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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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For all anyone knows, the undomesticated version of the horse was just as unruly as the zebra and in fact it seems pretty likely.

There's some weak evidence against it: we don't have pre-domestication true horses around, but the Przewalski's horse is a little closer related to the modern horse than to the zebra, and while they're even more assholish than zebras, they're supposedly more trainable. I'm not convinced that it's a big difference, but I'm not convinced that it's strong evidence against the Guns Germs Steel view.

I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure people eat kangaroos. How can you be so sure that kangaroos are not domesticable?

Kangaroos are farmed like deer, and take a similar environmental niche, but the males are also genetically primed to find the nearest biped and punch it in the face during mating season. That last bit's usually the argument why no one has domesticated them despite matching Diamond's six rules: yes, kangaroos have a dominance hierarchy, but it involves the lead male getting the shit clawed and kicked out of him, and humans aren't really built for that. They're also a little prone to panic, though that's kinda a hard metric to measure.

Conversely, the efforts to domesticate foxes, minks, and river otters are probably stronger arguments against Diamond: of his six proposed rules, these animals are bity, panicky, don't have as widespread a social structure, and are carnivorous. They still seem to get much more friendly pretty quickly; they just needed the right incentives and human leadership to domesticate or partially-domesticate.