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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 8439062" data-attributes="member: 1165">To quote the (controversial) Guns, Germs & Steel, here are some ingredients for domesticating large animals for food purposes.Diet. (Most large domesticated animals are herbivores, because you want to feed them cheaply. Obviously large dogs are an exception to this, but I've never heard of a culture that eats large dogs. The chihuahua was a kind of portable snack.)Growth rate. (Cattle grow quickly. Lions... not so much.)Captive breeding. (Many animals will refuse to breed in captivity. Apparently Japanese bears would not breed in captivity, so they were never actually domesticated. More on this in a bit.)Disposition. (Animals that get aggressive, such as bears, are very hard to domesticate. Even if you can, it's not worth it. Japanese bears were captured as cubs, rather than raise in captivity, then killed and eaten before they could grow too large and aggressive. African buffalo and zebras are also very nasty. I suspect the Wakandan rhino cavalry required some special technology to keep them under control.)Panic. (Many animals will panic in captivity, battering themselves against cages and walls or simply suffering from heart problems.)Social structure. (Horses, cattle, and dogs are particularly social, making them easy to control. If you want horses or cattle to go somewhere, just take control of the dominant horse or cow/bull and the rest will follow. You can get horses to cross streams this way. Non-social animals might simply spend too much time fighting.)I imagine dire moose cannot be domesticated as I've never heard of anyone domesticating real moose. But I don't know enough about moose behavior to determine if they are docile enough, social enough, and calm enough to domesticate.</blockquote>

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