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How Animal Domestication Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bright, and our buddy
0:15
Speaker 1: Noel who's producing us. Yeah. Uh, and that's stuff you
0:19
Speaker 1: should know. How's it going fine? Why are you guys?
0:27
Speaker 1: That's just friendly icebreaker? Oh I see. Yeah, as if
0:33
Speaker 1: we didn't just record it, uther Jack, we did. It
0:35
Speaker 1: was on police and turkeys, right, so, Chuck, Yes, you've
0:42
Speaker 1: heard of Jared Diamond before, right, No rang familiar, Guns,
0:48
Speaker 1: Germs and Steel. Okay, yeah, he uh he Um wrote Collapse.
0:54
Speaker 1: He's known for that those two books. Don't think I
0:56
Speaker 1: know that one. I think it came after Guns, Terms
0:58
Speaker 1: and Steel. But he wrote one of my favorite journal
1:03
Speaker 1: articles of all time is called the Worst Mistake in
1:06
Speaker 1: the History of the human race about agriculture, about transitioning
1:10
Speaker 1: to agriculture. I was going to guess on what that
1:13
Speaker 1: might be. Oh, sorry, what what do you guess that
1:16
Speaker 1: it's about the agriculture. Well, the thing is is it
1:20
Speaker 1: may be the worst mistake in the history of the
1:22
Speaker 1: human races. I've talked about it a million times. Um
1:26
Speaker 1: the article that is um but he also wrote this
1:29
Speaker 1: really interesting article called Evolution, Consequences and Future of Plant
1:33
Speaker 1: and Animal Domestication, which sounds extremely boring, and it's in Nature,
1:38
Speaker 1: the journal Nature. That it isn't boring. It's really really
1:43
Speaker 1: interesting because in it he talks about animal domestication and
1:47
Speaker 1: he says that it came about as a result of
1:50
Speaker 1: typically and about the same time as agriculture, the Neolithic revolution,
1:54
Speaker 1: where we went from hunter gatherers to agriculturists right to
2:00
Speaker 1: farmers and everything changed, Like we grew shorter in stature,
2:05
Speaker 1: our brains grew smaller, um, our jaws grew shorter. Um,
2:10
Speaker 1: we we got just weird in a bunch of different ways, right, Um.
2:16
Speaker 1: And it was as a result of agriculture. And if
2:18
Speaker 1: you look at what happens when we domesticate animals, when
2:21
Speaker 1: we take them from the wild and we plant them
2:24
Speaker 1: next to us on a farm, the same thing happens.
2:28
Speaker 1: So his point is, what he's arguing is that not
2:31
Speaker 1: only did humans domesticate animals, humans in turn have become
2:36
Speaker 1: domesticated themselves through agriculture. Yeah, there's probably nothing that's had
2:41
Speaker 1: a greater impact, no single transition or change or concept
2:46
Speaker 1: that's had a greater impact on Homo sapiens than the
2:50
Speaker 1: Neolithic revolution or the transition to agriculture, and a big
2:54
Speaker 1: part of that was the domestication of animals. They kind
2:57
Speaker 1: of went hand in hand and hoof and hand, which
3:01
Speaker 1: to me is hilarious because consider this, I think this
3:04
Speaker 1: is the funniest thing I've ever thought of in my life.
3:08
Speaker 1: Imagine being an alien come down to Earth, all right,
3:12
Speaker 1: and uh, you're just walking along taking everything in and
3:16
Speaker 1: you see a human riding a horse, and us it's
3:20
Speaker 1: a human riding a horse. It makes during complete sense.
3:23
Speaker 1: But if you're an alien, you see an animal riding
3:26
Speaker 1: another animal, and that would have to be the funniest
3:29
Speaker 1: thing you've ever seen ever. If you're a margin, yeah,
3:33
Speaker 1: an animal riding another animal, you know, like those little
3:37
Speaker 1: cowboy monkeys that ride dogs and stuff like that. It's hilarious.
3:40
Speaker 1: And that same thing, it's the exact same thing. Or
3:43
Speaker 1: when you watch Planet of the Apes an ape riding
3:45
Speaker 1: a horse. That sound funny, that's unsettling, it's terrifying. Yeah,
3:50
Speaker 1: that is the funniest thing ever you've ever said? Yes,
3:54
Speaker 1: it is. Um so man, that was a good setup.
3:58
Speaker 1: Thanks man. It's been a while since we've gotten in
3:59
Speaker 1: all old Josh story. I get really excited about anthropology. Uh, well,
4:04
Speaker 1: we are covering um domestication, and I guess we should
4:09
Speaker 1: say off the bat that not everyone is on board UM.
4:12
Speaker 1: Peter had to look this up because I wasn't sure
4:14
Speaker 1: what their actual stance was regarding animal domestication. You had
4:20
Speaker 1: to look that up. No about pets, sure, I wondered. UM.
4:24
Speaker 1: Officially they are against pet keeping, but they they know
4:28
Speaker 1: it's too late. They hate pets, but they know it's
4:31
Speaker 1: too late. They're like, well, we know we're not. What
4:34
Speaker 1: they are not for is for setting these animals free.
4:38
Speaker 1: Here's why. The original co founder I think UM is
4:42
Speaker 1: Ingrid new Kirk is an animal abolitionist, but pet is like,
4:46
Speaker 1: it's way too far gone. We don't want you to
4:47
Speaker 1: set these animals free. So we're gonna fight our fight
4:50
Speaker 1: on spaying and neutering and reducing that population is much
4:53
Speaker 1: as possible. But they are still officially against pets. But
4:58
Speaker 1: their position actually does make sense as a extremely realistic
5:01
Speaker 1: because there is a strict definition of a domesticated animal,
5:07
Speaker 1: and domesticated animal is a is a species that was
5:11
Speaker 1: formerly wild that has been taken in by humans and
5:16
Speaker 1: whose characteristics have been so all ser radically altered by
5:21
Speaker 1: humans that they can no longer feed themselves typically. Yeah,
5:26
Speaker 1: it's it's when we actually change their genetic makeup. Yes,
5:30
Speaker 1: And part of that change, part of the characteristic changes
5:33
Speaker 1: that the food supply is controlled by humans. So if
5:37
Speaker 1: you put say an average dog out, my dog luckily
5:42
Speaker 1: would be dead in three days. Yeah, And somebody say, well,
5:45
Speaker 1: they would forage through garbage humanity. If you took a
5:48
Speaker 1: dog out of any kind of human area and put
5:53
Speaker 1: it in the area, it may return to a primal state,
5:57
Speaker 1: in which case that dog is reverted to a feral state. Now,
6:01
Speaker 1: ferial animal is one that was formerly domesticated and then
6:04
Speaker 1: went back to the wild. If you take a single
6:09
Speaker 1: wolf and you teach it to jump up and grab
6:12
Speaker 1: beef jerky out of your hands, what you have there,
6:15
Speaker 1: because that's a tame wolf. Now, tame wolf could still
6:18
Speaker 1: go fend for itself. It's a it's a tame individual.
6:22
Speaker 1: A domesticated animal is one that's born comfortable associating with humans. Yeah,
6:29
Speaker 1: And there's exceptions, of course, cats, the domestic house cat
6:33
Speaker 1: being one. You could drop a cat out in the
6:35
Speaker 1: middle of the woods and they would survive. They would
6:37
Speaker 1: hunt mice and eat mice or whatever squirrels. Um. So
6:42
Speaker 1: the and the domestic cat is its own species. But
6:45
Speaker 1: that raises some questions under Jared Diamonds definition, the stricter
6:49
Speaker 1: definition of a domestic animal. If if a cat can
6:53
Speaker 1: just go like take care of itself, is it technically
6:56
Speaker 1: feral or is it ever really domesticated? Or is it
7:00
Speaker 1: just an agreement. Hey, I'll catch the mice in your
7:03
Speaker 1: house and I like that wet food every day at
7:07
Speaker 1: five pm, so I'll just hang out here and I
7:11
Speaker 1: like to sleep under your chin. Like the cat. The
7:13
Speaker 1: cat has found an agreeable arrangement that it could take
7:16
Speaker 1: or leave in any time. Yeah, mutually beneficial. As we'll
7:19
Speaker 1: see that. That's a consistent thing in the domestication of animals.
7:23
Speaker 1: Is that, uh, some people believe that it's good for
7:27
Speaker 1: the animal, it's good for the human. And we have
7:29
Speaker 1: learned to scratch each other's backs in many different ways
7:33
Speaker 1: literally even in some cases. So a little bit of
7:37
Speaker 1: a good background for this one might be to listen
7:39
Speaker 1: to our show on natural selection, because um, well it
7:44
Speaker 1: covers natural selection, but there's another kind of selection called
7:47
Speaker 1: artificial selection when it comes to domesticating animals, and that
7:51
Speaker 1: is not the same thing. That is when humans are
7:54
Speaker 1: choosing these desirable traits and making it so through breeding. Um,
8:00
Speaker 1: like the the original horses, the first domesticated horses were
8:04
Speaker 1: they smoked cigars, they did. We broke them of that.
8:08
Speaker 1: Now they were small like ponies. There were little ones,
8:10
Speaker 1: a little wild horses in Mongolia. I think they call
8:12
Speaker 1: him the Zewalski's not a family in Pittsburgh. No, it
8:19
Speaker 1: was a Russian army officer that they're named after. But
8:22
Speaker 1: when you start your name with three consonants, I never
8:24
Speaker 1: know which one is silent. Okay, so how do you
8:27
Speaker 1: spell it? P r z oh? I was not guess
8:30
Speaker 1: that's e w Alski. So I'm just gonna say z
8:33
Speaker 1: Wolski's horse. But um, people were at one point like, man,
8:38
Speaker 1: I'd love to ride that thing, but he's too small.
8:40
Speaker 1: So find the biggest one that's a male, and find
8:42
Speaker 1: the biggest one that's a female, make them go have sex,
8:45
Speaker 1: and maybe they'll have a bigger one, bigger son, and
8:48
Speaker 1: then make that one mate with someone big. And eventually
8:51
Speaker 1: these things are going to be big enough to where
8:53
Speaker 1: we can ride them, and then by proxy throw away
8:55
Speaker 1: the ones that don't fit the criteria that we want
8:58
Speaker 1: or use them for something else. Sure food, But that's
9:01
Speaker 1: what we did with dogs too. Like you got a
9:04
Speaker 1: bunch of different ones, right, say, big, small, soft, furry, um, fast, cuddly,
9:10
Speaker 1: and we we said, well, we like this one for this,
9:13
Speaker 1: and we like that one for that, and so artificial
9:15
Speaker 1: selection was still going on. We were just spreading it
9:18
Speaker 1: out all over the place. With like say a horse
9:20
Speaker 1: or something. We wanted bigger and stronger because we wanted
9:23
Speaker 1: to ride them. Uh, and we also wanted to apparently
9:28
Speaker 1: drink their milk, which I did not know, but it
9:31
Speaker 1: makes sense that horses produced milk because their mammals. But
9:34
Speaker 1: apparently our ancestors used to drink horse milk. You never
9:36
Speaker 1: had horse milk, no, And I want to know if
9:39
Speaker 1: there's anyone out there listening who's tasted horse milk, please
9:44
Speaker 1: describe it. Did someone out there is drinking horse milk
9:47
Speaker 1: right now while they're listening to the show. One of
9:50
Speaker 1: our Mongolian listening straight from the teeth. I think they're like,
9:53
Speaker 1: they used the horse for all sorts of stuff. The Mongolians.
9:56
Speaker 1: They're also like excellent riders. Yeah. I think that that
9:59
Speaker 1: ze Wolsky horses is in Mongolia again, Yeah, after being
10:04
Speaker 1: nearly extinct. I might be wrong about that. So um.
10:06
Speaker 1: In addition to selecting the big horse, we also did
10:09
Speaker 1: some cool stuff with sheep. We um we selected out
10:13
Speaker 1: there they had um, longer, coarser hair that we didn't
10:18
Speaker 1: want that camp. Yeah, we wanted the softer stuff that
10:22
Speaker 1: was inside a k a. The wool. So we bread
10:24
Speaker 1: sheep that had more wool than kemp until basically you
10:28
Speaker 1: can't find kemp in sheep any longer. And they were
10:30
Speaker 1: one of the first domesticated animals, right, the sheep. Yet
10:33
Speaker 1: they were um chickens uh don't normally produce eggs as
10:38
Speaker 1: frequently as as they do uh once they've been domesticated,
10:43
Speaker 1: and like a Rhode Island red ll produced five to
10:45
Speaker 1: seven a week. That's a lot of eggs. Yeah, apparently
10:49
Speaker 1: the original chicken too. I didn't look this up, but
10:51
Speaker 1: I remember a friend of mine that was a vegetarian.
10:55
Speaker 1: I witnessed an argument between a vegetarian and mediate, which
10:57
Speaker 1: is always fun because I don't get involved in that stuff. Um,
11:01
Speaker 1: and I think when I was like, well, look at
11:02
Speaker 1: the chickens. You know what else are they gonna do?
11:04
Speaker 1: You know, what are they good for? And he was like, dude,
11:06
Speaker 1: the original chicken wasn't anything like this chicken. The original
11:09
Speaker 1: wild chicken was like taller and leaner and ran super
11:12
Speaker 1: fast and road runner. I guess, yeah, I guess solve
11:17
Speaker 1: crimes and uh, and did all sorts of chickeny things
11:22
Speaker 1: that weren't just being slaughtered for food. And apparently the
11:25
Speaker 1: first chickens were domesticated. They think for um, cock fighting, Yeah,
11:30
Speaker 1: for entertainment. Yeah. Crazy. We have a shameful, shapeful history,
11:33
Speaker 1: don't we as people humans? Yeah? So Diamond, Um, you
11:39
Speaker 1: you would think, if we can domesticate animals, why don't
11:41
Speaker 1: we just domesticate them all and use them for purposes? Uh?
11:44
Speaker 1: And Diamond rites that only about fourteen animal species out
11:48
Speaker 1: of a hundred and forty eight candidates have been domesticated,
11:51
Speaker 1: and that's because we can't domesticate every animal. There's certain things,
11:56
Speaker 1: certain criteria that even opens up the possibility. Yeah, there's
12:00
Speaker 1: like a six point checklist basically, and it's not progressive
12:04
Speaker 1: if any one of these with these characteristics or treats
12:08
Speaker 1: isn't Matt, Yeah, it pretty much just throws off the
12:11
Speaker 1: whole deal. So you gotta have all six, all right?
12:13
Speaker 1: Those six are the first. One is the right diet
12:16
Speaker 1: if you're a picky animal, like, um, what's what's the
12:21
Speaker 1: one that only eats bamboo? The bamboo to those dumb,
12:26
Speaker 1: dumb koalas koalas, Now they eucalyptus. A man, I'm glad
12:31
Speaker 1: you remember that. Yeah, you're not gonna be able to
12:34
Speaker 1: domesticate a koala because what you want is something that
12:36
Speaker 1: you can feed in mass quantities on cheap accessible food.
12:40
Speaker 1: Oh well, actually bamboo would be the way to go.
12:45
Speaker 1: It's eucalyptus. Yeah, I don't know how eucalyptus, because if
12:47
Speaker 1: they bamboo, they'd probably be domesticated in that. Well. No,
12:51
Speaker 1: by cheap accessible food, I think they mean like millions
12:54
Speaker 1: of pounds of feed that you can put in a trough. Dude.
12:56
Speaker 1: Bamboo is like one of the fastest growing plants on Earth.
12:59
Speaker 1: Not lots that are still talking about ecous, but but
13:04
Speaker 1: this bamboo thing. Have you heard about bamboo? You know,
13:07
Speaker 1: I have a company that grows oh, Josh's Bamboo floors.
13:12
Speaker 1: The number two thing is a fast growth rate. So um, yeah,
13:16
Speaker 1: they gotta you know, be able to grow quick and
13:19
Speaker 1: so you can use them. Yeah. So like if we'd
13:21
Speaker 1: figured out how to use gorillas to build skyscrapers, that'd
13:25
Speaker 1: be awesome, but it would take forever to build a
13:28
Speaker 1: skyscraper because gorilla is only reproduced fairly and frequently. Okay,
13:33
Speaker 1: so we need something that can build a skyscraper fast.
13:36
Speaker 1: And that's why that didn't work when they tried it. Yeah,
13:39
Speaker 1: but that one gorilla wearing that hard hat got a
13:41
Speaker 1: lot of laughs. Uh friendly disposition. Um, that's pretty clear.
13:47
Speaker 1: If you're a Kodiak bear, you're not going to be domesticated.
13:51
Speaker 1: They tried that. They tried grizzlies at one point. That's
13:56
Speaker 1: a failed domestication. Yeah. Um. Zebras very famously can't be domesticated. Yeah,
14:02
Speaker 1: because I imagine people would be like, man, I want
14:04
Speaker 1: to ride that thing. It's cool looking, yeah, and it'll
14:06
Speaker 1: bite you to death. Really. Yeah. Apparently in that Jared
14:10
Speaker 1: Diamond article, he says that zookeepers zebras account for more
14:14
Speaker 1: injuries to zookeepers than any other animal at the zoo. Man, Yeah,
14:19
Speaker 1: that is one piste off stripy horse. They're not horses
14:24
Speaker 1: at all, though, are they They're related for sure, but
14:28
Speaker 1: the um so the zebras one and then koala is
14:31
Speaker 1: too apparently are like ferocious little animals eat while they
14:36
Speaker 1: they're tied to eat in bamboo, right, um one to
14:41
Speaker 1: three four? Easy breeding, Yeah, that's pretty obvious. You gotta
14:45
Speaker 1: be able to pump out little baby puppies quickly, yes,
14:48
Speaker 1: because some animals like just shut down when you when
14:51
Speaker 1: they're captive, like, they don't breed like pandas have a
14:56
Speaker 1: lot of trouble breeding and captivity too. Is that why
14:59
Speaker 1: it's always such a big deal when they're born at
15:01
Speaker 1: the zoo or when like twins are born like at
15:04
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Zoo. Oh, man, I don't know about zoos. Well,
15:09
Speaker 1: we did a podcast on that. I think that's the
15:11
Speaker 1: conclusion we came to. Huh, I think that was the
15:13
Speaker 1: title of it. Man, I don't know about zoos. What
15:16
Speaker 1: does he call her? Zoo's good or bad for animals? Yeah?
15:18
Speaker 1: That was a good episode. Yeah, that's one of those
15:20
Speaker 1: long lost overlooked ones. They are so good. That's polarizing
15:23
Speaker 1: to man. I did some Facebook posting about killer whales
15:27
Speaker 1: in captivity, and people really feel passionately about like Blackfish
15:33
Speaker 1: about supporting Sea World or not supporting Sea World. Um,
15:37
Speaker 1: and that black fish is a bunch of bunk. And
15:39
Speaker 1: apparently Blackfishes was highly manipulated the documentary was. But at
15:46
Speaker 1: the end of all of that, I was like, I
15:47
Speaker 1: don't care. I just don't think they should be kept
15:48
Speaker 1: in captivity this one particular thing. Um. But that was
15:53
Speaker 1: just me respect of a social hierarchy, that's a big one,
15:57
Speaker 1: because if you don't, if you can't be the alpha
16:00
Speaker 1: dog and the leader of the pack, then you're gonna
16:02
Speaker 1: have a very hard time domesticating that animal. Yeah, but
16:05
Speaker 1: with a cat being an exception, an animal um that
16:08
Speaker 1: does follow a social hierarchy is basically pre arranged to
16:12
Speaker 1: be domesticated because you just take that alpha male and
16:15
Speaker 1: punch him in the face a couple of times in
16:17
Speaker 1: front of everybody, make them cry, and then now you're
16:19
Speaker 1: the alpha male and you say start laying eggs and
16:24
Speaker 1: they listen to you, and then they're domesticated, at least
16:27
Speaker 1: in that respect, after you've punched the chicken. Yeah, but
16:30
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big one. Is with that social hierarchy,
16:34
Speaker 1: it sets them up there predisposed to our method of domestication,
16:37
Speaker 1: which is listening to humans and like sheep, it's mind
16:41
Speaker 1: blowing because sheep, they're herd animal that follows an alpha leader, right,
16:47
Speaker 1: and so we have gotten so we're just show offs
16:51
Speaker 1: when it comes to animal domestication. We're so good that
16:53
Speaker 1: we've taken one of our domesticated animals, the dog, and
16:57
Speaker 1: put the dog in as they for mail of the sheep. Yeah,
17:01
Speaker 1: that's how sheep are herded. That's that's just showing off
17:05
Speaker 1: the aliens. That's another good alien. Laugh. Well, the double
17:10
Speaker 1: domestications and the dog leading the sheep. Um. And it's
17:13
Speaker 1: funny too if you've ever had a dog that's a
17:16
Speaker 1: hurting has the hurting instinct when you see that play
17:18
Speaker 1: out in your own home. Uh, we used to see
17:21
Speaker 1: it all the time with Lucy. She would totally hurt
17:23
Speaker 1: us and when we let her out in the backyard,
17:25
Speaker 1: she would walk the perimeter of the fence, you know,
17:28
Speaker 1: instead of running through the middle of it. Very interesting stuff,
17:32
Speaker 1: that original, those original tendencies. Uh. And then the last
17:35
Speaker 1: one is they want panic. Um, if you have an
17:37
Speaker 1: animal that freaks out behind defence like dear, Yeah, it's
17:42
Speaker 1: it's uh that you're gonna have a real hard time there.
17:44
Speaker 1: But like we said, there are exceptions because wolves were
17:47
Speaker 1: fierce and cats, uh don't follow a pack leader. Um.
17:52
Speaker 1: And we're gonna get to dogs and cats a little later,
17:55
Speaker 1: but first, right after this break, we're gonna talk a
17:57
Speaker 1: little bit about the history of domestication. Chuck. You know
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Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff right now. So if you listen
19:19
Speaker 1: to our show on cave Art, you know that. And
19:23
Speaker 1: on Egyptology, you know the animals mummification, Yeah probably, so
19:30
Speaker 1: you know, the animals have been tied to humans for
19:33
Speaker 1: a long time and revered by humans for a long time,
19:35
Speaker 1: as evidenced by the fact that they buried them and
19:38
Speaker 1: they mummified them, and they painted them on their walls,
19:40
Speaker 1: painted pictures of us riding them. Yeah yeah, um yeah,
19:44
Speaker 1: they they they think that the um, the first animal
19:47
Speaker 1: to be domesticated by far was the dog. How awesome
19:52
Speaker 1: is that hunter gatherer society was and the dog were
19:56
Speaker 1: pals long before agriculture ever came along, but about the
20:00
Speaker 1: time of the agricultural revolution, which is and get this,
20:03
Speaker 1: check this out, uh, ten thousand, five hundred years BP
20:08
Speaker 1: to about forty hundred years BP before present. Is that
20:14
Speaker 1: the one. Yeah, that's like the scientific way of saying,
20:18
Speaker 1: there's no like zero year or anything like that. It's
20:21
Speaker 1: just ten years before present, the full before present. Not British,
20:28
Speaker 1: that was New Zealand. Uh So basically, at some point
20:34
Speaker 1: about ten thousand, five hundred years ago, what they think
20:38
Speaker 1: happened is the Earth's climate changed. Um, maybe we killed
20:42
Speaker 1: off enough of the mega fauna through over hunting or
20:45
Speaker 1: through climate change they just went extinct. And Um, about
20:49
Speaker 1: that time, some plants came around that we noticed we
20:53
Speaker 1: really liked, and maybe accidentally we started growing them. And
20:57
Speaker 1: then we figured out that we could just select these
20:59
Speaker 1: one and through a process of artificial and natural selection,
21:03
Speaker 1: merged together we got agriculture. And about that same time
21:07
Speaker 1: we started to domesticate pigs, sheep, and cattle. I think
21:13
Speaker 1: we're the big first three and they still are the
21:15
Speaker 1: big three, Like those are the money domesticated animals, you know. Well, yeah,
21:20
Speaker 1: and like you said, it's tied to human natural selection
21:23
Speaker 1: as well, because if you are the tribe that has
21:25
Speaker 1: figured out how to keep cattle, then you're gonna do
21:29
Speaker 1: better than your neighboring tribe that hasn't yet. And so
21:32
Speaker 1: you are going to be more successful as a civilization. Yeah,
21:36
Speaker 1: you are, and you're going to conquer like we talked about,
21:39
Speaker 1: and I think the Royalty one. We talked a lot
21:41
Speaker 1: about um tribes conquering other tribes through agriculture, through exporting
21:46
Speaker 1: agriculture and um as a result, Jared Diamond points out,
21:50
Speaker 1: eight percent of humans alive today speak one of seven
21:54
Speaker 1: language families and they come from two places in Eurasia,
21:59
Speaker 1: which were the places for agriculture to take group. So
22:02
Speaker 1: basically those tribes were so effective because of agriculture. Today
22:10
Speaker 1: we still basically the vast majority to speak one of
22:13
Speaker 1: seven language groups. That's crazy. Here's all these thousands of
22:18
Speaker 1: years later, that's how effective agriculture was. It, asserting Authorida,
22:23
Speaker 1: we should do one on agriculture, the Birth of agriculture.
22:27
Speaker 1: I can't believe we haven't yet. Yeah, let's do it, agreed.
22:31
Speaker 1: So back to animals. Uh, here's a little breakdown of
22:35
Speaker 1: where some of your favorite animals came from So in
22:39
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia's where you uh first got your goats, pick pigs,
22:45
Speaker 1: sheep and dogs. Southwest Asia. Yeah, we went over to
22:50
Speaker 1: Central it's like Mesopotamia. Okay, these are the birth of
22:54
Speaker 1: it all. Yes, um, Centraliser, you're gonna get your chickens
22:58
Speaker 1: and you're too humped bactry in sablets pronounced yeah, it
23:02
Speaker 1: looks like camel Central Asia. Yeah. And those camels were
23:07
Speaker 1: actually um well known for long hair and they can
23:10
Speaker 1: survive in cold climates. Yes, and they're not just desert
23:14
Speaker 1: dwellers right. And apparently when they were domesticated, it created
23:18
Speaker 1: such a revolution that some societies stopped using the wheel
23:22
Speaker 1: because they're like, we don't need the wheel anymore. We
23:24
Speaker 1: got camels, like the wheel left all together and then
23:27
Speaker 1: came back when someone said, uh, cars are pretty cool too. Yeah,
23:32
Speaker 1: actually as much sooner than that. Um Arabia is where
23:35
Speaker 1: you have the Arabian camel with a single hump. Um China,
23:40
Speaker 1: they domesticated pigs and the water buffalo and dogs. Move
23:46
Speaker 1: over to the Ukraine and you've got the wild Tarpaan
23:49
Speaker 1: horses and uh that's what most folks think are the original.
23:53
Speaker 1: Um the original the o g the original horse, even
23:58
Speaker 1: though I read about the small ones in Mongolia. Yeah,
24:01
Speaker 1: the Yeah, it was new ski here the h um. Yeah,
24:08
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to look that up. And then Egypt
24:10
Speaker 1: you've got your donkeys. And then South America you've got
24:13
Speaker 1: your lama and your alpaca. Lama as a beast of
24:16
Speaker 1: burden in the alpaca for their soft wool, and the
24:19
Speaker 1: guinea pig for their meat. Really yeah in South America, Yeah,
24:23
Speaker 1: the andies. I don't want to eat any pig. That's
24:27
Speaker 1: what they were britt for originally. Wow. Um. And those
24:33
Speaker 1: were some of the earliest ones in Jared Diamond again,
24:36
Speaker 1: I know I keep sighting, but man, this guy's great ideas.
24:39
Speaker 1: Is he live? Yeah? Okay, so he's he's a modern man. Yeah,
24:43
Speaker 1: he's got a little beat nick pointy beard and everything. Yeah,
24:47
Speaker 1: he's a good guy. Let's get in touch with them. Okay,
24:50
Speaker 1: attention Jared Diamond, please contact us for reasons we'll figure
24:54
Speaker 1: out later. Yeah, stuff podcast at how stuff works. Put
24:57
Speaker 1: in the subject line, I'm Jared Diamond, bigative. It'll be
25:03
Speaker 1: Lou Bega posing as Jared Diamond. Um. So, Diamond pointed
25:10
Speaker 1: out that over the last thousand years, only one substantial
25:16
Speaker 1: animal has been added to the list of domesticated animals.
25:20
Speaker 1: So basically we were good at it to start and
25:23
Speaker 1: we did everything we could. Basically, almost all animals that
25:28
Speaker 1: are going to be domesticated on Earth have been domestically.
25:32
Speaker 1: It was the reindeer. Oh, the hamster would until yes,
25:36
Speaker 1: I know. And if you read that, that's technically a
25:39
Speaker 1: tamed animal. Oh, it's not domesticated, not under the strictest definition,
25:44
Speaker 1: where it's like the animals are born in their genetically
25:48
Speaker 1: more comfortable around humans are born that way. With it.
25:51
Speaker 1: With a tamed animal, you're like inventing the wheel with
25:54
Speaker 1: each individual organism with us. With a domesticated animal, you've
25:59
Speaker 1: taken a wild PCs and you've selected it enough so
26:02
Speaker 1: that when an animal is born, it's cool being around
26:06
Speaker 1: a human, whereas like if you're around like a gerbil
26:09
Speaker 1: or a hamster baby, it's not gonna be cool around you.
26:13
Speaker 1: It doesn't have, you know, thousands of years of genetic
26:16
Speaker 1: information telling it that from birth it can be comfortable
26:19
Speaker 1: with you because you're gonna give it some pellets to eat, okay,
26:23
Speaker 1: Whereas a dog a puppy will just automatically snuggle up
26:27
Speaker 1: with you, right, But think about getting close to a
26:30
Speaker 1: wolf pup. It's gonna be problematic. M let's go try
26:36
Speaker 1: right now. Do you ever see that movie Never Cry Wolf,
26:40
Speaker 1: the Disney movie from like the mid eighties. It was
26:42
Speaker 1: so good. It wasn't he was live action. No, it
26:46
Speaker 1: was way before his time. No, no no, no, I totally
26:48
Speaker 1: know what you mean. I can picture the guy in
26:49
Speaker 1: my head. He like goes and lives with the wolf Man.
26:52
Speaker 1: That's a good movie. Yeah, he was in I can't remember.
26:56
Speaker 1: He's in another movie. So when when we did Domestic,
27:00
Speaker 1: like I said, we we took a wild animal underwent
27:04
Speaker 1: a process through artificial selection to where it just became
27:07
Speaker 1: something different. And there's certain traits that they're not quite
27:11
Speaker 1: sure how they happen, but they're clearly linked to the
27:15
Speaker 1: genes that lead to domestication, that take an animal and
27:19
Speaker 1: turn it from wild to tame to domesticated um, and
27:23
Speaker 1: that have outward signals and signs like floppy years. Um.
27:30
Speaker 1: The only other animal in the wild that has floppy
27:33
Speaker 1: years is the African elephant. Every other animal in the
27:36
Speaker 1: wild has perky ears, but it's almost like it's a
27:39
Speaker 1: signal like, okay, we're tame now. Our ears don't need
27:42
Speaker 1: to perk up. It totally is smaller brain size. They
27:46
Speaker 1: don't need to be as smart um over the years
27:49
Speaker 1: if you're feeding. As evidenced by my dumb dog Buckley,
27:52
Speaker 1: Like I said, he wouldn't survive two days in the wild. Um.
27:56
Speaker 1: My neighbor one time left his dog out all night
27:59
Speaker 1: by accident, and I was going out to the car
28:01
Speaker 1: the next morning and this big rottweiler comes running over
28:04
Speaker 1: at me and I was like, At first, I was like,
28:06
Speaker 1: oh man, and then I realized it was Carter and uh.
28:09
Speaker 1: I went and banged on his door and he finally
28:10
Speaker 1: woke up and he was like, Carter's in here. I
28:13
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think so. And he had come
28:15
Speaker 1: home from a long night let him out and forgot
28:18
Speaker 1: to let it back in. A little Carter just slept
28:20
Speaker 1: on the front porch like the sweetest thing ever. But
28:24
Speaker 1: Carter survived, is my point. But sleeping on the front
28:27
Speaker 1: by sleeping on the front porch and being like scratching
28:29
Speaker 1: on it like please let me in. Um so yeah,
28:33
Speaker 1: smaller brains uh, curly hair, um, sharp sense of sight
28:38
Speaker 1: and hearing. Um. Well, it's lessoned. Yeah, it's lesson because
28:42
Speaker 1: they don't need that stuff either, right, because they're being
28:44
Speaker 1: cared for by humans. The humans are saying, you just
28:48
Speaker 1: get dumb or in charge now. Yeah, well we'll teach
28:51
Speaker 1: everything you need to know. UM, we got a lot
28:54
Speaker 1: of this data, this information from a Jared Diamond very no,
29:00
Speaker 1: not even a very famous study that went on for
29:03
Speaker 1: about forty years UM by a Russian geneticist named Dmitri Balleyev.
29:09
Speaker 1: And Balete said, Hey, I'm going to figure out how
29:13
Speaker 1: domestication actually works, and I'm gonna take um silver foxes
29:18
Speaker 1: and I'm going to compress the domestication process. And basically,
29:22
Speaker 1: over the course of like thirty or forty years, even
29:24
Speaker 1: after he died, his UM his colleagues and UM interns
29:29
Speaker 1: and assistance carried on this experiment. So it's been going
29:32
Speaker 1: on for maybe fifty years and UM they've found that
29:37
Speaker 1: you can get predictable results from domesticating animals. And they've
29:40
Speaker 1: domesticated some silver foxes. UM. Their ears started getting floppy,
29:45
Speaker 1: their skulls started to get smaller, they started to get
29:48
Speaker 1: curly hair, some of them started to bark UM and
29:52
Speaker 1: they were born comfortable around humans. Yeah, and here's the thing. Um,
29:57
Speaker 1: if you've seen there's a really cute video on the
29:59
Speaker 1: internet about little fox getting his belly rubbed, it looks
30:02
Speaker 1: sort of like dogs, but they are DNA evidence. They
30:05
Speaker 1: have pretty much proven that dogs are descended from the
30:08
Speaker 1: Asian gray wolf and have nothing to do with foxes.
30:12
Speaker 1: But um, that's just proof through this experiment that at
30:16
Speaker 1: taming and domesticating this animal can lead to these traits. Yeah,
30:19
Speaker 1: because a lot of people are like, how do you
30:21
Speaker 1: get a Pomeranian from a gray wolf? Pug from a
30:25
Speaker 1: gray wolf or something like that. Have you seen that
30:27
Speaker 1: picture of that pug who's um who is clearly messing
30:31
Speaker 1: around with a crawfish and gets his tongue bit and
30:35
Speaker 1: it's like in mid air and you know they have
30:36
Speaker 1: huge eyes that are bolting out. Anyway, he's trying to
30:39
Speaker 1: like have sex with the c no know, like he
30:41
Speaker 1: was sniffing it and just the crawfish like grabbed onto
30:44
Speaker 1: his tongue and now the crawfish is hanging onto his
30:47
Speaker 1: tongue in mid air. Is the pugs like squealing or
30:49
Speaker 1: Whatever's hilarious anyway? Um, they they figured out that because
30:56
Speaker 1: of domestication, these traits change, and like I said before,
31:01
Speaker 1: with you know, different kinds of dogs, you get different
31:04
Speaker 1: kinds of well, different looking dogs that we've selected for
31:09
Speaker 1: over time. Yeah, and it didn't take that long apparently. Um.
31:12
Speaker 1: Apparently with canine specifically, selective breeding can affect the species
31:16
Speaker 1: really rapidly. And um, there's been evidence of Pekinese dogs
31:21
Speaker 1: as far back as first century a d. China. So, um,
31:25
Speaker 1: they weren't wolves for long once we decided. And you know,
31:28
Speaker 1: there's different theories on how that very first happened. Um.
31:31
Speaker 1: One of them, which I like, is that people found
31:35
Speaker 1: abandoned pups and it's just a natural human instinct to
31:39
Speaker 1: see a little puppy and care for it. So they said, well,
31:42
Speaker 1: let me take this little wolf puppy because it needs
31:45
Speaker 1: a home. We should talk about the science of cute sometime.
31:47
Speaker 1: It's really interesting and email the other day. We'll have
31:52
Speaker 1: to do that one. Um. So yeah, that's one of
31:55
Speaker 1: the theories. The other one is that, um, maybe some
31:58
Speaker 1: of the more tame wolves rummage around our garbage and
32:03
Speaker 1: for food, and so if you were a more tamele,
32:05
Speaker 1: if you're more likely to survive, eventually that would evolve
32:08
Speaker 1: into a more dog like species. Yeah, because you're the
32:11
Speaker 1: human garbage pile was much more reliable source of food
32:14
Speaker 1: than say, like whatever was growing in the wild. So exactly,
32:18
Speaker 1: they would be that's natural selection basically through artificial means
32:21
Speaker 1: almost um. But either way, they think that dogs descended
32:27
Speaker 1: from wolves or diverged from wolves as long as a
32:29
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years ago, but they didn't really start to
32:32
Speaker 1: undergo the drastic morphological changes until maybe fifteen thousand years ago. Um.
32:39
Speaker 1: And again all of this predates the advent of agriculture.
32:43
Speaker 1: So that means that hunter gatherers and dogs were friends
32:46
Speaker 1: for a while. And they think that the reason that
32:48
Speaker 1: happened was because they figured out that a dog could
32:51
Speaker 1: go flush out some quarry, a hunter gatherer could spirit
32:55
Speaker 1: and then tear off a piece and give the dog
32:58
Speaker 1: some and eat some himself. And they had a symbiotic
33:00
Speaker 1: hunting relationship that was aces Yeah, like we said earlier,
33:04
Speaker 1: mutually beneficial. It was great for the dog. They were
33:08
Speaker 1: fast and fierce and we were smart and uh, because
33:11
Speaker 1: we already mentioned dogs are are innately want to follow
33:17
Speaker 1: lead dog, an alpha dog. It just it was kind
33:20
Speaker 1: of like the perfect relationship and it has been ever since. Yeah.
33:23
Speaker 1: And one of the other cool things about the domestication
33:26
Speaker 1: of the dog is they in ancient Rome, apparently women
33:30
Speaker 1: is where they had the first evidence of little lap
33:32
Speaker 1: doggies because they were supposedly cured stomach aches, which of
33:38
Speaker 1: course they didn't. But I think it just made someone
33:40
Speaker 1: feel better having a little dog growed up on their lap.
33:43
Speaker 1: So how's your tummy feel? Now? We selected them for that,
33:45
Speaker 1: So we selected them for that. We selected um, oh,
33:49
Speaker 1: I don't know, sheep dogs to herd and terriers to
33:53
Speaker 1: catch rats, and you know that that explains all this
33:56
Speaker 1: variation in dog breeds. Yeah. I saw a cold special
33:59
Speaker 1: on it the other day. It was on I think
34:02
Speaker 1: it was on Animal Planet. But it wasn't one of
34:04
Speaker 1: those just like look how cute everything is. It was
34:07
Speaker 1: kind of like the science behind the history of these animals.
34:10
Speaker 1: It was really cool. So let's take a break and
34:13
Speaker 1: we'll come back and we'll talk about cats and other
34:15
Speaker 1: stuff too right after this. Okay, so cats don't follow
34:28
Speaker 1: in alpha male, which leads to a puzzle of how
34:31
Speaker 1: they could possibly have been domesticated, and if you talk
34:34
Speaker 1: to certain people, they may not have ever really been domesticated.
34:37
Speaker 1: Cats don't look different than their their ancestors, right, which
34:41
Speaker 1: means that it makes it tough to go back and
34:43
Speaker 1: compare modern cats to the cats and the fossil record
34:46
Speaker 1: and say, oh, they diverged X number of years ago
34:49
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah. That's one of my favorite things about
34:51
Speaker 1: cats is when you look at a cat in the backyard,
34:55
Speaker 1: you know, crouched down to leap on the bird, it
34:58
Speaker 1: looks just like a big line in about the leap
35:01
Speaker 1: on the big bird. The thing is, they're pretty sure
35:03
Speaker 1: that cats did not diverge from big cats like lions.
35:07
Speaker 1: They think they came instead from a couple of different wildcats,
35:11
Speaker 1: a European wildcat and an African wildcat, and both of
35:15
Speaker 1: those are still around today, and they think that that's
35:17
Speaker 1: what the cats last common ancestors were. Or if you yeah,
35:23
Speaker 1: like if you look at the African wildcat, looks like
35:25
Speaker 1: just a bigger version of a dabby. Yes, And they
35:29
Speaker 1: don't know exactly when they were um domesticated, but there's
35:32
Speaker 1: evidence that as far back as um years ago there's
35:38
Speaker 1: at least one grave site where a cat was clearly
35:41
Speaker 1: buried with the human, which indicates some sort of importance
35:43
Speaker 1: and um familial nous with a cat. They love cats
35:50
Speaker 1: and dogs, right, and I think cats were even had
35:53
Speaker 1: like a religious significance, but or maybe both of them did.
35:58
Speaker 1: But because Anubis that was the dog, right, I don't remember.
36:02
Speaker 1: I just remember Horace was the hawk, right, right, But
36:06
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians love their dogs and cats. It was Horace
36:09
Speaker 1: the dog. I think I knew us was the dog.
36:13
Speaker 1: So um again, cats probably are not technically domesticated, but
36:22
Speaker 1: um well, the reason why we we took them in though,
36:25
Speaker 1: is the same reason that some people still take them
36:27
Speaker 1: in now is because they're good mousers. And that's pretty
36:32
Speaker 1: much the explanation for domestication in a lot of ways.
36:36
Speaker 1: Like they animals were useful for work, that's right. Um,
36:41
Speaker 1: so some of the other animals, very ancient domesticated animals
36:45
Speaker 1: that we domesticated for work, And I guess I should
36:48
Speaker 1: say it wasn't just for work. Probably initially we domesticated
36:50
Speaker 1: animals for a food supply, like their milk. Um, things
36:55
Speaker 1: like cattle cows, we domesticated them for milk of course. Yeah,
37:00
Speaker 1: they're ancient ancestor it's now extinct called the a rock
37:05
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, that's what led to modern tame cattle
37:08
Speaker 1: apparently right um oxen. We domesticated them for work. Although
37:13
Speaker 1: there's milk from them. You can pretty much drink milk
37:17
Speaker 1: from anything. Yeah, I think was you can milk anything, right,
37:22
Speaker 1: a little, just a little milking. Um. The ox I
37:26
Speaker 1: think was was even stronger than the cow, and they
37:28
Speaker 1: would pull initially sledges, like put a bunch of junk
37:33
Speaker 1: on that thing and pull it over here, and then
37:35
Speaker 1: eventually plows and the force wheel wagons. And some say
37:39
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't have even gotten to where we were
37:42
Speaker 1: with the wheel if it hadn't have been for things
37:43
Speaker 1: like ox Yeah, because we would have had to pull it. Yeah,
37:46
Speaker 1: that's no good. Um cheap. We eventually figured out that
37:50
Speaker 1: we could breed them for their wool, although apparently there
37:54
Speaker 1: was a five thousand year differential between the time we
37:57
Speaker 1: domesticated cheap and the time we started um using wool.
38:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, before the loom, before they started weaving
38:06
Speaker 1: by hand. Goats. Goats were great because they'll eat anything. Um,
38:12
Speaker 1: so they're super useful. Um. You can be on infertile
38:17
Speaker 1: rocky land and a goat is pretty happy. They're great climbers. Uh,
38:21
Speaker 1: they eat them. Yeah, I got meat. Unfortunately, you can
38:23
Speaker 1: make cheese out of their milk. Yeah. Um, did you
38:26
Speaker 1: know that Kashmir comes from goats? Yeah, yeah, I did
38:30
Speaker 1: not know that. Um. I think they're just good for
38:33
Speaker 1: looking at and thinking they're cute. That's one thing. H Pigs,
38:37
Speaker 1: of course, are descended domesticated from the wild boar and um.
38:42
Speaker 1: Pigs were domesticated mainly because they would eat waste and trash,
38:49
Speaker 1: and so they were handy to have around because they
38:51
Speaker 1: would eat our trash and then we would eat them.
38:54
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting. North America has a pretty fascinating
38:57
Speaker 1: history as far as domesticated animals go. We pigs, in particular,
39:02
Speaker 1: the wild hogs in North America were not around. There
39:06
Speaker 1: are a couple of pig like animals, but there's no
39:08
Speaker 1: true wild pigs in North America, or there weren't until
39:13
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century when De Soto brought a bunch of
39:16
Speaker 1: domesticated pigs who wandered off, some of which wandered off
39:20
Speaker 1: and became the wild hogs of the America's Well, that's
39:23
Speaker 1: the same thing happened to the horse exactly. They originally
39:26
Speaker 1: came over on the bearing Land Bridge and then went extinct.
39:28
Speaker 1: And then the Spanish brought them over and they said, hey,
39:31
Speaker 1: I don't know why they aren't horses here already, because
39:33
Speaker 1: this is pretty great. The horses said that, and some
39:36
Speaker 1: of them went feral. And now you have the horses
39:38
Speaker 1: on Cumberland Island. Yeah they're still wild, aren't they. Yeah,
39:42
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. They're faking it. Cumberland Island is here
39:47
Speaker 1: in Georgia. For those of you that don't know, we're
39:49
Speaker 1: not talking about some like South American country. No, Cumberland Island. Yeah,
39:53
Speaker 1: right here in the South. Um, and you know it's
39:56
Speaker 1: cool is And for me, this is the fact of
39:58
Speaker 1: the podcast. After the horse, the next step forward and
40:02
Speaker 1: speed transportation was five thousand years later with the steam train.
40:12
Speaker 1: D years. Horses were as fast as we could go
40:17
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, tie up twelve of them to
40:19
Speaker 1: that stage coach and we'll be twelve horses strong. But um, yeah,
40:23
Speaker 1: for five thousand years is just amazing. And then following
40:26
Speaker 1: the invented the steam engine, and the horses were like,
40:28
Speaker 1: all right, fine, we'll go over here. But then apparently
40:33
Speaker 1: at first they were used for their meat and their milk, yeah,
40:36
Speaker 1: horse milk again. And then they were used as a
40:39
Speaker 1: mode of transportation. UM. Donkeys also good for transporting in Egypt.
40:45
Speaker 1: They came out of Egypt. Camels good for transport, And
40:47
Speaker 1: you've got a couple of different kinds, the Bactrian and
40:50
Speaker 1: the Arabian camels. UM, and the just using animals for
40:57
Speaker 1: transport and for work kind allowed for not only the
41:01
Speaker 1: agricultural revolution to take hold, but for it to spread
41:04
Speaker 1: as well through trade routes and stuff that allowed humans
41:08
Speaker 1: to just move longer distances faster. So that was another
41:12
Speaker 1: big way that domestication changed humanity. Helped spread like a
41:16
Speaker 1: plague over the face of your so you can ruin everything. Yeah,
41:20
Speaker 1: I guess we can talk about some other um, smaller
41:23
Speaker 1: livestock like chickens and roosters. Um. Like you said earlier,
41:27
Speaker 1: this was I think maybe the second fact of the
41:29
Speaker 1: show is possibly domesticated for entertainment as cock fighters. Yeah,
41:35
Speaker 1: which is sad uh. Turkeys. I didn't know this. They
41:39
Speaker 1: were the um one of the few indigenous North American
41:43
Speaker 1: domesticated animals. Yeah, Mesoamericans domesticated them. Who knew? I didn't
41:48
Speaker 1: know that either. Although if that Fletcher boat you should
41:51
Speaker 1: read four because stuff like that comes up. I just
41:54
Speaker 1: need to read both those at some point. I can't
41:56
Speaker 1: believe you haven't. I know. Here's another one. Bees. We
42:00
Speaker 1: domesticated bees, I'm sure through a very long and painful process.
42:04
Speaker 1: This is discussing as well. Um, but so we domesticated bees,
42:09
Speaker 1: and we use bees to help us with another domesticated organism,
42:13
Speaker 1: the almond tree. Oh yeah, so that's another one that's
42:17
Speaker 1: like sheep, dogs hurting sheep. Oh yeah, yeah, but this
42:20
Speaker 1: is bees pollinating almonds. Yeah. Well, bees, We did a
42:24
Speaker 1: great episode on that. That's how we um sweetened everything
42:27
Speaker 1: for many, many years and still do using honey. But
42:30
Speaker 1: last night it's still delicious in a cocktail. No, on
42:34
Speaker 1: a biscuit, Oh, nice little on the other biscuit. Uh,
42:38
Speaker 1: did you make the biscuit yourself? You we did nice
42:42
Speaker 1: from scratch from the can. Yeah, okay, those are good though.
42:46
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, it's real good. I've noticed is
42:48
Speaker 1: the frozen ones in the bag instead of the can.
42:52
Speaker 1: They they rise a lot more like a traditional Southern
42:56
Speaker 1: biscuit to me, we wanted just like a nasty, buttery
43:00
Speaker 1: like layer biscuit. Yeah, the flaky layers, man, those are
43:04
Speaker 1: good and it's always fun to open the package too,
43:06
Speaker 1: and it's delicious with honey. But thanks to a man
43:09
Speaker 1: named L. L. Lank Strath, he is the guy who
43:13
Speaker 1: really made bee keeping. Uh. There are a lot of
43:16
Speaker 1: people working with frames already, but he's the one. He's
43:18
Speaker 1: the first guy that made removable and movable frames, which
43:22
Speaker 1: apparently bees will have a tendency to uh tie their
43:26
Speaker 1: honeycombs into the wall of the box, let's say, and um,
43:30
Speaker 1: with those removable and movable frames, they weren't I couldn't
43:33
Speaker 1: do that anymore. And apparently that made it really easy
43:37
Speaker 1: to manage them. So thanks to him in eighteen fifty two,
43:40
Speaker 1: smart guy, we could uh domesticate those bees for their
43:44
Speaker 1: delicious honey. And so here's where it comes. Um kind
43:49
Speaker 1: of falls apart from me. I can see saying bees
43:52
Speaker 1: are domesticated. They don't sting you, they're used to being
43:56
Speaker 1: around people. Yeah. Um, silkworms yeah no. Uh, Rabbits no,
44:03
Speaker 1: I would say that you can tame a rabbit, but
44:06
Speaker 1: for the most part, they're not domesticated. And then the
44:09
Speaker 1: same with hamsters, which I didn't realize that they were
44:12
Speaker 1: this recent. Yeah, from nineteen thirty And another fun fact
44:16
Speaker 1: is supposedly the entire population of domesticated or I'm sorry,
44:21
Speaker 1: tamed hamsters derives from that one hamster family because they
44:26
Speaker 1: make so many little hamsters so quickly. So you take
44:30
Speaker 1: issue with silkworms, rabbits, and hamsters as tamed but not domesticated. Yes,
44:35
Speaker 1: like the elephant, just because Hannibal rides an elephant doesn't
44:39
Speaker 1: mean it's domesticated. It meant he had a tamed elephant
44:42
Speaker 1: to ride and chuck. Just before we wrap up, I
44:45
Speaker 1: mentioned that, uh, humans in turn have been domesticated by agriculture,
44:50
Speaker 1: and we have, like we've gone undergone a lot of
44:53
Speaker 1: the same changes that domesticated animals undergo when we domesticate them,
44:57
Speaker 1: Like our reproductive period has increas east because we don't
45:02
Speaker 1: have to carry a kid like ten kilometers every day
45:04
Speaker 1: because we're not hunter gatherers, so we can have more
45:06
Speaker 1: kids on the horse and exactly um. And one of
45:11
Speaker 1: the other ways that we've changed, in addition to some
45:14
Speaker 1: of us becoming lactose tolerant into adulthood, is we've become
45:19
Speaker 1: um ravaged by and also immune to a lot of diseases,
45:25
Speaker 1: a lot of epidemic diseases which couldn't have ever existed
45:29
Speaker 1: prior to the advent of agriculture for two reasons. One,
45:33
Speaker 1: it needs a dense human population that agriculture supports for
45:37
Speaker 1: it to be spread around and contracted and to really
45:40
Speaker 1: gain steam. And then secondly, it also requires a lot
45:44
Speaker 1: of repeated close proximity to animals. And it turns out
45:48
Speaker 1: that all of our epidemic diseases come from the agricultural
45:52
Speaker 1: revolution and are hanging out with livestock a lot like um.
45:57
Speaker 1: For example, um influenza came from pigs and ducks. Um
46:02
Speaker 1: measles and tuberculosis came from cattle. Possibly smallpox came from cattle,
46:07
Speaker 1: if not camels. And then get this, The very fact
46:11
Speaker 1: that all of these, almost all of these worst epidemic
46:16
Speaker 1: diseases have their origins in Eurasia mean that that's because
46:21
Speaker 1: our domestication took place in Eurasia, which means that the
46:25
Speaker 1: people of Eurasia were able to develop resistance and immunity
46:28
Speaker 1: over the generations to these diseases, so they don't get
46:31
Speaker 1: these diseases as much, you know, And when we came over,
46:34
Speaker 1: that's what wiped out the North American New World populations
46:39
Speaker 1: because they didn't have any resistance to these diseases, So
46:43
Speaker 1: you can really make a case that agriculture changed everything
46:47
Speaker 1: more than anything else ever has. So that's that you
46:51
Speaker 1: got anything else. I've got nothing else, man, you need
46:53
Speaker 1: to read that tonight. Okay, if you want to know
46:59
Speaker 1: more about animal domestication, you can type those two seemingly
47:02
Speaker 1: boring but rather fascinating words into the search part house
47:06
Speaker 1: to work dot com and that will bring up this
47:09
Speaker 1: article and then sinsistant search parts. Time for listener mail.
47:14
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Nielsen family. We heard from quite
47:16
Speaker 1: a few got quite a few people that showed pictures
47:19
Speaker 1: of their little like two and three dollar packets, which
47:22
Speaker 1: is kind of neat. I don't think it's even five
47:24
Speaker 1: dollars anymore. I think a couple of people just got
47:26
Speaker 1: two dollars. Apparently they give you two to sweeten the pot,
47:30
Speaker 1: and then once you do it, you get more. That's
47:32
Speaker 1: what I think. Alright, that's what somebody I think said. Well,
47:35
Speaker 1: this is from a real deal Nielsen family that got
47:38
Speaker 1: paid and they're from Atlanta, from Grant Park Um. Apparently
47:41
Speaker 1: our address was picked at random by their computer program
47:44
Speaker 1: and they sent out a representative with a gift set
47:46
Speaker 1: of ugly Tumblers to convince us to participate. We agreed
47:51
Speaker 1: because they pay you about two hundred dollars every six
47:53
Speaker 1: months if you let them track your TV and computer usage. Rob,
47:57
Speaker 1: who was the representative, came by, installed the TV box
48:01
Speaker 1: and computer program, and we check in on us in
48:03
Speaker 1: person every six months and ask a set of questions
48:06
Speaker 1: about our life and purchasing habits. They always asked about
48:09
Speaker 1: table wine, which I thought was interesting. Uh. You know,
48:14
Speaker 1: every time we turned on our two they would have
48:15
Speaker 1: loved me because I would just be drunk on table
48:17
Speaker 1: wine the whole time. Every time we turned on the
48:20
Speaker 1: TV or opened up our laptop, we had to press
48:21
Speaker 1: a button about who was watching. Uh. And using the
48:24
Speaker 1: computer wasn't that hard, but it became annoying after a
48:27
Speaker 1: couple of years. So we're happy when our contract ended.
48:30
Speaker 1: Apparently they were really excited to have us as a
48:32
Speaker 1: part of their program because we were what they call
48:34
Speaker 1: a grand Slam family, which means we were young, under
48:39
Speaker 1: thirty with over the air TV, no cable antenna. Uh,
48:43
Speaker 1: and we owned a Mac. So that's a grand Slam apparently.
48:49
Speaker 1: Uh it seems yeah, I guess. So it seems like
48:52
Speaker 1: we're pretty rare, fined in the world, in their world,
48:54
Speaker 1: so rare that when our two year participation ran out,
48:57
Speaker 1: they all offered us a year long extension. We also
49:00
Speaker 1: got a bonus payment for being a minority household, which
49:03
Speaker 1: is hilarious because both of us are white as can be,
49:06
Speaker 1: but my husband is half Cuban. So that is from
49:10
Speaker 1: Laura and Chris right here in Atlanta. Nice Laura and
49:14
Speaker 1: Chris Nielsen. Yeah, the Nielsen family no cable under thirty
49:20
Speaker 1: Mac users the Grand Slam Grand Slam. If you are
49:25
Speaker 1: a Grand Slam family of some weird sort, we want
49:28
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can tweet to us at
49:30
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast. You can join us on
49:33
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can
49:35
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
49:38
Speaker 1: Works dot com and check out our home on the web,
49:41
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
49:48
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
49:51
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