Quotes & Sayings About Domesticated Animals

Walter had never liked cats. They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat owners stroke their animals' lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where it's true heart lay ... cats were all about using people — Jonathan Franzen

Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show truly staggering ability to 'ignore' certain kinds of information - that which does not 'fit' their imprinted/ conditioned reality-tunnel — Robert Anton Wilson

Jane Austen has often been praised as a natural historian. She is a naturalist among tame animals. She does not study men (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he has been domesticated. Her men and women are essentially men and women of the fireside. — Robert Wilson Lynd

They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution. — Carl Sagan

For the herds of wild elephants show no resentment when domesticated animals join them. They have none of that herd instinct directed against the stranger that one finds in cattle, in small boys and among many grown-up men. This tolerance is just one of the things about elephants which makes one realise they are big in more ways than one. — Lt.-Col. J. H. Williams O.B.E.

The deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of diseases. From the love of splendour, from the indulgences of luxury, and from his fondness for amusement he has familiarised himself with a great number of animals, which may not originally have been intended for his associates.
The wolf, disarmed of ferocity, is now pillowed in the lady's lap. The cat, the little tiger of our island, whose natural home is the forest, is equally domesticated and caressed. The cow, the hog, the sheep, and the horse, are all, for a variety of purposes, brought under his care and dominion. — Edward Jenner

Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. Ancient foragers, who had domesticated only dogs, were free of these scourges. — Yuval Noah Harari

Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueller with the passing of the centuries. — Yuval Noah Harari

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science. — Jared Diamond

She had something Adam didn't. Curiosity. First step to growth
and if it wasn't for Eve's Adam would still be sitting by the side of the pool picking his nose and scratching his scalp, bamboozled by his own reflection. Off in her part of Eden, Eve hadn't bothered naming the animals. On the other hand she'd discovered how to milk some of them and how best to eat the eggs of others. She'd decided she wasn't overly keen on torrential rain and had built a shelter from bamboo and banana leaves, into which she'd retire when the heavens opened, having set out coconut shells to catch the rainwater with a view to saving herself the schlep down to the spring every time she wanted a drink. The only thing you won't be surprised to hear about is that she'd already domesticated a cat and called it Misty. — Glen Duncan

At present, more than 90 per cent of the large animals of the world (i.e. those weighing more than a few kilograms) are either humans or domesticated animals. — Yuval Noah Harari

We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Despite widespread attemps to equate human captives with domestic animals and even to market them and price them the same way < ... > slaves were fortunately never held long enough in a distinctive group to undergo genetic neoteny < ... >. Yet a kind of neoteny was clearly the goal of many slaveholders, even if they lacked a scientific understanding of how domestication changed the nature and behavior of animals. Aristotle's ideal of the "natural slave" was very close to what a human being would be like if subjected to a genetic change similar to that of domesticated plants and animals. — David Brion Davis

The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects. — Warder C. Allee

We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves. — Arnold J. Toynbee

Domesticated animals such as dogs and cats are vulnerable and entirely dependent on us for all of their needs. They live very unnatural lives because they are not part of the human world and they are not part of the animal world. — Gary L. Francione

The goddess Artemis had a twin brother, Apollo, the many-faceted god of the Sun. He was her male counterpart: his domain was the city, hers the wilderness; his was the sun, hers the moon; his the domesticated flocks, hers the wild, untamed animals; he was the god of music, she was the inspiration for round dances on the mountains. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

The bee is domesticated but not tamed. — William Longgood

I know that most domesticated animals aren't indigenous to this country. So guess what, cat? You can beat it. Go back to Catalina Island or Catalonia, Spain, or Katmandu, or wherever the hell your hairy ass is from! 'Cause this is America and around here - Katmandon't. — Arj Barker

The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'" he mumbled what was evidently a quotation. "That's it - foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon the planet was just so much foam. He domesticated the serviceable animals, destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared the land of its wild vegetation. And then he passed, and the flood of primordial life rolled back again, sweeping his handiwork away - the weeds and the forest inundated his fields, the beasts of prey swept over his flocks, and now there are wolves on the Cliff House beach." He was appalled by the thought. "Where four million people disported themselves, the wild wolves roam to-day, and the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defend themselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all because of the Scarlet Death - — Jack London

It takes 25 years or so for a male sperm whale to reach the edge of social maturity, when it attains the size and weight of those I saw being butchered. It took less than four hours to transform those once vibrant creatures into the basic ingredients of candle wax, lubricating oils, cosmetics, fertilizer, ivory trinkets, and food for domesticated animals. — Sylvia Earle

Every time that an animal eats a plant or another animal, the conversion of food biomass into the consumer's biomass involves an efficiency of much less than 100 percent: typically around 10 percent. That is, it takes around 10,000 pounds of corn to grow a 1,000-pound cow. If instead you want to grow 1,000 pounds of carnivore, you have to feed it 10,000 pounds of herbivore grown on 100,000 pounds of corn. Even among herbivores and omnivores, many species, like koalas, are too finicky in their plant preferences to recommend themselves as farm animals. As a result of this fundamental inefficiency, no mammalian carnivore has ever been domesticated for food. — Jared Diamond

The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated animals will be granted that right in law. — J.M. Coetzee

Why were there far more species of domesticated animals in Eurasia than in the Americas? The Americas harbor over a thousand native wild mammal species, so you might initially suppose that the Americas offered plenty of starting material for domestication. — Jared Diamond

Although native Africans domesticated some plants in the Sahel and in Ethiopia and in tropical West Africa, they acquired valuable domestic animals only later, from the north. — Jared Diamond

The pretense that humans are superior to nonhumans is entirely unsupportable. I have seen no compelling evidence that humans are particularly more "intelligent" than any other creature. I have had long and fruitful relationshis with many nonhuman animals, both domesticated and wild, and have reveled in the bouquet of radically different intelligences - different forms, not different "quantities" that they have introduced to me, each in his or her own time, in his or her own way. — Derrick Jensen

Perhaps if zoologists would contemplate the wide variations presented by many plants of indubitably one and the same species, and the still wider diversities of long cultivated races from an original stock, they would find more than one instructive parallel to the case of the longest domesticated of all species, man. — Asa Gray

Do you like flora and fauna? How about plants and animals? Because we have more of that beautiful crap than we know what to do with. Charmingly domesticated troops of monkeys swing freely throughout our orchid-laden property. You're probably thinking that a lot of all-inclusive resorts have monkeys. True, but only one resort packs a monkey for each of their guests to take home. You'll be showing off more than a tan to your friends, you'll be showing off a gibbon. — Colin Nissan

Golden eagles don't mate with bald eagles, deer don't mate with antelope, gray wolves don't mate with red wolves. Just look at domesticated animals, at mongrel dogs, and mixed breed horses, and you'll know the Great Mystery didn't intend them to be that way. We weakened the species and introduced disease by mixing what should be kept seperate. Among humans, intermarriage weakens the respect people have for themselves and for their traditions. It undermines clarity of spirit and mind. — Russell Means

Among the numerous heartbreaks of this terrible war, the innocent horses shot, abused, and killed would not rank among the worst atrocities - but somehow, the killing of innocent beasts, domesticated animals who existed only for man's beauty and pleasure, seemed to highlight the barbaric and depraved depths to which man had allowed himself to sink. — Elizabeth Letts

Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth. Titanic did not sink a North Atlantic iceberg. And Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. These are simple historical facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals. But not ... to Bill O — Keith Olbermann

Many animals flourish not in spite of the fact that they are "animals" but because they are "animals" - or even more precisely, perhaps, because they are felt to be members of our families and our communities, regardless of their species. And yet, at the very same moment, billions of animals in factory farms, many of whom are very near to or indeed exceed cats and dogs and other companion animals in the capacities we take to be relevant to standing (the ability to experience pain and suffering, anticipatory dread, emotional bonds and complex social interactions, and so on), have as horrible a life as one could imagine, also because they are "animals."

Clearly, then, the question here is not simply of the "animal" as the abjected other of the "human" tout court, but rather something like a distinction between bios and zoe that obtains within the domain of domesticated animals itself. — Cary Wolfe

Unlike a child in a totally urban environment, my friends and peer group were not only other children, but also wild and domesticated animals, plants of every sort, brooks and waterfalls, rocks and sand. — Freeman Patterson

The animals we raise for food today are eaten not because they are notably delectable or nutritious or a pleasure to be around, but because they were the ones first domesticated in the Stone Age. — Bill Bryson

It's been argued that of all the animals humans have domesticated, the horse is the most important to our history. For thousands of years, horses were our most reliable mode of transportation. — Elton Gallegly

They also carried on commerce with other nations. All this clearly shows, as Heer has remarked, that they had at this early age progressed considerably in civilisation; and this again implies a long continued previous period of less advanced civilisation, during which the domesticated animals, kept by different tribes in different districts, might have varied and given rise to distinct races. — Charles Darwin

It is common talk that every individual is entitled to economic security. The only animals and birds I know that have economic security are those that have been domesticated
and the economic security they have is controlled by the barbed-wire fence, the butcher's knife and the desire of others. They are milked, skinned, egged or eaten up by their protectors. — Ray Lyman Wilbur

The first animals to be successfully domesticated were dogs, which were a big help because they would bark all night and fetch thrown sticks, thereby freeing humans from having to perform these tedious yet vital tasks. — Dave Barry

There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and genuflecting before their masters. — Larry Niven

Chen pointed to the cub. "There's your brute." Then he pointed to the pups. "And there's your domestication. For the most part, Westerners are descendants of barbarian, nomadic tribes such as the Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons. They burst out of the primeval forest like wild animals after a couple of thousand years of Greek and Roman civilization, and sacked ancient Rome. They eat steak, cheese, and butter with knives and forks, which is how they've retained more primitive wildness than the traditional farming races. Over the past hundred years, domesticated China has been bullied by the brutish West. It's not surprising that for thousands of years the Chinese colossus has been spectacularly pummeled by tiny nomadic peoples. — Jiang Rong

Breaches of Sharia law, some involving domesticated animals. — Lee Child