What Animal Will Humans Domesticate Next?

[00:00:00]Somewhere out there, right now, there is an animal living its absolute best life.

[00:00:04]Completely wild, completely free, no idea what's coming, no idea that in a few hundred or maybe a few thousand years, some descendant of ours is going to look at it and go, "Yeah, that one.

[00:00:16]That one's going to live in my house and eat out of a bowl with its name on it."

[00:00:19]Because that's what we do. That's literally what humans do. We look at wild, dangerous, unpredictable creatures and go, "What if friend?" We did it with wolves. We did it with wild boars. We did it with the ancestor of the cow, which by the way was called the auroch, and aurochs were absolutely terrifying.

[00:00:38]6 ft tall at the shoulder, massive horns, would destroy you without a second thought. And some ancient human looked at one and thought, "Milk machine."

[00:00:47]Absolute legend, but here's the thing most people don't realize. Domestication isn't over. It didn't stop. It's not some ancient process that finished 10,000 years ago and now we're just maintaining.

[00:01:00]No. No. No. Right now, today, there are animals on this planet sitting at various stages of the domestication pipeline. Some of them are being actively bred in captivity. Some of them are already living alongside humans.

[00:01:14]Some of them are just suspiciously friendly for wild animals.

[00:01:18]And today we're going to talk about which ones might actually make the cut.

[00:01:22]Which animals are most likely to become the next dog, the next cow, the next wait, you have one of those as a pet?

[00:01:28]Let's start with what domestication actually means, because people get this wrong all the time. Domestication is not taming. This is important. A tame animal is an individual that has learned to tolerate or even enjoy human presence.

[00:01:40]You can tame almost anything if you raise it from birth and have enough patience and enough scars. People have tamed tigers. People have tamed crocodiles. There's a man in Russia with a domesticated bear named Stepan, who apparently loves watching TV and hugging people. Stepan is a tame bear. Stepan is not a domesticated bear. Domestication is genetic. It's a change that runs through an entire population, passed down through generations, selected for over time.

[00:02:06]Domesticated animals are fundamentally different at the biological level from their wild counterparts. They behave differently, they look different, usually smaller heads, floppier ears, shorter faces. They reproduce differently. They even think differently. The classic example is the fox experiment. In the 1950s, a Soviet scientist named Dmitri Belyaev started selectively breeding silver foxes. He only picked the ones that were friendliest toward humans, bred them together, picked the friendliest offspring, repeated. Within just a few generations, something wild happened.

[00:02:37]The foxes didn't just get friendlier, they started looking different. Floppy ears, spotted coats, curled tails, they started barking, they started seeking human attention. They looked and acted like dogs, even though nobody selected for any of that, just for friendliness.

[00:02:53]The physical changes came along for the ride because they're all connected to the same underlying biology. That experiment tells us something massive.

[00:03:01]Domestication can happen faster than we thought, and it tells us what to look for when we're trying to predict the next domesticated animal.

[00:03:08]So, what are the criteria? What does an animal need to be a candidate? First, it has to be able to breed in captivity.

[00:03:15]This sounds obvious, but it eliminates a ton of animals. Giant pandas famously struggled with this for decades.

[00:03:22]Cheetahs are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity. Some animals just will not do it unless everything is exactly right. Second, it needs a flexible diet. You cannot domesticate a koala.

[00:03:34]Koalas eat almost exclusively eucalyptus leaves, which are slightly toxic, and they've evolved a special gut to handle them. The logistics alone would be a nightmare. You want animals that will eat what you give them, not animals that require a very specific imported leaf from one continent. Third, it needs a relatively calm disposition, or at least the capacity for one. Not necessarily calm right now. Aurochs weren't calm.

[00:03:59]Wolves weren't calm. But, there has to be variation in the population. Some individuals that are less reactive, less aggressive, less prone to panic. You need something to select for. Fourth, and this one is underrated. It needs to have social structures that are compatible with human interaction. Herd animals, pack animals, animals that naturally have a hierarchy. These are way easier to domesticate because they already have the mental framework for this individual is in charge and I should follow them. You slot yourself into that role, and suddenly the animal is comfortable. Zebras fail this test spectacularly, by the way. Everyone always asks, "Why didn't Africans domesticate zebras instead of horses?"

[00:04:38]And the answer is, zebras are genuinely insane. They have almost no variance in their aggression. Every zebra is ready to fight at basically all times. They bite and they don't let go. There's a reason zookeepers are statistically more likely to be injured by zebras than by lions.

[00:04:55]Zebras looked at the domestication pipeline and said, "Absolutely not."

[00:04:59]Now, with all of that in mind, let's get to the actual candidates. The one that scientists genuinely think is closest to domestication right now is the fox, and not because of the Russian experiment.

[00:05:10]Well, partly because of the Russian experiment. The foxes from that project are actually being sold as pets now.

[00:05:16]But, beyond that, urban fox populations around the world are already evolving.

[00:05:21]City foxes are measurably less fearful of humans than rural foxes. They're bolder. They're more curious. They're better at reading human cues. This is happening naturally, without any deliberate selection on our part. Just because the foxes that are less scared of us do better in cities.

[00:05:38]Given a few thousand years and some intentional breeding, the fox is genuinely the most likely candidate for full domestication. It basically already wants to be a dog. It's just not there yet. Now, let's talk about one that might genuinely surprise you, the crow.

[00:05:53]I know, I know what you're thinking.

[00:05:55]That's a bird. Yes, correct.

[00:05:57]Domesticated birds exist. Chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, we've done it before. But, crows are different and the reason crows are different is that they are terrifyingly intelligent. Crows can recognize individual human faces. They hold grudges. They've been documented leaving gifts, shiny objects, buttons, pieces of foil for humans who feed them regularly. There are documented cases of crows warning people they know about nearby dangers. They teach their young which humans to trust and which ones to avoid, passing down social knowledge across generations.

[00:06:31]And here's the thing about urban crow populations. They are already, right now, developing a kind of informal relationship with humans. They know garbage day schedules. They've been observed using cars to crack open nuts by dropping them in traffic lanes. They wait at crosswalks, not at the button, at the part of the crosswalk where the nuts won't get crushed by wheels, but will get hit by tires at the right angle. Crows figured out our infrastructure and are using it as a tool. That's not animal behavior, that's a roommate. The challenge with crows is that they're not social in the way that pack animals are. They don't have a natural leader relationship to slot a human into. But, they do form long-term partnerships. The question is whether selective breeding over generations could produce crows that are more dependent on human social bonds. Given what we've already seen from the fox experiment, the answer is probably yes.

[00:07:19]And honestly, a domesticated crow sounds amazing and also slightly terrifying, which is on brand for crows. Let's talk about something completely different now, the capybara. If you've spent any time on the internet recently, you already know that capybaras are beloved.

[00:07:34]They've become a meme, a symbol, a whole vibe, chill, enormous rodent energy.

[00:07:40]But, here's what's actually interesting about capybaras from a domestication standpoint. They're already partway there. Capybaras are the largest rodents on Earth. They're highly social. They live in groups. They communicate constantly. They have complex social structures. They're already kept as pets in several countries. They're relatively calm with humans when raised around them. They eat grass, which is about as convenient as a diet gets. They're surprisingly good at coexisting with other animals. There's an almost absurd amount of footage of capybaras just sitting there while birds, monkeys, ducks, and other animals climb on them like a living piece of furniture. The main things holding capybaras back from full domestication are that they need water. They're semi-aquatic and require regular access to pools or ponds. And they're still mostly wild animals with wild instincts. But, the raw ingredients are there. Child demeanor, check. Social hierarchy, check. Flexible enough diet, mostly check. Breeds in captivity, check. If someone started a capybara breeding program focused on selecting for human affinity, I genuinely think you could have a recognizably domesticated capybara population within a hundred generations. That's not very long in evolutionary time. Also, they're absolutely enormous and look like someone took a guinea pig and hit it with an enlargement spell. So, I'm strongly in favor. Now, here's the one that's going to make you uncomfortable.

[00:09:00]The octopus. Okay. Okay. Stay with me. I know octopuses are not cute and cuddly and warm-blooded. I know they live underwater. I know they have eight arms and three hearts and blue blood and they're basically aliens. But, domestication isn't just about pets. The vast majority of domesticated animals throughout history weren't companions.

[00:09:19]They were food. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep. The emotional bond came later, if at all. Octopuses are already being farmed. There are active octopus aquaculture programs in several countries. Primarily driven by the fact that global demand for octopus as food is significantly out pacing what can be caught in the wild. Spanish research institutions have been working on closing the life cycle of octopus farming, meaning breeding them in captivity through multiple generations, for years. And here's where it gets interesting. Octopuses have individual personalities. Researchers who work with octopus tanks consistently report that individual animals respond differently to different people. Some are shy, some are aggressive, some are curious and playful. They recognize individual humans. They've been documented squirting water at researchers they don't like. If you were doing selective breeding and you were selecting for animals that are calm and curious around humans, that variation is already there to work with. The challenges are enormous. Octopuses are short-lived.

[00:10:19]Most species live about 1 to 2 years.

[00:10:22]They're solitary and cannibalistic, which makes group housing a logistics nightmare.

[00:10:27]They're escape artists of legendary ability. But the actual domestication criteria, flexible diet, yes, they eat fish and crustaceans which can be farmed. Breeds in captivity, increasingly, yes. Variation in temperament, definitely yes. I'm not saying your great-great-grandchildren are going to have a pet octopus named Gerald. I'm saying it's not impossible.

[00:10:48]And not impossible is the beginning of every domestication story in history.

[00:10:53]Let's go back to something more comfortable. The deer. Deer are fascinating from a domestication perspective because we've come very close historically. Reindeer, which are the same species as caribou, are semi-domesticated by several indigenous peoples of the Arctic and subarctic.

[00:11:09]They've been herded, bred selectively, and managed for thousands of years.

[00:11:14]They're not fully domesticated in the way cattle are, but they're well along the spectrum. White-tailed deer, the ones that live in suburban American backyards and have no fear anymore, are already adapting to human environments in ways that look a lot like early domestication signals. They're calmer around humans than their ancestors were.

[00:11:31]They've learned to use human infrastructure. They associate humans with food sources. Red deer and fallow deer are farmed in many countries. Their meat is sold commercially. There are breeding programs. The infrastructure exists. What deer have going for them?

[00:11:47]They're social. They're herd animals with clear hierarchy. They can eat grass and common vegetation. They breed in captivity without much trouble. What works against them? They're seasonal breeders controlled by day length, which complicates year-round farming. And they have antlers, which are medically impressive and also dangerous. But if you were betting on which wild animal is going to be domesticated for agricultural purposes over the next few centuries, deer are a serious candidate.

[00:12:14]We're already doing the early stages.

[00:12:16]It's just a matter of how many more generations of selection it takes. And then there's the elephant. This one is tricky because the conversation around elephants and domestication gets complicated very fast.

[00:12:27]Elephants have been used by humans for thousands of years. In war, in labor, in ceremony.

[00:12:33]But here's the thing. Almost every working elephant in history has been a wild-caught animal that was then broken and tamed through an often brutal process. That's taming, not domestication. True domesticated elephants, genetically different from their wild counterparts due to generations of selective captive breeding, basically don't exist yet. But the potential is enormous and the debate is real. Elephants are extraordinarily intelligent, highly social, long-lived with complex emotional lives. They can form deep bonds with individual humans.

[00:13:07]They communicate in sophisticated ways.

[00:13:09]They can learn enormous numbers of tasks and commands. The problems are significant. Elephants take 15 years to reach sexual maturity. Their gestation period is 22 months, the longest of any land animal. They require massive amounts of space and food. A breeding program that could meaningfully domesticate elephants would take centuries just to get through enough generations to see genetic change. But some researchers argue it's already starting slowly in countries like Myanmar and Thailand where captive elephant populations have existed for generations. The elephants in those populations may already be subtly different from truly wild elephants in ways that are hard to measure but real.

[00:13:48]It would be the slowest domestication in human history playing out over a timeline measured in centuries, but it might be happening.

[00:13:56]Let's zoom out for a second because there's a bigger question underneath all of this. Why does domestication keep happening? Why do we keep doing this?

[00:14:03]The obvious answers are food, labor, companionship, but there's something deeper.

[00:14:09]Domestication is in a way the most profound relationship that exists between species. It's not predation.

[00:14:16]We're not just eating the animal. It's not parasitism.

[00:14:20]Both species generally benefit in some complicated way. It's a genuine long-term evolutionary partnership where both species change because of each other. Dogs didn't just become domesticated, humans changed, too, partly because of dogs. We became better hunters. We became more attuned to reading nonverbal social cues from another species. Some researchers even argue that having dogs helped us develop the theory of mind, the ability to model what another being is thinking. That made human social intelligence so powerful. The auroch didn't just become a cow.

[00:14:52]The humans who domesticated them built the agricultural foundation that made civilization possible. Cities, writing, mathematics, all of it built on the back of domesticated animals. So when we ask what animal will humans domesticate next, we're not just asking about the animal. We're asking about who we will become because of that relationship. And that's a genuinely hard question to answer because every new domestication changes the human side, too.

[00:15:18]If we domesticate crows and they become household companions, what does it do to our relationship with urban nature? If we fully domesticate foxes, does it blur the line between dog and fox in ways that change how we see both?

[00:15:31]If octopus farming becomes a reality, does the intimacy of that process, recognizing individual animals, observing their personalities, selecting which ones live and reproduce, create new ethical obligations we don't currently have? The domestication of animals has never been a purely practical process. It's always been entangled with culture, with identity, with ethics, with meaning. And the next wave of domestication is going to be no different, except that we're doing it with more knowledge, more technology, and more public scrutiny than ever before. There's one more candidate that almost nobody talks about, and I want to end on this one because I think it's the most interesting. The wolf. No, not dogs, wolves, again.

[00:16:14]There's a small but serious scientific conversation happening about whether wolves, in specific isolated populations, particularly in areas where they've been in close contact with humans for a long time, are undergoing a second domestication event, independently of the one that produced dogs tens of thousands of years ago. Not all wolves, not most wolves, but specific populations in specific places that have been living alongside human settlements for generations. The idea is that in places where wolves have learned to coexist with humans, rather than flee or fight, and where those wolves are more likely to survive and reproduce, selection pressure is already working. You're already selecting passively for wolves that are less reactive to humans, more curious, more willing to take food near settlements.

[00:17:02]Sound familiar? It should, because that's probably exactly how the first domestication happened. Not a deliberate choice, not a breeding program, just wolves hovering at the edges of human camps, the bolder, calmer ones doing better, generation after generation, until one day a human looked at one of them and thought, "Yeah, that one can come inside." We might be at that edge again right now with a different wolf population in a different century for a different version of the same story. And if that's true, if domestication is not just a thing humans did once long ago, but a thing that keeps happening, keeps emerging, a kind of gravity that pulls certain species and human civilizations toward each other, then the question, what animal will humans domesticate next, might have a simpler answer than we think. All of them, eventually. All the ones that can be. All the ones that are ready. Because somewhere out there, right now, an animal is standing at the edge of a human settlement, looking in, not running.