For at least 15,000 years, humans have domesticated, selectively bred, genetically modified, factory farmed - and, recently, cloned - animals. Gilbert Reid visits Old MacDonald's farm.

About 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, human beings lived by gathering berries
and nuts and fruit and by killing red deer, gazelles, mammoths, horses, and
a myriad of other animals.

One of their rivals as hunter was the wolf, a clever carnivore that hunted
in packs. About 15,000 years ago a number of wolves teamed up with humans – hanging around human campfires and scavenging human leftovers – and, under human influence, these wolves evolved into dogs, and, with their sharp sense of smell and tracking abilities, became invaluable servants of human hunters. In fact, human hunters became so efficient they exterminated most large mammals. By exterminating animals, humans redesigned the environment – and therefore opened up new niches for other animals.

About 10,000 years ago in the Middle East people began to fence in or tie up animals such as goats and sheep, or to herd them, and breed them – in short people had begun to “domesticate” animals.

Over the next few thousand years people domesticated – as well as goats and sheep – cattle and pigs and horses. The wild progenitor of the cow was the huge, fierce, and dangerous Aurochs, now extinct. The ancestor of the pig was a version of the wild boar. The prototype of the horse was the wild
horse – hunted by humans for its meat – of the Steppes of Asia – again, the
original wild horse is now extinct.

These animals – dogs, and goats and sheep, pigs and cattle, and horses – laid the basis for human agriculture and human civilization.
By about 4,000 to 6,000 years ago all the main species – including the water
buffalo, the llama, and the camel – had been domesticated. From that point
on, humans have been living essentially from that stock of animals, changing
the animals into specialized breeds over time.

In the 18th Century, in England, the Industrial Revolution began with the
invention by James Watt of the steam engine. At the same time, an English
tenant farmer, Robert Bakewell, revolutionized animal breeding by
introducing and popularizing inbreeding, an intensive form of incest
breeding by which the characteristics of animals were “fixed”, that is an
animal would produce offspring like itself. Animals could be made to be
bigger, stronger, and to produce more meat faster – to feed the burgeoning
millions – then billions – of human city dwellers resulting from the Industrial Revolution.

The creation of the pure bred system, relying on public records and stud books, intensified the reduction of the genetic base of various breeds through inbreeding.

Partly using Bakewell’s methods, new breeds of chickens, dogs, sheep,
cattle, and horses were developed in the 19th and 20th Century. Breeds and strains of breeds multiplied as farmers experimented with breeding, and as fanciers began to breed for “beauty” and later for “talent”. The first
poultry and dog beauty shows date from the mid-19th Century.

Exotic cats, such as the Siamese and the Persian, were imported to England
from the far reaches of the world, and soon became popular breeds, and were further refined by Bakewell-type breeding methods. Later on unexpected mutants were used to create new breeds, such as the Murray Grey cattle, or the hairless Sphinx cat, or specific mixes of breeds were used to try to create a new breed – a process that led, for example, to the Ocicat.

With farmers and breeders experimenting everywhere, a multitude of hardy,
useful breeds of cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, and dogs were created. But
industrial agriculture following World War II usually concentrated on a
single super-producing, highly standardized animal in each field: one type
of dairy cow, one type of meat chicken, one type of egg laying chicken, one
type of pig, one type of turkey. This process is now reducing the vast
array of breeds and strains of livestock animals developed over the
centuries – indeed over millennia – to the edge of extinction. As a
consequence, much of the biological diversity and wealth on the basis of
which humans have built their civilizations is in danger of disappearing.

Resources: A list of related web sites, book list, and contributors to the show.

How Humans Invented Animals was prepared by Gilbert Reid, and produced by Marilyn Powell.

Photo Credits:
Canadienne Cows, Tina and Rosa, courtesy of Rare Breeds Canada.
Cotswold Ewes, courtesy of Rare Breeds Survivor Trust.
Highland Steer, courtesy of Jan Vorwald Dohner.