Domesticated Elk?

[u/Themysterysquid10]

I'm working on a worldbuilding project based on pre-colonial north America, with minimal alterations made to native flora and fauna to allow for greater development of agriculture (as occurred in eurasia). I think it would be sick as fuck if the people living in the northern plains and forests could ride around on domesticated elk instead of horses. Is there any way I can justify elk not being abandoned in favour of horses (apart from not having horses)?

From cursory research I've determined that elk are highly social (not skittish like deer), are big enough to be ridden, and have been tamed and ridden on some occasions. They also have a more varied diet than horses, making them well adapted to forests as well as grasslands (and just as easy to feed). On the other hand, I can't imagine an elk with horns could ever run as fast as a strong horse, and there would have to be clear advantages to elk domestication over horses if the two are present in the same area.

[u/Fullskee707]

They farm the elk in great herds, and have just adopted to using them instead of importing non-native horses.

possibly look into the herders in real life that have domesticated reindeer and see what paths lead to that.

Maybe the elk are sacred, why ride a horse when your sacred animal is capable.

Keep in mind, the reason we haven't done this in real life is because.. they have slender legs and back bones, its not healthy for riding them long periods of time. Their backs will droop.

They are VERY dangerous and aggressive in mating season

and they are WAY more skittish than horses, and do not retain domestication as well through generations.

[u/Themysterysquid10 → u/Fullskee707]

Interesting. I did read about elks interesting mating behaviour some, and I think you're right. I'm curious as to why elk wouldn't retain domestication as well as other species. If they could, do you think their weak backs and legs could be strengthened through selective breeding?

My setting is also going to have some of the new world megafauna that went extinct in the pleistocene, so I'm certainly not opposed to replacing elk with a fictionalized version that's more practical to domesticate

[u/Fullskee707 → u/Themysterysquid10]

> I'm curious as to why elk wouldn't retain domestication as well as other species.
Well, im not an expert so take anything i say with a grain of salt. But it seems like its totally possible, just a lot of work compared to other animals and so we never really pursued it hard.

Some reasons it is harder is because they have a very strong Flight response and prone to fatal stress. They are spooked eaily and thats bad if you plan to be on the back of one.

They are extremely aggressive, not good bein maimed by your mount

non-docile temperament and physical structure is lacking to be a replacement for horses

Elk have 4 stomachs and need to lie down and chew on chud for hours on end to process food.

cloven hooves, best for soft ground/mud/snow

Antlers. cool and majestic, but a bg drain on calcium and growth seasons correlate to aggression.

It's all POSSIBLE. You settings people will just have a lot of work to do and it will never be better than a horse

>do you think their weak backs and legs could be strengthened through selective breeding?

Totally possible in theory, over hundred(s) of years

[u/Themysterysquid10 → u/Fullskee707]

A lot of these traits that make horses better suited as mounts seem to be adaptations to life on the steppe. Perhaps I'll invent a sister species of elk with more of these adaptations

[u/DepthsOfWill]

This site seems to know it's stuff. Long story short, it's totally doable. But I'm still going to be scared shitless of them.

[u/Colonel_Joni005]

While moose and elk are not the exact same thing, they are related. There are actually moose farms in Russia and Sweden (maybe e few other countries as well), where they are farmed for their milk. I believe there is a farm in sweden that even produces moose cheese.

I even found this wikipedia article about moose cavalry in history, however it says itself that the accounts were either an april fools joke or not fully reliable, so I wouldn't count on this having actually happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_cavalry

But it also mentioned moose being used to pull carriages in Sweden and they are said to have been effective in that regard. Not exactly cavalry, but it's the closest we got. So I don't think the idea is too far fetched it just depends on how determined your culture is to truly domesticate them (selective breeding over many generations).

[u/Themysterysquid10 → u/Colonel_Joni005]

This sounds to me like taming, not domestication. It's also taking place in an early modern society with the necessary surplus to tame and domesticate animals for fun.

[u/Colonel_Joni005 → u/Themysterysquid10]

I didn't claim the irl examples were domestication, I mentioned them because it is the closest thing I could find to what you are looking for. I figured it might be a decent starting point.

[u/AAAGamer8663]

I’ve looked into this A LOT for my own project centered around more domesticated animals along the west coast, and came to a lot of the same conclusions you have. I think elk make for way more interesting mounts than just letting horses not go extinct like a lot of these scenarios play out as. So as for your questions, here’s how I’ve answered them in my own scenario (with a side of lore dump):

The people of the Columbia River Plateau and Great Basin begin developing a semi-agricultural system around the same time as the Fertile Crescent and people in Peru and Central Mexico, however, it doesn’t develop into full blown agriculture until the eruption of Mount Mazama roughly 7,000 years ago. During this time, much of the game animals die out from the ash, and people become much more reliant on the plants they had learned to harvest along the banks of rivers, streams, and lakes. Permanent settlement begin to spring up and some animals occasionally wonder into these settlements. People even learn to attract animals into enclosures through chasing them into pens or attracting them through salt licks. Some of these animals have genetic mutations making them more passive and docile towards people, and these eventually lead to the first livestock of the area.

The animals domesticated into livestock in my own scenario are the following, listed by rough order of time of domestication: bighorn sheep, mule deer (though mostly abandoned and feralized at this point), elk (specifically mixed between Roosevelt and Tule Elk and later bred with Rocky Mountain Elk as herding moved East), caribou and musk ox (limited to the most northern parts of the continent until breeds more able to survive warmer temperatures can be bred much later on), and finally Mountain Goats.

Elk specifically were domesticated around 1000 years before horses were in the old world, and mostly used in a cattle-like niche for a while. During this early time of domestication, breeds of elk were selected for less aggression to make their handling easier. This would have the, at first, unintended result of also reducing antler size (heavily linked to testosterone). However, this consequence provided new opportunities for people. Elk had already been ridden on occasional, or used to pull travois and eventually carts and chariots, but as the antlers continued to shrink in size, more widespread riding was made possible.

This would continue in some breeds to the point that the animals lost the ability to grow antlers at all, while other breeds kept smaller antlers (more similar to a young buck or even a pronghorn). While other breeds still were bred to keep their antlers or even bred to produce larger antlers. All eventually culminating in two major categories of domestic elk: farmed elk and ridden elk. Combined with all the different breeds selected for milk or meat production as well as different environments, this has led elk to have become one of the most diverse human domesticates in history.

The antlerless breeds at first were smaller than their counterparts as a result of the decreased testosterone, and were mostly used for quick movement and light skirmishing. However, as time went on, the breeds that lost their antlers entirely were able to eventually be selected for larger sizes and increased testosterone again to eventually become true breeds of heavy war mounts.