11.2 Domesticating Animals And Plants Flashcards
They selectively bred two things:
Cereals
Domestication of castles
Humans have been able to change the characteristics of some kinds of animals and plants, they have achieved this through…
Selective breeding
The most important plant foods grown by early farmers were cereal grasses, this is because the seed brain is rich in starch and can be…
Stored when dry
Once early farmers were growing cereal grasses they would notice if some plants produced …
Bigger or better grains than others
They could choose the best grain to be used as seed for next year’s crop - less useful grain would be eaten
Humans selected strains of wheat with:
Tall, strong stems
Tall stems were preferred because the wheat was harvested by hand, using a sickle and tall strains of wheat were therefore…
Easier to harvest
The stalks also needed to be strong because tall wheat with weak stems was more likely to be blown over by wind and rain. This is called:
Lodging
Lodging meant that the crop was usually:
Spoiled
Recently, harvesting has become more…
Mechanised
Wheat is now harvested using machinery rather than by hand. This means that plant breeders have developed strains of wheat that are…
High-yielding, but have much shorter stems because machinery can harvest these easily.
Also, short stems are less prone to…
Lodging
A further advantage of short stems is that more of the energy from sunlight that the plan harvests in photosynthesis can go towards growth of the grain, that her than growth of the…
Stem
Modern cattle have developed from the wild aurochs which were:
Fierce and strong animals with long horns and they would not have been easy to domesticate.
Early farmers chose to domesticate ruminants such as cattle for the following reasons:
- They eat grass, which means they digest cellulose. This is a food source that cannot be used by humans directly, so they were not competing with humans for the same food sources.
- They have a HERDING instinct, which makes them easier to manage because they can be rounded up together
These animals were artificially selected so that they had:
Shorter horns
Smaller in size
More docile temperament
Cattle were important for 2 main things:
Meat
Milk
Other uses for their carcass was:
Horns to make tools
Hide to make clothing
Cattle four also be used to pull things along such as…
Ploughs
Modern cattle can be divided into 2 categories:
Dairy
Beef
Dairy cattle have been bred mainly to produce milk. They are usually:
Lean Fairly fine bones Larger udders Strong feet Capable of breeding regularly Some produce large volumes of milk
Beef cattle have been bred mainly for the production of…
Meat
Beef breeds have:
A great deal of muscle tissue, especially around the loins and hindquarters
So much muscle=strong bones and large frames
As soon as humans formed settlements, it is likely that dogs would have gathered around the settlement, attracted by the remains of:
Food
Studies of DNA show that dogs were domesticated from the wolf but were domesticated several:
Times
