Would you agree that animals that are commonly domesticated (cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, horses) have young that humans also find cute?
Yes, but not significantly more than the average young mammal is cute. The difference |P(Cute|Domesticated) - P(Cute)| is small and uninteresting.
Is your point that other animals also have young that humans find cute (baby seals spring to mind) but are less commonly domesticated and therefore usefulness rather than cuteness of young is the primary criteria that determined domestication?
Yes, precisely.
It is probably impossible to know the full story behind the domestication of animals but it seems at least plausible that humans first ‘adopted’ some animals partially because they were ‘cute’ and the utility was an unplanned benefit.
It’s possible. There are also other models, where humans domesticated whole groups of animals gradually over many generations. For instance, people who followed herds of large grazing mammals around could have protected them from predators and very gradually tamed them by selection and by relaxation of predator pressure, perhaps over many generations of people as well as of cattle. In another case, it’s said wild wolves or dogs may have come to live in human settlements and eaten scraps, or cats may have come in to hunt rodents in grain stores, and were only gradually domesticated.
We can’t know for sure, as you say. But at the very least, once humans had a general concept of domestication, they began trying to domesticate potentially useful animals, disregarding their cuteness or un-cuteness.
Yes, but not significantly more than the average young mammal is cute. The difference |P(Cute|Domesticated) - P(Cute)| is small and uninteresting.
Yes, precisely.
It’s possible. There are also other models, where humans domesticated whole groups of animals gradually over many generations. For instance, people who followed herds of large grazing mammals around could have protected them from predators and very gradually tamed them by selection and by relaxation of predator pressure, perhaps over many generations of people as well as of cattle. In another case, it’s said wild wolves or dogs may have come to live in human settlements and eaten scraps, or cats may have come in to hunt rodents in grain stores, and were only gradually domesticated.
We can’t know for sure, as you say. But at the very least, once humans had a general concept of domestication, they began trying to domesticate potentially useful animals, disregarding their cuteness or un-cuteness.