Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: What was the first animal to be domesticated by humans?
The beginnings of animal domestication involved a protracted coevolutionary process with multiple stages along different pathways. It is proposed that there were three major pathways that most animal domesticates followed into domestication: (1) commensals, adapted to a human niche (e.g., dogs, cats, fowl, possibly pigs); (2) prey animals sought for food (e.g., sheep, goats, cattle, water buffalo, yak, pig, reindeer, llama and alpaca); and (3) targeted animals for draft and nonfood resources (e.g., horse, donkey, camel). The dog was the first domesticant, and was established across Eurasia before the end of the Late Pleistocene era, well before cultivation and before the domestication of other animals. Humans did not intend to domesticate animals from, or at least they did not envision a domesticated animal resulting from, either the commensal or prey pathways. In both of these cases, humans became entangled with these species as the relationship between them, and the human role in their survival and reproduction, intensified, leading eventually to a formalised animal husbandry. Although the directed pathway proceeded from capture to taming, the other two pathways are not as goal-oriented and archaeological records suggest that they took place over much longer time frames.
Morphological, cytological and molecular studies confirm the European polecat is the sole ancestor of the ferret, thus disproving any connection with the steppe polecat, which was once thought to have contributed to the ferret's creation. Ferrets were first mentioned by Aristophanes in 450 BC and by Aristotle in 350 BC. Greek and Roman writers in the first century AD were the first to attest on the ferret's use in bolting rabbits from their burrows. The first accurate descriptions of ferrets come from Strabo during 200 AD, when ferrets were released onto the Balearic Islands to control rabbit populations. As the European rabbit is native to the Iberian Peninsula and northwest Africa, the European polecat likely was first domesticated in these regions.
In 2018, Mufasa, a three-year-old, was in the process of being sold in South Africa after he was taken from an owner illegally keeping him as a pet. An anonymous buyer wanted both Mufasa and a female lion named Soraya, intending to protect both. Over 280,000 signed a petition asking that Mufasa not be auctioned, fearing a buyer might just want the lion for hunting.
Madagascar was colonised rather recently compared to other landmasses, with first evidence for humans—arrived from either Africa or Asia—dating to 2,300 or perhaps 4,000 years before present. It is assumed that humans first stayed near the coast and penetrated into the interior only several centuries later. The settlers had a profound impact on the long-isolated environment of Madagascar through land clearing and fire, introduction of zebu cattle, and probably hunting to extinction the native megafauna including, among others, elephant birds, giant lemurs and giant tortoises. The first Europeans arrived in the 16th century, starting an age of overseas exchange. Population growth and transformation of the landscape was particularly rapid since the mid-20th century.
Though bloody, this method would take the shortest amount of time to kill the animal out of all the hypotheses. Because of the differences of anatomy between species possibly hunted by machairodonts, the geometry needed to kill a horse, for instance, might not work for a bison. This would require the genus, or even the specific species, to be highly specialized for one type of prey animal. This might offer an explanation for their extinction, for the movement or extinction of that prey species would lead to the death of its specialist predator.
The distinguishing factor between the process of non-human animal and human mummification is when the two types were mummified. Humans had been mummified consistently since the days of the early conquerors of Lower Egypt, hundreds of years before even the first non-human animal was mummified. The earliest signs of non-human animal mummies are dated to the Badarian Predynastic Period (5500–4000BC) after the unification of upper and lower Egypt. It is likely that animal mummies did not exist earlier on because mummification was less accessible primarily due to cost. 
In general, the mummifying of animals was not given the careful attention afforded to humans. Mummies sold to pilgrims as offerings were only minimally treated, and unlike humans, even the most sacred of animals, such as the Apis bulls, did not have their internal organs preserved. The large scale of production indicates that relatively little care and expense was involved in animal preparation compared to human mummies. However, recent radiological studies by archeologists indicate that animal mummification may more closely follow human mummification than was originally thought. The accepted view is that animals were merely wrapped in coarse linen bandages and/or dipped in resin after death. However, as with human mummification there was a range in terms of the quality of treatments. A simple visual analysis of the mummies suggests that some animal mummies were treated with the same complexity as those of humans. Egyptians treated animals with great respect, regarding them both as domestic pets and representatives of the gods. The presence of fats, oils, beeswax, sugar gum, petroleum bitumen, and coniferous cedar resins in animal mummies shows that the chemicals used to embalm animals were similar to those used on humans.
The caves and rock shelters vary in size and what they contain. Many contain paintings and other forms of graphic representation. Contents include ceramics and stone tools. The corn materials show similarities to the first vestiges of the domestication of wheat and rye in the Middle East. One of the deepest caves is called the Cueva de la Paloma. The caves have been studied since the 1960s, especially the Cueva de Guilá Naquitz (white stone in Zapotec), which has some of the best evidence for the domestication of corn and squash, which dates back more than 10,000 years. Other caves, such as those near Yagual and Mitla confirm findings at Guilá Naquitz and show human occupation to about 8000 years BCE the sites also show similarities to the Head Smashed and Buffalo Jump Complex sites in Canada. Many more smaller caves with similar artifacts are thought to exist in the area.
In 1996 Dolly the sheep was born, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. The process by which Dolly the sheep was cloned utilized a process known as nuclear transfer applied by lead scientist Ian Wilmut. Although other scientists were not immediately able to replicate the experiment, Wilmut argued that the experiment was indeed repeatable, given a timeframe of over a year.
Equus is a genus of mammals in the family Equidae, which includes horses, donkeys, and zebras. Within Equidae, "Equus" is the only recognized extant genus, comprising seven living species. The term equine refers to any member of this genus, including horses. Like Equidae more broadly, "Equus" has numerous extinct species known only from fossils. The genus most likely originated in North America and spread quickly to the Old World. Equines are odd-toed ungulates with slender legs, long heads, relatively long necks, manes (erect in most subspecies), and long tails. All species are herbivorous, and mostly grazers, with simpler digestive systems than ruminants, but able to subsist on lower-quality vegetation.
In January 1961, Elsa died from disease resulting from a tick bite. Her three young cubs became a nuisance, killing the livestock of local farmers. The Adamsons, who feared the farmers might kill the cubs, were able to eventually capture them and transport them to neighboring Tanganyika Territory, where they were promised a home at Serengeti National Park. In the concluding part of "Forever Free" the Adamsons lost track of the cubs in their new home. After describing a fruitless search, Joy Adamson contemplated a pair of lions: "My heart was with them wherever they were. But it was also with these two lions here in front of us; and as I watched this beautiful pair, I realized how all the characteristics of our cubs were inherent in them. Indeed, in every lion I saw during our searches I recognized the intrinsic nature of Elsa, Jespah, Gopa and Little Elsa, the spirit of all the magnificent lions in Africa".
Carthaginian frescoes and coins minted by whoever controlled North Africa at various times show very small elephants, perhaps at the shoulder, with the large ears and concave back typical of modern African elephants. The North African elephant was smaller than the modern African bush elephant ("L. a. africana"), probably similar in size to the modern African forest elephant ("L. cyclotis"). It is also possible that it was more docile and plainer than the African bush elephant, which is generally untamable, allowing the Punics to tame it as a war elephant by a method now lost to history.
A fully-grown "Smilodon" weighed approximately and had a short tail, powerful legs, and a large head. The cats have two huge canine teeth, about long, that are used to kill prey by suffocation. The jaws could open to about 120 degrees in order to use these fangs to deadly effect. They would die out due to climate change.
Gabi lived in the same enclosure with his mother Tamar and the zoo's three other female elephants for nearly 5 years. By 2010, however, Gabi was growing increasingly aggressive and anti-social — typical behavior for a 5-year-old bull elephant. The zoo decided to send him to the Gaziantep Zoo in Turkey, where it is hoped he will sire his own offspring and thereby increase the number of Asian elephants in captivity.
Most female mammals have an estrous cycle, yet only ten primates species, four bats species, the elephant shrew, and the spiny mouse have a menstrual cycle. The relatedness of these groups suggests that four distinct evolutionary events have caused menstruation to arise.
The horse adapted to survive in areas of wide-open terrain with sparse vegetation, surviving in an ecosystem where other large grazing animals, especially ruminants, could not. Horses and other equids are odd-toed ungulates of the order Perissodactyla, a group of mammals that was dominant during the Tertiary period. In the past, this order contained 14 families, but only three—Equidae (the horse and related species), Tapiridae (the tapir), and Rhinocerotidae (the rhinoceroses)—have survived to the present day.
Dolly lived her entire life at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian. There she was bred with a Welsh Mountain ram and produced six lambs in total. Her first lamb, named Bonnie, was born in April 1998. The next year Dolly produced twin lambs Sally and Rosie, and she gave birth to triplets Lucy, Darcy and Cotton in 2000. In late 2001, at the age of four, Dolly developed arthritis and began to walk stiffly. This was treated with anti-inflammatory drugs.
Besides the horse, there are six other species of genus "Equus" in the Equidae family. These are the ass or donkey, "Equus asinus"; the mountain zebra, "Equus zebra"; plains zebra, "Equus quagga"; Grévy's zebra, "Equus grevyi"; the kiang, "Equus kiang"; and the onager, "Equus hemionus".
The elephants comprise three living species and are the largest living land animals.Sirenia is an order of fully aquatic, herbivorous mammals that inhabit rivers, estuaries, coastal marine waters, swamps, and marine wetlands. All four species are endangered.The treeshrews are small mammals native to the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. Although called treeshrews, they are not true shrews and are not all arboreal.The two species of colugos make up the order Dermoptera. They are arboreal gliding mammals found in Southeast Asia.The order Primates contains humans and their closest relatives: lemurs, lorisoids, monkeys, and apes.Rodents make up the largest order of mammals, with over 40 percent of mammalian species. They have two incisors in the upper and lower jaw which grow continually and must be keep short by gnawing. Most rodents are small though the capybara can weigh up to 45 kg (100 lb).
The name "Brittany" is taken from the Brittany region in northwestern France where the dog originated. Images of orange and white Brittany-like dogs hunting and retrieving game were first seen on tapestries and paintings from the 17th century. The first written and verifiable record of Brittanys comes from a hunting description written by Reverend Davies in 1850. He described hunting with small "bobtailed" dogs who pointed and were excellent retrievers. It was around the same time that the modern Brittany is rumored to have been bred by mating with English Setters. The Brittany was first shown at the Paris Dog Show in 1900.
Dolly, a Finn-Dorset ewe, was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult somatic cell. Dolly was formed by taking a cell from the udder of her 6-year old biological mother. Dolly's embryo was created by taking the cell and inserting it into a sheep ovum. It took 434 attempts before an embryo was successful. The embryo was then placed inside a female sheep that went through a normal pregnancy. She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in Scotland by British scientists Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell and lived there from her birth in 1996 until her death in 2003 when she was six. She was born on 5 July 1996 but not announced to the world until 22 February 1997. Her stuffed remains were placed at Edinburgh's Royal Museum, part of the National Museums of Scotland.
Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female domestic sheep, and the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer.
The commensal pathway was traveled by vertebrates that fed on refuse around human habitats or by animals that preyed on other animals drawn to human camps. Those animals established a commensal relationship with humans in which the animals benefited but the humans received no harm but little benefit. Those animals that were most capable of taking advantage of the resources associated with human camps would have been the tamer, less aggressive individuals with shorter fight or flight distances. Later, these animals developed closer social or economic bonds with humans that led to a domestic relationship. The leap from a synanthropic population to a domestic one could only have taken place after the animals had progressed from anthropophily to habituation, to commensalism and partnership, when the relationship between animal and human would have laid the foundation for domestication, including captivity and human-controlled breeding. From this perspective, animal domestication is a coevolutionary process in which a population responds to selective pressure while adapting to a novel niche that included another species with evolving behaviors.
Commensal pathway animals include dogs, cats, fowl, and possibly pigs. The dog is a classic example of a domestic animal that likely traveled a commensal pathway into domestication. The dog was the first domesticant and was domesticated and widely established across Eurasia before the end of the Pleistocene, well before cultivation or the domestication of other animals. Ancient DNA supports the hypothesis that dog domestication preceded the emergence of agriculture and was initiated close to the Last Glacial Maximum 27,000 YBP when hunter-gatherers preyed on megafauna, and when proto-dogs might have taken advantage of carcasses left on site by early hunters, assisted in the capture of prey, or provided defense from large competing predators at kill-sites. The wolves most likely drawn to human camps were the less aggressive, subdominant pack members with lowered flight response, higher stress thresholds, and less wariness around humans, and therefore they were better candidates for domestication. The earliest sign of domestication in dogs was the neotenization of skull morphology and the shortening of snout length that results in tooth crowding, reduction in tooth size, and a reduction in the number of teeth, which has been attributed to the strong selection for reduced aggression. This process may have begun during the initial commensal stage of dog domestication, even before humans began to be active partners in the process.
The second group proposed that there were three major pathways that most animal domesticates followed into domestication: (1) commensals, adapted to a human niche (e.g., dogs, cats, fowl, possibly pigs); (2) prey animals sought for food (e.g., sheep, goats, cattle, water buffalo, yak, pig, reindeer, llama and alpaca); and (3) targeted animals for draft and nonfood resources (e.g., horse, donkey, camel). The beginnings of animal domestication involved a protracted coevolutionary process with multiple stages along different pathways. Humans did not intend to domesticate animals from, or at least they did not envision a domesticated animal resulting from, either the commensal or prey pathways. In both of these cases, humans became entangled with these species as the relationship between them, and the human role in their survival and reproduction, intensified. Although the directed pathway proceeded from capture to taming, the other two pathways are not as goal-oriented and archaeological records suggest that they take place over much longer time frames.
Humans were already reliant on domestic plants and animals when they imagined the domestic versions of wild animals. Although horses, donkeys, and Old World camels were sometimes hunted as prey species, they were each deliberately brought into the human niche for sources of transport. Domestication was still a multi-generational adaptation to human selection pressures, including tameness, but without a suitable evolutionary response then domestication was not achieved. For example, despite the fact that hunters of the Near Eastern gazelle in the Epipaleolithic avoided culling reproductive females to promote population balance, neither gazelles nor zebras possessed the necessary prerequisites and were never domesticated. There is no clear evidence for the domestication of any herded prey animal originating in Africa.