MODERATOR LARRY ELDER: Should someone have to have a government-issued license to drive a car?
UNKNOWN MAN IN GREY SUIT: Hello no!
DARRYL PERRY: What's next, requiring a license to make TOAST in your own damn TOASTER?
[audience clapping and cheering]
GARY JOHNSON: A...license to drive? You know, I'd like to see some competency exhibited by people...before they drive... [cut off by a loud boo from the audience]
The Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad is, to a modern audiences, what classicists have called “boring as hell,” but I can’t help but think that if you were watching Homer recite it it would have been more like when comedians go, “anybody here tonight from Chicago?” and the Chicagoans in the back start cheering
Homer’s like, “and there were forty black ships from… LOCRIS” and the Locrians in the crowd start going absolutely nuts
Phew. This one took, uh… a bit longer than expected due to other projects both irl and art-wise, but it’s finally here. The long-awaited domestic animal infographic! Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough space to cover every single domestic animal (I’m so sorry, reindeer and koi, my beloveds) but I tried to include as many of the “major ones” as possible.
I made this chart in response to a lot of the misunderstandings I hear concerning domestic animals, so I hope it’s helpful!
Further information I didn’t have any room to add or expand on:
🐈 “Breed” and “species” are not synonyms! Breeds are specific to domesticated animals. A Bengal Tiger is a species of tiger. A Siamese is a breed of domestic cat.
🐀 Different colors are also not what makes a breed. A breed is determined by having genetics that are unique to that breed. So a “bluenose pitbull” is not a different breed from a “rednose pitbull”, but an American Pitbull Terrier is a different breed from an American Bully! Animals that have been domesticated for longer tend to have more seperate breeds as these differing genetics have had time to develop.
🐕 It takes hundreds of generations for an animal to become domesticated. While the “domesticated fox experiment” had interesting results, there were not enough generations involved for the foxes to become truly domesticated and their differences from wild foxes were more due to epigenetics (heritable traits that do not change the DNA sequence but rather activate or deactivate parts of it; owed to the specific circumstances of its parents’ behavior and environment.)
🐎 Wild animals that are raised in human care are not domesticated, but they can be considered “tamed.” This means that they still have all their wild instincts, but are less inclined to attack or be frightened of humans. A wild animal that lives in the wild but near human settlements and is less afraid of humans is considered “habituated.” Tamed and habituated animals are not any less dangerous than wild animals, and should still be treated with the same respect. Foxes, otters, raccoons, servals, caracals, bush babies, opossums, owls, monkeys, alligators, and other wild animals can be tamed or habituated, but they have not undergone hundreds of generations of domestication, so they are not domesticated animals.
🐄 Also, as seen above, these animals have all been domesticated for a reason, be it food, transport, pest control, or otherwise, at a time when less practical options existed. There is no benefit to domesticating other species in the modern day, so if you’ve got a hankering for keeping a wild animal as a pet, instead try to find the domestic equivalent of that wild animal! There are several dog breeds that look and behave like wolves or foxes, pigeons and chickens can make great pet birds and have hundreds of colorful fancy breeds, rats can be just as intelligent and social as a small monkey (and less expensive and dangerous to boot,) and ferrets are pretty darn close to minks and otters! There’s no need to keep a wolf in a house when our ancestors have already spent 20,000+ years to make them house-compatible.
🐖 This was stated in the infographic, but I feel like I must again reiterate that domestic animals do not belong in the wild, and often become invasive when feral. Their genetics have been specifically altered in such a way that they depend on humans for optimal health. We are their habitat. This is why you only really see feral pigeons in cities, and feral cats around settlements. They are specifically adapted to live with humans, so they stay even when unwanted. However, this does not mean they should live in a way that doesn’t put their health and comfort as a top priority! If we are their world, it is our duty to make it as good as possible. Please research any pet you get before bringing them home!
I am once again stating that the last part of the infograph was NOT an “adopt don’t shop” message and I assumed I clearly said “do not support unethical breeders,” as in breeders who breed more for aesthetics than health.
I did not mean for it to sound like I was calling all breeders unethical. It’s saying that if you truly want a breed with unethical traits, then it is better to adopt it than to encourage more breeding of that trait (though you could also buy from a breeder who is specifically avoiding those traits.) I’m sorry this point was not clear enough.
Also, I have been answering questions and adding a lot of clarification in the comments and reblogs here, but I’d like to address some of the points that keep coming up:
🔴 A “blood sport” is any sport or entertainment that involves intense fighting, bloodshed, and/or risk of death. There is a list of bloodsports on the Wikipedia page here. (I would highly recommend not looking too far into the animal-related ones as they are very upsetting. The 17th-18th century Europeans were barbaric.) A blood sport does not always entail “making animals fight each other.” See for example bullfighting, which involves a human fighting a bull. The bloodsport listed under fancy rats alludes to “rat-baiting” which involved throwing a bunch of rats in a pit for a terrier to kill, and taking bets on how long it took the dog to kill all the rats. This is not necessarily what they were domesticated for, but this was what led to fancy rats eventually being domesticated. The prettiest, nicest rats were spared from the pit, dressed in ribbons, and became pets.
🐓 I somehow forgot to add “bloodsport” under chickens, as well as “livestock guarding, companionship” under African/Chinese Geese. This was a lot of information to keep track of at once. :T Some breeds of chickens were definitely bred specifically for cockfighting, and African and Chinese Geese also make good guard animals.
🐄 While only some of the animals here have “companionship” listed under “bred for,” all of them could technically be kept for companionship. Those are just the species which have been specifically bred to be pets in the past or currently. While sheep can make good pets, there are no breeds that are specifically bred for that purpose, that I am aware of.
🍑 Asses were named before “ass” became a slang term for buttocks. In fact, the slang term was originally “arse,” a separate word from the animal, but the r was dropped in the 1860s. Etymology is interesting like that, and it’s unfortunate these beautiful endangered equids have to live at the whims of our ever changing vocabulary. Let’s not hold human language against them, eh?
🦎 There are certainly gray areas as to what makes a good pet and what doesn’t, especially when it comes to reptiles and invertebrates. In general, domestic species will always make better pets as they are specifically adapted to live with us and more resources are available for their care. Some reptiles, like corn snakes and bearded dragons, have adapted well to being bred in human care, and are easily tamed. But whether there are domestic non-avian reptiles is a point of contention. There are certainly many being bred in captivity for their colors and markings, but that does not make a species domesticated. Species that do exceedingly well in captivity, are not being captured from the wild to bolster the pet trade, and don’t have specialized diets or at least don’t have diets that are hard to replicate and make easily accessible to pet owners, are usually fine to keep as pets. (I myself have a corn snake, sand boa, crested gecko, and tarantulas.) It’s definitely a case by case basis. But you’re not gonna have as hard a time figuring out the ethics of keeping a particular pet if it’s a species that’s fully domesticated.
🐍 Oh yeah, and my examples at the end of the infograph were meant to be examples of unethical breeding and not examples of unethical breeds, but I unfortunately wasn’t clear about that. Spider is a morph of ball python, not a breed. There are no breeds of non-avian reptile, merely morphs which are aesthetic colors and/or patterns.
🐫 There are three species of camel alive today: the Domestic Dromedary, the Domestic Bactrian, and the Wild Bactrian. However, both wild ancestors of the Domestic Dromedary and the Domestic Bactrian are extinct. The Wild Bactrian was originally thought to be the ancestor of the Domestic Bactrian, but genetic studies have shown that these species diverged before humans were even a Thing. So, yes, there are still wild camels, but the Wild Bactrians are critically endangered and pretty rare. Most “wild” populations of camel today are actually feral.
🇲🇽 I was also a little confused about axolotls while researching this. The Aztecs did not domesticate them as far as I could find; they just hunted them. Scientists took them to France for scientific research and due to their high capacity for breeding and hybridization with tiger salamanders their gene pool is now quite different from that of wild axolotls. I listed “meat” in their “bred for” section because I found that they were raised for food in Japan, but apparently it is just this one specific restaurant in Osaka that serves them.
🐴 Like Wild and Domestic bactrian camels, Domestic Horses and Przewalski’s Horses diverged long before the domestication of the horse. There were apparently some attempts to domesticate Przewalski’s Horses in history, possibly resulting in the Botai horses, but the living population has never been domesticated, according to the most recent studies.
🐈 Cats are fully domesticated. They are very different from African Wildcats. They are not semi-domesticated or semi-wild, and they should not be allowed to roam outdoors unsupervised both for their own health and safety and the health of the environment.
Working with different business cultures all over the globe, my biggest surprise is that while the USA is bad, it's not actually the very absolute worst I've ever worked with.
The key is business culture is like its own weird separate culture with rules and structures, but most places have a fairly comprehensible set of expectations. So most of the time, it's just remembering perceived differences in expectations. Some places it's polite to be what feels really overly friendly to me. Some places it's polite to be what feels obsequious and formal to me. It's like, whatever. A secondary form of language kinda. It's not even social cues, it's just mechanics of language really. Places with that stuff, those are all fine and wonderful to deal with because there's a framework to communicate and all that.
Part of why the USA shits the bed trying to talk with is because every business person here has like zero framework, it's all lies and bullshit, and everyone wants to be the smartest bestest boy. It's not business culture as much as daycare for toddlers who have millions of dollars and hate human rights. Not the worst though, not by far.
What's key to understand is this is all separate from things like the real people in different places. Business brain people don't have any relevance to real human behavior, it's this whole other structure of make believe which controls everyone's well being. It's important to know because I know how to email a business guy in South Korea using language that will feel appropriate enough after translation, but that's completely irrelevant to the real people living there. It's easy to talk to business guys in China or India or whatever. Germany, Nigeria, Mexico.
UK business guys are pretty bad too. Still not the worst but you have to put a lot of extra work in because business culture in the UK still thinks the Brittish empire exists. The majority of business dudes in the UK see no difference between selling something that has their company name on it, and making it themselves. It's like how all the stuff that says "made in the USA" is 99% made somewhere else, and then one staple is put into it and it's made in the USA, but if you talk to business guys here, they never confuse where things are made, just like... more basic realities like linear time and physics. UK guys go the opposite way, and always say they own everything. But that's all relatively navigable. It's like, okay, you all live in an imaginary world, but I can still get everyone to understand time and logistics and stuff enough to get everyone understanding the same information. I can translate imagination land to reality and back, they get it.
Australia business guys are the worst. Uncontested. I keep minutely detailed notes on every interaction I have with any business brained Australian. I don't want to do this. I have to. Working with business guys in Australia is like being stuck in a marriage with an emotionally abusice pickup artist. Their favorite way to communicate is using work appropriate language to imply you're stupid and your work is worthless. Luckily, there's also no way to explain what you do, because I think when you get a corporate executive level position in an Australian business, they surgically remove the part of your brain that takes in new information.
My average verbal or email exchange with an Australian business guy goes something like this:
"Okay, this is going to take around a month. We need so and so dollars to start. Also, the Earth orbits the Sun."
"Great, just to confirm, we're ready to deliver tomorrow, and the giant hamster rolls the sunball across the sky. Sounds good, have you started?"
It's infuriating in some ways, fascinating in others. Information simply vanishes into an Australian business person as if you hurled it into space, but something in space might theoretically end up somewhere and everything I say to Australian business guys doesn't. I've tried every way around it, and nothing works. And they become enraged when the things they imagined, which no one ever actually said, don't happen. Like you know those clips from Alex Jones in court being read his own words? Imagine that instead of blustering denial he demanded to know how the lawyer was so incompetent at lawyering because words don't exist and he was told this was a carnival cruise not lawsuit. And they have both of the worst traits of USA and UK business guys on top of all that. And I've never heard anyone even close to the same level of casual racism as business guys in Australia. I mean, business guys as a rules aren't great people, but nowhere I've ever worked with has been so consistently terrible to deal with. It would be one thing if it was an outlier, I've had one or two USA companies that were rough, sometimes companies in South Korea can be a real pain, navigating business culture in France if you're from the USA is a labyrinth. But Australia. Those business guys are on another level. Every other company with dodgy practices knows what they’re doing that's questionable. I don't know if business guys in Australia have the ability to understand... like... language. Do they understand laws, money, logistics, anything? Impossible to say! They walk and talk like people but they have discovered some means by which they never intake any information ever. It's like plausible deniability evolved into a new part of the brain specifically to make it easier to be as unethical as the manifest physical reality permits. The regular people in Australia all seem fine, just more people, but the business operators are like night and day. I can find ways to communicate with non-English speakers fairly well, knowing how to work language to adapt to translation is fun. I can't make fucking heads or tails of English speaking Australian corporate execs. If you speak any second language, any at all, know that you are doing better at it than these guys are in their first one. It's literally impossible to overstate how uniformly unpleasant it is to work with business guys from Australia. They are, without question, the worst.
@elodieunderglass Those look really interesting, do you have a link to a sharper version? (Or is there a joke about communication difficulties and you're not supposed to see what it says?)
Ha, yeah, I hadn’t expected Tumblr to compress it like that - “do you love the colour of business communication around the world?”
The body of work is called “Communication Patterns Around the World,” by Richard Lewis. The main book they’re from is at the bottom of the image, but they’re widely spread. Googling will lead to many articles and many images.
its gonna be so nuts when our generation of old people is shuffling around with big stupid meme tattoos imagine being a personal support specialist in 2080 and peepaw has a bee movie script sleeve and youre twenty years old and delivering pills like dude what is that and he goes Its from a movie about a jerry seinfeld bug lusting after a human woman who looks like flo from progressive who is still a prominent american cultural figure and you say OK and then you help him plug into his VR headset to play for2nite the sequel to fortnite and he mains former president hunter biden and then you go on lunch break and pay $75 for a ham and cheese sandwich
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