What IS domestication?

At its core, domestication is a selection process shaped by control objectives. I want a cow that is easiest to extract milk and meat from. I want a chicken for the easiest scrambled eggs and sweet and sour wings possible. I want a dog for the best companionship or easiest hunting experience possible. When we domesticate a plant, animal, or person, we have an objective. We’re trying to extract something and we want that extraction to be as quick and easy as possible. So what gets favored or suppressed in a breeding program or a training regimen depends on what makes the organism more compatible with our human-defined system of control. And across species (including humans), here’s what that looks like…

We select for individuals that are calmer, more tolerant of handling, and more willing to defer to authority or hierarchy. We want reduced variability in responses to stimuli (think “calm” dog vs “reactive” dog)…steady, less surprising behavior is easier to manage. We consistently reward (or at least end up with) juvenile traits (neoteny) like playfulness, submissiveness, and prolonged dependency. These make the domesticate easier to mold and keep in a controlled state. Traits that allow reproduction on human terms are also heavily favored…earlier sexual maturity, more frequent cycles, larger litter sizes (or in humans, lineages that adapt to arranged marriages, “concubinage,” follow religious edicts to “go forth and multiply,” etc.). Finally, the ability to navigate symbolic or artificial rules is prized…dogs attuning to human gestures, and humans adapting to bureaucracies or religions.

There are are a few qualities fundamentally opposed to control. These are the traits that selected against in a domestication process. Reactive aggression and impulsivity clearly disrupts group or handler control. High sensory reactivity and vigilance are problems, as well. Skittishness, flight responses, or overreaction to confinement make animals (and people) harder to control. Next, any overt sign of autonomy / resistance to control is obviously and inherently something that needs deletion. Whether that’s a dog that won’t stay in the yard, sheep that have a habit of jumping fences, or a human who won’t accept various forms of subjugation…it simply can’t be tolerated. Broadly speaking, unpredictability needs to trained / bred out. Any trait that makes outcomes less stable…irregular reproduction, volatile behavior, refusal to follow routine. Excessive independence has no home here. Animals that refuse to bond with humans and humans that refuse to bond with institutions are destined for the slaughterhouse, prison, shelter, behavioral therapy, the streets, the margins.

Taken together, this suite of traits produces the domestication syndrome. Smaller brains, reduced sexual dimorphism, more juvenile features, dampened stress responses, and greater and greater compliance. It’s clearly a stunting process…but one that optimizes survival inside artificial systems of control.

So, what is domestication?

You could say it’s the selection against an animal’s drive to act independently of a system of control.