Feral

Feral refers to a reduction of the state of domestication of a species formerly under the control of humans.

Table of contents

1 Applicability 1.1 Animals 1.2 Plants 1.3 Humans 2 Variables 2.4 Susceptibility 2.5 Degree 2.6 Persistence 3 Tenur of Domestication 4 Examples 5 Conclusions 5.7 General 5.8 Humans 5.9 Early Americans 6 See Also 7 External Links

Applicability

Animals

A feral animal is one that has reverted from the domesticated state to a stable condition more or less resembling the wild.

Plants

Domesticated plants that revert to wild are usually refered to as escaped, introduced, or naturalized. However, the adaptive and ecological variables seen in plants that go wild closely resemble those of animals.

Humans

Modern humans are refered to as feral under certain conditions, often involving only relatively mild changes of behavior, and the usage frequently seems intended to register disdain. This usage is typically applied to a single individual, more rarely a family or small group. In cases where the reversion has been extensive, such individuals are usually referred to simply as wild. There are no known populations of feral humans in modern times, though such transformations may have occurred in the past. Normally, a classification as feral makes the assumption of a breeding population, and so is usually not accurate for humans.

Variables

Susceptibility

Certain familiar animals go feral easily and successfully, while others are much less inclined to wander and usually fail promptly outside domestication.

Degree

Some species will detach readily from humans and pursue their own devices, but do not stray far or spread readily. Others depart and are gone, seeking out new territory or range to exploit and displaying active invasiveness.

Persistence

Whether they leave readily and venture far, or not, the ultimate criterion for success is longevity. Can they establish themselves and reproduce reliably in the new environment?

Tenur of Domestication

Neither the duration nor the intensity with which a species has been domesticated offers a useful correlation with its feral potential.

Examples

• The goat is one of the oldest domesticated creatures, yet readily goes feral and does reasonably well on its own.
• Sheep are close contemporaries and cohorts of goats in the story of domestication, yet they have little inititive and even less competence.
• Cattle have a medium-long history under human domination, and do well enough on open range for months or even years with little or no supervision. Their ancestors the Aurochs were indominable, on par with Cape Buffalo, and even feedlot cattle display traces of this past. Although they had plentiful opportunity in North America, they failed to established any long term independence. Perhaps they were too valuable not to be rounded up and recovered, or maybe in kind with grizzles, their vestigal Bos primigenius confidence did not serve well against humans.
• The horse became a legendary and spectacular feral invader of the American continent. Indications are that it escaped, spread, and thrived from the earliest introductions, and did so repeatedly. It has a medium-long history of domestication
• The pig was free-ranged with other animals by pioneers and settlers. Across the Southern tier and Mid-western region there are multiple highly tenacious populations descendant from escapees, mixed in places with released wild European swine. They have been hunted, shot on sight, tracked with dogs, trapped and even poisoned. Likewise in Europe, the French harvest about 10,000 swine per year as wild game (also possibly mixed wild-feral), and recently a large city park within urban Paris was disrupted and closed for months while wildlife officials struggled to evict, shoot or trap a boar that had claimed the refuge for his own.

Conclusions

General

The difficulties of defining the nature of and predicting the properties of species that undergo domesticated, even after the fact, are themselves intractable. It appears that doing the same for feral development includes all the baggage of domestication, plus additional complications.

Some heavily dominated and selected species remain ready, willing and able to bolt for freedom, and strive impressively to retain it, while others that are only lightly domesticated and seem like good candidates for successful flight and invasion perform weakly.

Outstanding questions about the feral state include:

1. What are the differences between a fully established feral population and it's domestic ancesters?
2. Are feral populations of long standing comparable with the pre-domestication species, or with other never-domesticated animals?
3. Do feral resources always offer good re-domestication prospects, i.e., do they retain the core goal traits of captivity?

Humans

The special case of humans is even more problematic. Their status as domesticates is poorly resolved, and there is little opportunity presently for feral conditions.

Early Americans

The early New England colonies suffered heavy losses which were in many cases runaways, yet there were pressures to hide and misreport this particular problem. As the runaways became established in the hinterlands, their existence was again better denied, since their acknowledged presence would constitute a legal encumberance on those lands and regions they occupied. Later in the Colonial Era and into the early days of the United States, they came to be known as "the rabble", and by all descriptions they were extraordinarily rough-hewn, even for this very rugged period.

The rabble was often described as animal-like and as having gone wild, and it is conceivable that they were an actively developing feral population. Eventually, their still-unofficial presence became an acute political problem, which was solved by a combination of enticement and inducement to migrate south where they intermingled and gradually dispersed among other groups.

See Also

• Domestication

External Links

Note: Links that treat feral animals as a mere pest issue are the norm.

• National Wild Horse and Burro Program
• "There are probably at least 300,000 feral camels in Australia..."
  feral camels
• "...the anti-Barbie, fresh from the rainforests of Northern New South Wales, Australia."
  Meet Feral Cheryl