Why didn't humans tame tigers or lions as cattle or mounts?

With the development of science and the constant understanding of nature, more and more wild animals are known to humans. In the 3rd century BC, Aristotle described 450 animals; In the first half of the 18th century, Linnaeus described about 4,000 animals; in the late 19th century mankind knew more than 500,000 species.

We now know more than 1,000,000 species of animals that exist on Earth, and from the point of view of the taxonomists, this number has not stopped and the actual number of species outside of nature still exists. A lot, it's just that we still haven't discovered it all.

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So many animals exist on our planet, so why are there so many animals that have not been domesticated? Lions can run at speeds up to 80 km / h, why didn't our ancestors tame them as vehicles, or use their power to conquer the world?

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To answer this question, we can mention four main reasons. When domesticating an animal, we will have to nurture and take care of them, so ensuring a balance between output and input is extremely important.

For example, when we domesticate and raise animals, most of them only eat grass and plants but give us meat, which is available everywhere, while Humans do not eat grass, so their food source and humans are considered "living water does not violate well water".

Therefore, domesticating and rearing grazing animals will save money but the amount of meat we collect is far more valuable than taking care of them, which can be seen. like a completely beneficial trade, using grass for meat and the problem lies only in waiting for them to grow.

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However, tigers and lions are different, they are carnivores and eat only meat, what we get when raising them is also meat, if we treat them like cows.

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In addition, with 10 pounds of grass, a cow can produce 1 pound of beef.

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But for 10 pounds of meat, a tiger will only gain one pound of meat after eating.

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Meanwhile, beef calories are similar to tiger meat.

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Therefore, if you want to tame a tiger to eat tiger meat, you must feed it 10 pieces of beef before eating a piece of tiger meat. Meanwhile we can eat all 10 pieces of beef with 10 times more calories than 1 piece of tiger meat!

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This is the reason why most carnivorous animals in general are not domesticated to become carnivores. The ancients chose some herbivores or non-picky, omnivorous animals, which could eat anything to domesticate.

The next reason is aggression and human friendliness. Let's say you are an ancient man and you want to catch some wild animals to raise them. Catch tigers, lions, bears, or wolves? It is best to carefully prepare your health and psychology because you will probably turn into their lunch.

What about friendly animals? With so many herbivores, not all of them are easy to raise. If you intend to domesticate the African buffalo it is best to ignore that intention, they are a very psychologically unstable animal and once they get angry and go crazy, they will not Just like a mobile tank.

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What about hippos, are they omnivores and can produce huge amounts of meat? Well, let's continue to ignore them because this is the animal that is ranked in the top of the animals that tend to attack and kill humans in Africa, according to statistics, each year the hippo causes 500 deaths. .

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Because domesticated animals must be highly friendly and psychologically easy to control, it is certainly not a good idea to domesticate tigers or lions.

Going on to the third reason is high growth and fertility. The fact has proved that animals that breed too slowly will be ignored by humans or will be kept on a small scale. What humans want is high-fertility animals that can produce many offspring in one batch and it won't take long for the next litter, such as ducks, ducks, pigs, chickens, etc. .

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But there are exceptions, for example, elephants, to grow an elephant takes a lot of food at the same time, their growth time is also very long, the female adult and can reproduce after 9 years old and adult males take up to 15 years.

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So people will never raise elephants for meat, instead for other purposes such as travel, traction or use in the war, but this is not common because it is too costly. lots of time and money. Instead, the wild elephants will be hunted and domesticated, but if doing so with tigers and lions it seems impossible, they are predators, and in their instincts will always treat other animals as prey from weaning.

The last reason is to have herd behavior, living in groups according to blood ties.

People like animals that have strong herd behaviors. Some animals are raised from an early age, when growing up with humans, they will consider humans a family member or a leader. So taming or making them will become easier. Typical examples include dogs or horses.

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What about a tiger with a lion? Tigers are animals that do not have the habit of living in groups, they only meet during mating season, the rest if the two tigers meet in the wild, they will rush in to fight to protect the territory.

Lions live in groups, but they always live according to the "law of the jungle" the strong will be led, so in the lion masters there will occasionally take place a few battles to compete for rank in the herd, and if humans raise them, most likely one fine day they will consider us the enemy who rushes to compete for the top position.

This is probably why there are thousands of animals in the world, but humans can only tame the few in it.