Which Ungulates Are Rideable?

It stands to reason that certain animals would have been better suited to domestication over others and that those were selected by accident/intent/experimentation and thus worked upon. However I suspect that there's also an element of need. If you've already got your cattle/dog/horse/pig/whatever then chances are you don't, as a native person, feel a pressing need to go out and get more of the same from the wild to tame; especially as taming can come with a high risk.

So way-back the risks were even higher and the exchange of knowledge lower. So chances are many potentially viable species were overlooked once the process started. As a result today we've got breeds with thousands of generations of selective breeding against those without such a breeding history. So its easy to say that modern non-domestics are "too wild" when in actuality its more likely that they are just too wild at present. Of course how many generations it would take to domesticate would be up in the air for debate and might well vary on a lot of factors.
 
Yes: ancient Egypt shows many failed domesticates in addition to those that survived as familiar. But often domesticates do not spread where you would expect. Paleoindians of Otamid racial type are thought to have had fogs similar to the Carolina dogs but their Fuegian descendants had a local fox. So either Fuegians switched over or somehow lost New World domestic dogs beforehand.
 
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Just realized I wanna do this only with a big male Gaur!


How much bigger would a castrated male Gaur be than an intact Gaur? I read on San Diego Safari Park's blog a while ago that they have a castrated male. I've never seen an ox or team of oxen in person but would like to see a pulling competition some day. I read all about oxen in this book. It's really cool! I'd train the Gaur using it's techniques. I got my edition in 2008 so the cover looks different.
Oxen: A Teamster's Guide by Drew Conroy (paperback) - Tillers International
 
Apparently, Cape Buffalo are able to be semi-domesticated with time and patience. Here's a fascinating documentary about a man's quest to save the disease free Cape Buffalo in South Africa. It's called "Buffalo Warrior".
 
FunkyGibbon said:
In Guns, Germs and Steel, the author makes the case that essentially all domestication, particularly of ungulates, has already happened. Some species are more predisposed to it and others probably can't be. The fact that humans originated in Africa, and yet the donkey is the only domesticated ungulate to come from there is evidence that the others are simply nowhere near as suitable.
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I wouldn't dispute that argument but GGS is a highly flawed book.
 
tschandler71 said:
I wouldn't dispute that argument but GGS is a highly flawed book.
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Honestly I don't know enough about that field to talk about it knowledgeably, but I thought a lot of what he said made sense. There were a couple of points where it seemed like he had made some jump that wasn't reasonable though. I'd like to know your thoughts.
 
Whilst I've not read the book in my experience when authors/writers make large leaps of logic or miss out chunks of information it can be for several reasons.

Most often I see it because they've learned something at the casual/adhock/in the field level. Ergo they've learned a subject to a particular depth and that depth might only be at a functional day-to-day level or they've learned theories/concepts that are taught/passed on at the early level.

The problem there is that many subjects often get simplified at that stage so that the information is more directly easy to understand. However it often glosses over, misses or even gets some more complex underlying fundamentals wrong.


As such it can cause all kinds of confusion because those who do know the subject to a greater depth can see the errors and problems; whilst those who don't can typically follow the logic along and agree with the author (or put into basic practice what the author says).

Personally I still hold the view that more species are capable of being domesticated than currently are, but that historically there was simply no need when there were already better established domestics to make use of. Fast forward to today and there's simply no pressure to domesticate them beyond the pet market which is frightfully fickle and jumpy as to what is "popular" so there's no long term interest.
 
FBBird said:
There was a private zoo in the UK many years ago (can't remember any detail) where the owner insisted all his animals could be ridden.
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I believe you're thinking of Sir Anthony Wingfield's private zoo at Ampthill House in Bedfordshire. (Wingfield was President of the Amateur Menagerie Club.)

Also on the subject of rideable ungulates:

The cover picture of the book "Ride a Rhino" (Michaela Denis; 1959) features the author, Michaela Denis, riding the Indian rhinoceros "Mohan" at Whipsnade.
 
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FBBird said:
There was a private zoo in the UK many years ago (can't remember any detail) where the owner insisted all his animals could be ridden.
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Tim May said:
I believe you're thinking of Sir Anthony Wingfield's private zoo at Ampthill House in Bedfordshire. (Wingfield was President of the Amateur Menagerie Club.)
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And I’ve just found a snippet of film, taken at Wingfield’s zoo. featuring people riding various animals including ostriches, zebras, llamas, bulls and even a pig!

See link below

Animal Rides at Wingfield's Ampthill Zoo
 
Guns Germs and Steel makes interesting points but it's been torn apart in the history community for the author's tendency to follow bad scholarship.
 
I found a video on YT of someone who tried to ride a Gaur at a safari park. The Gaur's name is/was Diesel.
 
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