domesticating chimps. why not

[Martin]

Interesting since both Chimps and Gorillas are dying from Ebola, scientists figured it had to be coming from somewhere else.
I read that they thought the original source could be a rodent so I guess bats would be it. Any mention of how it's transmitted from the bats?
Flea bites would be my guess or maybe chimps eating bats.

[Blarg]

Ebola can be transmitted through the air or through touching anything that has had a germ contact it, and through bodily fluids. With bats, as the natural host, there won't be massive amounts of bodily fluids leaking or blood droplets etc. being coughed into the air, but of course you can put many millions of germs on the head of a pin. I'm sure just handling an infected bat could get you, or breathing the air it breathes, or eating it. The article I read did say that the amount of virus in many bats was extremely low, so perhaps you could go breathing the air of an ebola infected bat for quite a while without getting infected. I guess it depends what organs and tissues it's stored in, etc., as to its chances of making its way out into the world.

They are trying to ban the eating of bats now, but partially just to encourage people to stay away from them and not handle them.

[MrMon]

If it were simply a matter of aggression, you could breed that out of the chimps. The real problem with domesticating them is they breed too slowly. Take a look at all the animals that are domesticated. Almost all are quick to breeding age, all have young at least every other year. To domesticate, you need a large supply of animals from which to select, as you are literally creating a new species. (Elephants are the exception, but they aren't really domesticated, just trained.)

Once you have a large number of animals from which to select, the animal has to be genetically disposed to domestication, e.g. there has to be something that allows them to become docile. Even if you could get enough animals, sometimes the animal is just going to remain wild. Jared Diamond points out that ideally, Africans should have domesticated the zebra, but genetically, it's missing something found in the horse to allow it to domesticate. No doubt they tried, but ultimately failed, through no fault of their own.

So, great apes simply breed too slowly, plus, they're probably too smart to ever truly domesticate.

[RunDownHouse]

You should read some of the established great minds in anthropology that mostly say Diamond is a quack with poorly-supported theories.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
You should read some of the established great minds in anthropology that mostly say Diamond is a quack with poorly-supported theories.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know who Jared is or much of anything about the field, but I understand it is one rife with politics and bitchy and sometimes earnest disagreement. Stephen Jay Gould for instance disagrees strongly with Richard Dawkins, and with a great many others too.

This really isn't all that rare in science.

[Rduke55]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You should read some of the established great minds in anthropology that mostly say Diamond is a quack with poorly-supported theories.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know who Jared is or much of anything about the field, but I understand it is one rife with politics and bitchy and sometimes earnest disagreement. Stephen Jay Gould for instance disagrees strongly with Richard Dawkins, and with a great many others too.

This really isn't all that rare in science.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, antrhopology is a mess. It's like high school.
And many scientists have a bad impression of "popularizer" scientists.
I like a lot of Diamond's stuff. I thought Guns, Germs, and Steel was a great read.