Domesticated

Evolution in a Man-Made World

By: Richard C. Francis

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Without our domesticated plants and animals, human civilization as we know it would not exist.

We would still be living at subsistence level as hunter-gatherers if not for domestication. It is no accident that the cradle of civilization - the Middle East - is where sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced their fatefully intimate associations with humans.

Before the agricultural revolution, there were perhaps 10 million humans on Earth. Now there are more than seven billion of us. Our domesticated species have also thrived, in stark contrast to their wild ancestors. In a human-constructed environment - or manmade world - it pays to be domesticated.

Domestication is an evolutionary process first and foremost. What most distinguishes domesticated animals from their wild ancestors are genetic alterations resulting in tameness, the capacity to tolerate close human proximity. But selection for tameness often results in a host of seemingly unrelated by-products, including floppy ears, skeletal alterations, reduced aggression, increased sociality, and reduced brain size. It's a package deal known as the domestication syndrome.

Elements of the domestication syndrome can be found in every domesticated species - not only cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses but also more recent human creations, such as domesticated camels, reindeer, and laboratory rats. That domestication results in this suite of changes in such a wide variety of mammals is a fascinating evolutionary story, one that sheds much light on the evolutionary process in general.

We humans, too, show signs of the domestication syndrome, which some believe was key to our evolutionary success. By this view human evolution parallels the evolution of dogs from wolves, in particular.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2015 Richard C. Francis (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Dry listening.

Very dry but interesting. I was listening on a long road trip & in places the narrator almost put me to sleep!

Stellar

Overall very well written and research. Gem of a book. One of the best in this genre.

I learned so much about animals & people

Some of my favorite animals were an in-depth study of camels & the hilarious experience he had with them.
I enjoyed the horse evolution too, along with cats, dogs, pigs, foxes and more. I’m an animal love so found it especially interesting.

Still chewing...

What made the experience of listening to Domesticated the most enjoyable?

I really enjoyed the tidbits about each animal as they relate to the history of humanity. Some interesting points about human evolution were especially satisfying.

Would you recommend Domesticated to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes, However rather than an audio book, I would recommend a physical copy. The narration constantly referenced charts and pictures that I didn't have readily accessible and that I feel could have made parts of the especially hard science aspects of the book more understandable.

Any additional comments?

I found this book enjoyable but the more professional terms as well as hard science parts of the book went over my layman's understanding of genetics. Some people might find the repetition of connected facts to be arduous, but didn't bother me personally.

Science + History

Self-domesticating racoons? Not just a fascinating story about our favorite pets, this book explains what it may mean to find a racoon in your yard, or in my case, my dog's dinner bowl while camping. Did you know that there is not just one theory of evolution, as started by Darwin, but a whole series of sophisticated developments of that theory using modern evidence? This book combines up to the minute biological science with an objective comparison of differing theories of evolution, taking domestication processes as an accelerated subcase of evolution. It could be a dry book but it's not because it weaves in pre-history, history, social human systems and even personal stories just when your eyes get crossing over the technical terms. You must be tolerant of learning new scientific concepts but it doesn't expect that you already know them.

I actually found the several appendix chapters fascinating, especially the author's critical review of psychobiology theorists who seem to be ignoring much of the latest developments in the theory of evolution that don't fit their prior hypothesis. My extension of this critique (not mentioned by the author) is that this incomplete view has been latched onto by popular social movements, such as the Paleo diet, founded on outmoded assertions about how long it takes for human dietary adaptation to occur. Any hypothesis that starts with the assumption that we haven't changed since paleolithic days is now going in the category of pseudoscience in my view.