a problem in the central desert and arid areas.

Feral camel numbers in Australia today are estimated
at more than 500 000, with approximately half of
them in Western Australia, and they continue to
increase. Some estimates place the population at
closer to one million.
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/publications/camel/index.html

Loosely domesticated, yes. They are kept in pastures, pens and barns. A few bison have been trained to perform on the rodeo circuit. Oxen were used to pull wagons when the white man moved west.

What I was pointing out was

1. the physical characteristics of bison and moose and Texas Longhorns etc does not promote mobility. They are not agile, fast or otherwise built for man to ride for pleasure, hunting or travel.

2. other countries have trained large mammals for travel, such as elephants and camels. They do not eat them to my knowledge. Indians made use of most every part of the bison / buffalo and deer that they hunted. They did not hunt horses, so when the european horse arrived, it wasn't "food." Eastern countries eat cats and dogs. They are seen as food, not pets. So, I'm suggesting that the distinction might be what is on the menu.

Horse meat is on the menus still in many countries squinney. Dog meat is certainly eaten in some asian countries.
I reckon you're off target there but its a reasonable thought.

Mungo rode an ox.

You said that people don't domesticate what they eat. I was pointing out that people long ate horses, cattle, goats and sheep before they domesticated them. Many cultures have eaten cats and dogs, and that includes some Europeans, although long ago. The Amerindians ate dogs and horses. Read the journals of the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition sometime--they routinely purchased (traded for) ponies from the tribes they met along the route with the express purpose of eating them as they went along. When Raold Amundsen successfully reached the South Pole (the first man to do so), he used a technique of hauling supplies with a large number of sleds pulled by dogs, and then slaughtering the weakest of the dog-team members as the sleds were emptied of their supplies. He started with 100 dogs, and returned to his base with all of his men, and 11 dogs. (Source) The English expedition under Captain Robert Scott, which used tractors on the ice, not only failed to beat Amundsen to the South Pole, they failed to survive--Scott and his four companions froze to death, or died of exhaustion and malnutrition.

People ate a great many animals which they subsequently domesticated, and they have commonly eaten domestic animals--horses, dogs, etc.--which were not domesticated to be food animals.

......
a moose or two, a carabiou and a bison cow or so
and for Redeye Dick and Mexican Pete this was ...kinda slow.

I believe domestication was partly done to ensure a steady supply of a certain animal when natural stocks are dwindling due to population pressure.

At least this was the case with the domestication of the reindeer by the Sami of Lapland. The need for domestication of the reindeer only become pressing when the wild reindeer was nearly hunted to extinction. Semi-domestication of the reindeer required a semi-nomadic lifestyle in which domesticated reindeer were used to pull sleighs. The population of moose in Lapland was never threatened (until the 1960s) so there was no need to domesticate them (It has been attempted successfully in Siberia, though). Apart from that, the size of the moose made domestication impractical, just think of the kind of enclosure needed to hold an animal that can easily skip a seven foot fence.

I think that since there was an abundance of wildlife in North America there was less pressure for domestication. Most of the native tribes were sedentary, so the need for transport animals was not very great (If I remember correctly, the great plains were not colonised by the indians until the horse was adopted, before that the nomadic tribes used dogs as beasts of burden).

I do not think disposition plays such an important role in the domestication of herd animals. With a determined effort any social animal can be domesticated (although the risks involved are naturally greater with the size of the animal and whether it is a predator or not). Zebras and quaggas have been domesticated, as well as ostriches, (water)buffalo and (African) elephants; all considered before to be untamable. In fact, domesticated camels have such foul dispositions that one wonders whether they are actually tamed.
The practical usefulness of an animal also plays a role in domestication. It is possible to domesticate lions, but they would be very hard in their upkeep and the benefit derived from it would be very small (mostly as a prestige object, I guess), the same goes for a hippo. Imagine the amount of food needed for one of those, plus the water hole and no use as beast of burden and little use as food animal (since they breed too slowly). And finally, it may be possible to domesticate the African wild pigs, but why bother when you already have domesticated pigs.

Actually, the reason for the lack of domestication in North America was that all North America’s (and lowland South America’s) mammals have highly egalitarian social structures. The Arctic musk ox does have a dominance hierarchy (actually it has one only for separate male and female herds), but herds of musk oxen maintain exclusive territories against other herds, so that more than two dozen musk oxen can never be penned together without violent fighting.

Bighorn sheep and peccaries live in large herds like the mouflon sheep or wild boar, but there is no dominant individual at all. Males, both within and outside the breeding season, fight for females consistently. This means bighorn sheep and peccaries are instinctively independent and will not submit themselves to a human handler. If a human handler takes a bighorn or peccary, the remainder of the herd will simply wander off without him or her.

As a result, herding these and all other North American and lowland South American mammals is quite impossible. The old song goes that domestic sheep “never go the way I want/so I need someone to help me/I just give a whistle/and I call for Bob the kelpie”, but mouflons failing to follow nothing compared to trying to control a herd of bighorns or peccaries that will fragment as soon as they are freed to be merely fed.

Egalitarian social structures also apply to moose or bison herds, and in addition moose are territorial in the breeding season and will never breed if kept in crowded enclosures in captivity. Moose also will jump away very quickly if penned for a lengthy period, so are difficult to keep in a confined area.

The absence of highly social animals is a striking feature of the Western Hemisphere as a whole and not only amongst its herbivores. Probably owing to fertile soils from the “Pacific Ring of Fire” and the presence of perennial rivers from wet mountains, the arid and semiarid zones of the Western Hemisphere do not possess social predators like lions, jackals, hunting dogs, or even the ground hornbills, kookaburras and butcherbirds. This presence of permanent water even in hyperarid zones also means “follow the leader” dominance hierarchies are not needed amongst the mammals of the western US or Argentine Patagonia. In fact, in a flat plain where conditions can vary from uninhabitable due to glaciers to exceptionally productive, “follow the leader” dominance hierarchies would be a liability since they reduce the ability of herds to colonise newly available areas as glaciers retreat. Egalitarian social structures allow territories to be opened up much more rapidly, with the exception of the very high mountain country of the Andes where a dominant leader makes it much easier for a herd to locate food.

Except for the camel family and reindeer, all the Ancient Fourteen were descended from taxa that originated with the ongoing uplift of the Himalayas, Karakoram, Hindukush, Pamir, Tian Shan and Kunlun Shan. The Himalayas are overlooked as a “cradle of civilisation” by people as diverse as Jared Diamond and Richard Lynn, but even if no plant species was initially domesticated in Himalayan valleys, the uplift of these mountains was crucial to permitting domestication of cattle, sheep and pigs.

Interesting.

Horses are flock animals and see a human being as their leader.
Reindears are also flock animals or heards.
Elks and moose live alone and do not want or need a leader.
With their large horns I think they would be rather impractical too ride.
Also elks and moose are rather tall animal and not easy to use as pack animals whereas a reindear is not as tall.