Thank you for sharing your presentation. It was very educational, and you explained a lot of things clearly. I do agree that selective breeding can get out of hand especially with the dogs. I know a lot of the livestock were necessary especially in the older times, but since we now have options, we can start reducing our dependence on them.
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I'm glad you liked the presentation. Breeding of animals goes back centuries. Sadly, there is not much we can do about the changes we have bred into them. It seems unlikely they will ever be able to live in the wild again. I still have hope we can sanctuaries once their populations become manageable.
If we can identify how they were when they were living in the wild, we can slowly revert them again. I've seen how some dog breeders are fixing some dogs like the pug by bringing their snout back. For animals like sheep where there isn't cruelty, I don't think we need to change much. The owners usually take good care of them and shear the wool.
It may sound plausible, but changing an animal so that it can exist in the wild is not an easy feat. The existing wild reversions of them are struggling. Some have already become extinct. An easier approach would be to conserve their wild versions rather than attempt to change the domestic versions into something similar to the wild versions. The existing wild versions also have the benefit of evolution, which has adopted them in the most relevant ways.
Even if we do succeed in changing domestic animals into a viable wild animal that could survive, we may end up causing an imbalance somewhere else in the ecosystem, which could turn out to be catastrophic in the long run.
I guess that's true. But do all of them still have wild versions available?
I would say more like close relatives.