Domestication Sentence Examples
Size and form have also been modified by domestication, the wild canary being not more than in.
Domestication has changed the behavior and appearance of cats, but not their digestive systems.
They are docile in disposition, and thus well fitted for domestication.
C. Darwin collected a large number of cases in his Animals and Plants under Domestication.
A more or less close adaptation to local conditions is thus brought about, and breeds or races are produced which are sometimes liable to deterioration on removal even to a short distance in the same country, as in numerous cases quoted by C. Darwin (Animals and Plants under Domestication).
The various breeds of goldfish are familiar examples, but the carp is almost the only food-fish capable of similar domestication.
On many of the islets numerous tropical fruits are found growing wild, but they are no doubt escapes from cultivation, just as the large herds of wild cattle, horses, donkeys, pigs, goats and dogs - the last large and fierce - which occur abundantly on most of the islands have escaped from domestication.
These white breeds are, however, partial albinos; and such semi-albinos are always the result of domestication and could not have arisen in the wild state.
C. Darwin opened his argument by consideration of plants and animals under domestication.
Little is positively known of the wild stock to which we owe our tame birds, nor can the period of its reintroduction (for there is apparently no evidence of its domestication being continuous from the time of the Romans) be assigned more than roughly to that of the African discoveries of the Portuguese.
AdvertisementFinally, in this connexion, the first steps in domestication, beginning with the improvement of natural corrals or spawning ground, and hunting with trained dogs and animals.
With Apis, the genus of the hive-bee, we come to the most highly-specialized members of the family - better known,perhaps, than any other insects, on account of the long domestication of many of the species or races.
It is often confounded with domestication or with naturalization; but these are both very different phenomena.
One of the greatest of his publications was the Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876), a monumental work, which every student will maintain fully justifies its author's hope that it may bear "a similar relation to the eleventh and twelfth chapters of the Origin of Species as Mr Darwin's Animals and Plants under Domestication bears to the first."
It may be added that the long tails of most tame breeds are, like wool, in all probability the results of domestication.
AdvertisementThe feeble development of the horns is probably also a feature due to domestication.
The same author was likewise of opinion that the domestication or taming of various species of wild cats took place chiefly among nationalities of stationary or non-nomadic habits who occupied themselves with agricultural pursuits, since it would be of vital importance that their stores of grain should be adequately protected from the depredations of rats and mice.
Horses are now diffused by the agency of man throughout almost the whole of the inhabited parts of the globe, and the great modifications they have undergone in consequence of domestication, crossing, and selective breeding are well exemplified by comparing such extreme forms as the Shetland pony, dwarfed by uncongenial climate, the thoroughbred racer, and the London dray-horse.
The uniformly reddish or chestnut-brown specimens approach most nearly to the wild mouflon or urial in colour, but the chestnut extends over the whole of the underparts and flanks; domestication having probably led to the elimination of the white belly and dark flank band, which are doubtless protective characters.
They are, however, all so closely allied that'each will, at least in a state of domestication or captivity, breed with any of the others.
AdvertisementThe steps along which plant and animal domestication passed upwards in artificiality are graphically illustrated in the aboriginal food quest.
A more curious case is that of the one-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius), a beast only known in domestication, and that in arid countries; yet a number of these have become feral in the Spanish marshes, where they wade about like quadrupedal flamingoes.
Agriculture, pottery, weaving, the domestication of animals, the burying of the dead in dolmens, and the rearing of megalithic monuments are the typical developments of man during this stage.
And yet in the European Stone age which followed, the age in which the great menhirs and cromlechs were erected, in which the domestication of animals began and the first corn was sown, we find in the strata no image of man or beast, big or little.
In a state of nature canaries pair, but under domestication the male bird has been rendered polygamous, being often put with four or five females; still he is said to show a distinct preference for the female with which he was first mated.
AdvertisementThe domestication of the goldfish by the Chinese dates back from the highest antiquity, and they were introduced into Japan at the beginning of the 16th century; but the date of their importation into Europe is still uncertain.
A multitude of varieties of cultivated plants and domesticated animals existed, and these differed amongst themselves and from their nearest wild allies to an extent that, but for the fact of their domestication, would entitle them to the systematic rank of species.
The hive bee is, moreover, the only insect known to be capable of domestication, so far as labouring under the direct control of the bee-master is concerned, its habits being admirably adapted for embodying human methods of working for profit in our present-day life.
In the case of the latter class, however, acclimatization is a necessary preliminary to naturalization, and in many cases to useful domestication, and we have therefore to inquire whether it is possible.
During the years of its domestication, the canary has been the subject of careful artificial selection, the result being the production of a bird differing widely in the colour of its plumage, and in a lew of its varieties even in size and form, from the original wild species.
Its patient watchfulness, the fascination it exerted over its victims, the easy domestication of some species, and the deadliness of others have always impressed primitive minds.
In a state of nature, every recurring severe winter or otherwise unfavourable season weeds out those individuals of tender constitution or imperfect structure which may have got on very well during favourable years, and it is thus that the adaptation of the species to the climate in which it has to exist is kept up. Under domestication the same thing occurs by what C. Darwin has termed "unconscious selection."