Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

by Jared Diamond

For example, in the New Guinea villages where I work, I often see people with pet kangaroos, possums, and birds ranging from flycatchers to ospreys. Most of these captives are eventually eaten, though some are kept just as pets. New Guineans even regularly capture chicks of wild cassowaries (an ostrich-like large, flightless bird) and raise them to eat as a delicacy—even though captive adult cassowaries are extremely dangerous and now and then disembowel village people. Some Asian peoples tame eagles for use in hunting, although those powerful pets have also been known on occasion to kill their human handlers. Ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, and modern Indians, tamed cheetahs for use in hunting. Paintings made by ancient Egyptians show that they further tamed (not surprisingly) hoofed mammals such as gazelles and hartebeests, birds such as cranes, more surprisingly giraffes (which can be dangerous), and most astonishingly hyenas. African elephants were tamed in Roman times despite the obvious danger, and Asian elephants are still being tamed today. Perhaps the most unlikely pet is the European brown bear (the same species as the American grizzly bear), which the Ainu people of Japan regularly captured as young animals, tamed, and reared to kill and eat in a ritual ceremony. Thus, many wild animal species reached the first stage in the sequence of animal-human relations leading to domestication, but only a few emerged at the other end of that sequence as domestic animals. ...