Humanity has used animals as companions since before recorded history. We hunted with dogs, milked cows, and rode horses. However, hawks have been used for hunting too. In other countries, Elephants have been used as transportation. You don’t see any of them being used as pets or kept on farms. So, what exactly makes an animal tamed, what makes them domesticated, and is there a way to domesticate tamed ones?

To start off, taming an animal is essentially taking a wild animal and conditioning it to accept the presence of human company, and it usually involves just one animal, or only a few of one type. Meanwhile, domestication of an animal is taking an animal species and selectively breeding it over multiple generations, then taking the ones with the best traits (friendliness, sociability, etc,) and breeding those ones to create a genetically unique breed willing to co-exist and thrive with humans. This process takes time, dogs and cats were not fully domesticated for many years. Taming, however, takes far less time.

So what types of animals are usually domesticated? Well, mostly mammals. Most animals we think of when considering what animals are actually domesticated are mammals. Cats, dogs, sheep, pigs, cows, goats, horses, all of them are mammals. Most non mammal pets aren’t really domesticated, they are tamed. Reptiles like turtles, lizards and snakes are primarily focused on survival, their brains are incapable of feeling affection for humans, and fish just aren’t smart enough to truly be domesticated. Parrots, while smart, are also not considered domesticated due to them not going through the same breeding process as other animals. An exception to this mammal rule is the chicken, which despite being a bird, is considered a domesticated animal due to centuries of humans breeding and raising them for eggs and meat. 

So, if chickens can be domesticated, then can any animal be domesticated over a certain period of time? Well, no. Most animals do not possess the necessary genetic and behavioral traits that are needed to be present during domestication, and years of breeding wouldn’t change that. No matter what you do, a hawk won’t grow bonds with a person like a chicken would, despite both being birds, and an elephant isn’t going to act like a horse just because they are both mammals. Not even centuries of breeding is going to change those animals drastically.

So, are there any animals that can be domesticated eventually? Yes there are, as there are already attempts to domesticate foxes, such as the Russian red fox, which do behave somewhat like dogs. And while they aren’t domesticated yet, they are similar enough to their pet canine counterparts where it is very possible that they could become pets at some point. Just don’t expect to be around to see it.