If all the African elephants 200 or so years ago could communicate and coordinate, they could more or less take over the world - at least Africa + Eurasia.<p>An elephant goes where he wants and does what he wants, and only extremely thick steel or a fearless / stupid human with an elephant gun can stop it.<p>Now imagine 100k elephants working together and humanity is armed only with muskets.<p>I imagine primitve cannon would be effective, but in this alternate history, disciplined young elephants might charge and overcome an artillery position.
> "The scientists compared wild African elephants from the species Loxodonta africana with bonobos and humans on 19 social, cognitive and physical traits. The researchers found that elephants, like bonobos and humans, are not very aggressive, play a lot, have a long childhood. [...] By comparing the genome of wild African savannah elephants with those of 261 domesticated mammals such as dogs, cats and horses, the scientists identified 79 genes linked to domestication in other species that seem to have become more common in elephant generations over time."<p>what if we've been 'domesticating' them by killing the tuskiest ones for ivory or because we don't like their musth rampages, neotenizing even the wild populations
Self-domesticating seems an interesting evolutionary track for the survival of a species. Elephants may have a bit of a hard time totally committing to it, as they're somewhat large. I have a hard time visualizing a herd wandering around a large city - although I do enjoy the clever elephants that cross streets and seemingly "thank" stopped motorists, or elephants that steal food from trucks they've stopped (obvy I can't tell intent)
Same for cats:<p><i>wildcats, such as the species Felis lybica, began exploiting new resources offered by human environments, such as a proliferation of rodents in grain stores. These cats were tolerated by people, supporting their natural evolution to deviate further from their wild counterparts</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication#Cats" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication#Cats</a>
<i>Domestication</i>: the process of hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into domestic and cultivated forms according to the interests of <i>people</i> [1].<p>Using this word in the title is clearly not reflecting the nature of what might be happening. The correct term would probably be <i>neoteny</i> [2] or juvenilization<p>[1] Britannica and every other credible reference on the English language out there<p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny</a>
prosocial evolution is a lot better term than "self-domestication". of course, it's also completely unexceptional, so perhaps not favored in the academic (publishing) ecosystem.
Pretty interesting that signs of self domestication include a shrunken brain and aggressive males being eliminated from the population. I would not have thought that our brains have shrunk since we (humans) became self domesticated.
It's now widely accepted that cats self-domesticated, making this claim ("Find would put pachyderms in a rare group that only includes humans and bonobos") a bit dubious.<p>Here's one article on the matter: <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/domesticated-cats-dna-genetics-pets-science" rel="nofollow">https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/domestica...</a>
i wonder if this is a case of humans having domesticated them in the past (probably for war), then that population ended up going free for whatever reason, and they still have the traits because they're elephants and nothing will eat them
Humans kill anything that poses a threat to humans. Plenty of wild animals have had their populations decimated by this (bears, wolves, tigers, lions, etc).<p>And the much smaller populations that remain tend to be the less aggressive/less dangerous ones.
My impression was that wolfs self-domesticated into dogs as well.<p>The story I heard about wolf domestication was that some wolfs started living nearer to humans, cooperated during hunts, ate their scrap etc. I would consider this self-domestication.<p>If humans had captured wolfs and selectively bred them to be less aggressive, that wouldn't be self-domestication.<p>Or am I totally off track here?