Domestication of Other Animals

Humans are the only mammals that have domesticated other animals that previously existed in the wild. They use them as food, sources of labor, or as pets. Great apes have shown no domestication of animals in the wild. In captivity, there have been rare instances of an ape befriending a member of another species, such as a cat, but this has been interpreted as a formation of a bond more like friendship than the the true domestication of that animal. While domestication does exist in other taxa (e.g., ants domesticate aphids or certain fungi), humans can actively and deliberately control breeding and can select for desired physical and/or behavioral phenotypes.