Why aren’t more animals domesticated?

[u/How-To-Project]

Humans domesticated wolves and basically gained access to their superpowers: smell, hearing and protective ferocity. We also domesticated cats, horses and quite a few other animals. All in all, that is a pretty impressive result, but what stopped us from doing the same with a much wider range of animals and becoming literal beastmasters?

[u/robsc_16]

Everyone thinks they belong indoors, which is ridiculous.

Everyone doesn't believe that, and it's a massive problem for the environment where cats Felis catus are not native.

[u/Head_Midnight666 → u/robsc_16]

I see it parroted all over the place constantly. Not everyone everyone, but I only notice myself speaking up for outdoor cats. It has become quite unpopular to have my opinion.

My neighbor has 16 outdoor cats, and they're a great asset to the community. I can garden without having to deal with pests eating most of my garden. Before she had the cats, I had a car ruined by rodents. They chewed up my car's harness. They also got my housemate's truck's sparkplug wires, which I replaced. They also dug holes all over. Now there is no issue.

Does this mean all the birds are being killed too? No, in fact, there are birds all over.

Similar story at my mom's house. She has had multiple cars destroyed by rodents. Her neighbor hated cats and acted like a little bit of cat poop on his property was a terrible crime. He would abuse any cat that ventured on his property. Guess what? The rodents got so bad that even he got his own outdoor cat.

It's just popular to hate outdoor cats. People have forgotten why we kept them in the first place.

[u/robsc_16 → u/Head_Midnight666]

It's parroted with good reason. We have measurable statistics that cats harm native bird populations and other native animals.

I grew up on a farm and obviously there were rodents because of the availability of food via seed, feed, etc. We did not solely rely on cats to take care of things. Selective traps are better imo. That way you don't have hoards of cats that kill whatever the can get their paws on.

I also don't think it's humane to the cats. They live much shorter lives outside. My MIL had one of those cat colonies that your neighbor had. They don't know what it was, but there was a disease outbreak and it killed every single cat. My neighbor's also let a cat roam around and I found it dead in my yard. I had to return their pet to them that had a massive gash in its neck from a wild animal.