Wild & genetics
Domestication
The long genetic change that turns a wild population into one adapted to living alongside people — distinct from taming, which happens to an individual.
A tamed animal is a wild animal that has got used to a person. A domesticated animal is born already predisposed to tolerate people, because the population it comes from has been selected over many generations for exactly that. You can tame a wolf; you cannot tame it into a dog.
Dogs and cats arrived at it from opposite directions. Wolves were pulled in and reshaped by human work into breeds that herd, hunt and haul. Cats largely domesticated themselves around grain stores and stayed physically close to their wild ancestor, which is part of why they hybridise with wildcats so readily.
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More in Wild & genetics
HybridisationBreeding between two distinct populations or species — the main threat to wildcats, because a wildcat that breeds with a domestic cat leaves offspring that are neither.IntrogressionGenes moving from one population into another and staying there, carried in by hybrids that go on to breed back with the parent population.TNRHumanely trapping free-roaming cats, neutering and ear-tipping them, and returning them to where they were found instead of removing or killing them.FeralA domestic animal living wild — descended from domesticated stock, unsocialised to people, and genetically still a domestic animal rather than a wild species.LandraceA local population shaped over generations by climate, terrain and the job it does, rather than by a written standard and a closed studbook.Coefficient of inbreedingThe probability that an animal inherited two identical copies of a gene from a shared ancestor — a single number for how closely related its parents were.