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Old 01-22-2018, 03:29 AM   #381
malloyd
 
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Default Re: [IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Most mammals can't bet tamed. The smartest non-avian dinosaurs were cognitively on par with ostriches... I'm doubtful many if any could be domesticated.
What do you think those have to do with each other?

Domestication has little or nothing to do with being "smart", it has to do with having a social structure people can exploit. Things that live in groups (packs, herds, flocks, colonies whatever) are likely candidates. Things that live solo are terrible ones.
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Old 01-22-2018, 06:46 AM   #382
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Crocodiles can be tamed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocho_(crocodile) ), it is just that people rarely make the attempt because of the fact that the grow into large carnivores. In fact, the majority of animals above the intelligence of insects can be tamed and trained, it is just that few people make the effort, though groundhogs seem to be terrible candidates by all reports.
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Old 01-23-2018, 08:30 AM   #383
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Crocodiles can be tamed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocho_(crocodile) ), it is just that people rarely make the attempt because of the fact that the grow into large carnivores.
Some crocodilians don't get *that* large. And of course domestic breeds can be very different from their wild ancestors. Perhaps the latest fad pet on Homeline is a friendly dwarf crocodile native to timeline where they were domesticated by ancient Egyptians several thousand years ago.

Of course many agents who operated on that timeline are not so fond of them, thanks to their traumatic memories of dealing with guard crocodiles.
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Old 01-23-2018, 03:08 PM   #384
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Domesticated crocodiles (as opposed to tame wild crocodiles) would be an interesting export. Saltwater Crocodiles can live up to 100 years, so you could have multiple generations within a human family partnering with a domesticated Saltwater Crocodile. Wild saltwater crocodiles have IQ 3, so a domesticated subspecies could have IQ 4 after hundreds of years of selective breeding (along with increase ST and other traits), with some individuals within the domesticated subspecies reaching IQ 5 or even IQ 6.
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Old 01-23-2018, 03:14 PM   #385
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There were once dwarf elephant species on the Mediterranean islands and in Indonesia. Given how well the large ones domesticate and the dwarf ones were often only waist high to a adult person they might make a new pet. Has to be some worlds where they haven't died out. Or dwarf mastodons from the Channel Islands off California.
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Old 01-23-2018, 03:14 PM   #386
Flyndaran
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Default Re: [IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
What do you think those have to do with each other?

Domestication has little or nothing to do with being "smart", it has to do with having a social structure people can exploit. Things that live in groups (packs, herds, flocks, colonies whatever) are likely candidates. Things that live solo are terrible ones.
Perhaps I should have said trainable rather than domesticated in this context. Domesticated generally means usable and changed from natural state, I suppose.
I assumed they meant domesticated like a riding animal which requires intelligence on par with a mammal.
(I have been extra scatter-brained lately.)
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Old 01-23-2018, 03:20 PM   #387
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Default Re: [IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

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Domesticated crocodiles (as opposed to tame wild crocodiles) would be an interesting export. Saltwater Crocodiles can live up to 100 years, so you could have multiple generations within a human family partnering with a domesticated Saltwater Crocodile. Wild saltwater crocodiles have IQ 3, so a domesticated subspecies could have IQ 4 after hundreds of years of selective breeding (along with increase ST and other traits), with some individuals within the domesticated subspecies reaching IQ 5 or even IQ 6.
Just learning/choosing not to eat people easily the size of normal prey is pretty amazing for any extant reptile. (I think quite a few of us have had house cats that would maul us to death by accident if we were smaller.)

Extinct crocodilians were FAR more varied than the few modern ones.
It's not hard to imagine a smarter even warm blooded relative on a parallel amenable to training.
Saltwater crocs don't mature fast and generation length is what's important for selective breeding, not number of years spent doing so. 15 years minimum per generation is slow.

I wonder if there's a reptilian version of the mammalian and avian domestication syndrome.
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Old 01-23-2018, 03:29 PM   #388
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I agree, but they have created domesticated foxes in only a dozen fox generations, which would translate to a couple hundred years for saltwater crocodiles (or some extinct relative). You just have to ruthlessly throw out any unsuitable candidates during the process.
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Old 01-23-2018, 03:34 PM   #389
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Canines and their relatives are unusually domesticatable.
Many have attempted to domesticate all sorts of animals with only a low percentage working. Horses worked, but zebras, not so much.
Given enough time, effort, and some understanding of heredity, I wouldn't say any particular animal is impossible to domesticate if not necessarily make trainable or much smarter.
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Old 01-23-2018, 04:10 PM   #390
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Default Re: [IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

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There were once dwarf elephant species on the Mediterranean islands and in Indonesia. Given how well the large ones domesticate and the dwarf ones were often only waist high to a adult person they might make a new pet. Has to be some worlds where they haven't died out. Or dwarf mastodons from the Channel Islands off California.
Elephants are not domesticated and never have been. Trained is not at all the same thing.
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