GAH: concepts and domestication

Question 1

define livestock by dictionary and UK legal standards

Answer 1

dictionary:
- farm animals regarded as an asset

UK legal definition:
- any creature kept for the production of food, wool, skins, or fur or for the purpose of use in the farming of land or the carrying on in relation to land of any agricultural activity
- pheasants reared for sport are not livestock
- racehorses cannot be livestock within the definition, and land used simply for keeping (but not grazing) horses cannot comprise an agricultural holding, unless horses are kept for the production of meat of use in farming the land

Question 2

define wildlife by UK legal standards

Answer 2

• “wild animal” means any animal (other than a bird) which is or (before it was killed or taken) was living wild
• “wild bird” means any bird of a kind which is ordinarily resident in or is a visitor to GB in a wild state but does not include poultry or (except in sections 5 & 16) any game bird

Question 3

define game by the 1831 Game Act standards

Answer 3

includes hares, pheasants, partridges, grouse, heath or moor game, black game, and bustards

Question 4

what is a social license to operate (SLO)?

Answer 4

ongoing acceptance of a company or industry’s standard business practices and operating procedures by its employees, stakeholders, and the general public

• intangible, unwritten, and non-legally binding social contract
• academic attention on this concept has focused on the mining and minerals industry
• traditionally, SLO has been applied to a practice whose practitioners seek legitimacy due to the perception that those practices or actions cause environmental and/or social harms

Question 5

list some animal products

Answer 5

• meat (including offal)
• milk and milk products
• skins, hides, leather, fur
• hair or wool
• honey
• fish and fish products (caviar)
• crustaceans
• shellfish
• gelatin (cattle, chicken, pigs, and fish)
• insulin (pigs and cattle)
• pituitrin
• snake and spider antivenom (horse, sheep)
• bovine serum albumin and other media (cattle, others)
• recombinant bioactive proteins from milk (cattle, sheep)

Question 6

what is the etymology of animal husbandry?

Answer 6

husbondi - derived from old Norse (500 AD)
- equivalent to hus (house) and bondi (variant of dwell)

middle english variant housebondrie (1250-1300

Question 7

what did Temple Grandin say about the ancient contract between animals and humans?

Answer 7

“People feed, shelter, and breed cattle and hogs, and in return the animals provide food and clothing. We must never abuse them, because that would break an ancient contract. We owe it to animals to give them decent living conditions and a painless death.”

Question 8

describe the meaning of domestication and when it occurred

Answer 8

• a process of social and physical change
• “the process of enfolding a species into human society and taking responsibility for its husbandry and control over its breeding” (Clutton-Brock, 1992)
• occurred around 10-20,000 years ago (400-800 human generations)

Question 9

what happens to the rate of evolution under domestication?

Answer 9

evolution rate is very, very high
- accelerating some aspects
- decelerating others

Question 10

** need to come back to pathways to animal domestication**

Question 11

approximately when and where were dogs domesticated?

Answer 11

• 15,000 to 50,000 years ago
• East Asia, Eurasia

Question 12

approximately when and where were cats domesticated?

Answer 12

• 10,000 years ago
• Middle East

Question 13

approximately when and where were pigs domesticated?

Answer 13

• 9,000 years ago
• East Asia, Middle East

Question 14

approximately when and where were sheep and goats domesticated?

Answer 14

• 10,000 years ago
• Middle East

Question 15

approximately when and where were cows (taurine) domesticated?

Answer 15

• 8,000 years ago
• Eastern Europe

Question 16

approximately when and where were cows (indicine) domesticated?

Answer 16

• 5,000 years ago
• Asia

Question 17

approximately when and where were chickens domesticated?

Answer 17

• 7,500 years ago
• China

Question 18

explain the role domestication plays in changing selective pressures on a species

Answer 18

• some selective pressures are relaxed (mate finding behavior)
• some new selective pressures are imposed by humans, often referred to as “improvement” (milk production)
• some new selective pressures are created by the human environment (adaptation of digestion to new diets)

Question 19

explain the role domestication plays in changing random, non-selective pressures on a species

Answer 19

founder effects, genetic drift, and bottlenecks are major features of early domestication events
- founder effect: original domesticates are a small subset of larger populations
- drift: domesticated populations would have been subjected to geographic isolation from others
- bottleneck: domestic populations were periodically subjected to intensive culling and disease

Question 20

describe how domestication caused skeletal changes in animals

Answer 20

• initial reduction in size (easier to manage; reach puberty sooner; more animals per unit of space)
• allometric scaling (smaller grazers are more efficient than larger)
• increased muscling of hindquarters and reduced forequarter movement
• shorter flatter skull and face (human preference)

Question 21

describe how domestication affected fat deposition in animals

Answer 21

• increased predisposition to deposit body fat in domesticated animals
• animals selected for meat production deposit more fat within the muscle and over the muscle
• animals selected for other traits or wild animals deposit more fat within the abdomen and around the kidneys

Question 22

describe how domestication affected muscle composition in animals

Answer 22

selection for muscle mass (meat) has lead to increased levels of white type 2 muscle (2a: fast-twitch, oxidative, glycolytic) (2b: fast-twitch, predominantly anaerobic glycolytic)
- particularly evident in pork and poultry

Question 23

describe how domestication affected organ size in animals

Answer 23

variable effects include change in proportional size of heart
- landrace pig heart: 0.29% of BW
- wild boar heart: 0.63% of BW

Question 24

describe how domestication affected digestive enzymes in animals

Answer 24

• human environment that dogs moved into provided a relatively starch rich diet
• unintended selection for dogs that have digestive enzyme profiles that enable them to make use of starch
• wolves do not thrive on high-starch diets, but domestic dogs do well on it

Question 25

define a darwin (r) and give examples

Answer 25

1 darwin (r) is a phenotypic change equivalent to a factor of e over 1 million years

• natural populations typically = 0.1-400 darwins
• racehorse selection = 14,000-29,000 darwins
• livestock performance = 380,000 darwins
• natural population colonization or catastrophe = 10,000 darwins