What if we consider ungulates co evolving with humans?

Reading a book I got for Christmas. Chapter 5 of "A hunter-gatherer's guide to the 21st century "
Depending on ungulates also means we manipulated conditions, we dealt with competitors, used fire, even domesticated some. So in the 21st century it seems we want to take a step back from all of that. Let nature take its course. But what if the many thousands of years the "Wild" ungulates we have coddled in some way by co evolving are not really up to the task, that our lives are entwined?
Topic for discussion.

Nature will sort that out rather quickly.

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Originally Posted by horshur

Reading a book I got for Christmas. Chapter 5 of "A hunter-gatherer's guide to the 21st century "
Depending on ungulates also means we manipulated conditions, we dealt with competitors, used fire, even domesticated some. So in the 21st century it seems we want to take a step back from all of that. Let nature take its course. But what if the many thousands of years the "Wild" ungulates we have coddled in some way by co evolving are not really up to the task, that our lives are entwined?
Topic for discussion.

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It's a great thing to think about. I'm not sure we've "coddled" ungulates, but there's no question we all co-evolved. I mean, bios don't ask hunters to *not shoot* collared animals precisely because human caused hunting mortality has always been part of any animal's life experience, right?

Letting nature take it's course usually seems to me to be the response of people who don't understand what that looks like and who don't understand that humans have achieved apex predator status and have kind of (going out on a limb here, I know) created a global predator pit.

Sounds like a book I would fall asleep after reading first page.:shock:

It is a easy read.

My hunting partner has a theory. The animals are only here because we want them here. Many species like the Buffalo were on the brink of extinction until we did something about it. So we have to keep manipulating their habitat to keep them going. Unless we are willing to dedicate huge swaths of land for them to live in without logging, mining or other industry than they’re going to continue to need help.

All animals have definitely evolved around humans. It’s not hard to see when you drive through jasper park and the sheep and elk sit 10 yards from the edge of the ditch for tourists to take their photograph, but anywhere else they’d vanish into the wilderness.

I’m a bit more of a naturalist and Id love to see more land set aside for animal habitat, but I also understand the need for industry to support the lifestyle we’ve come accustomed too. Balance is the key and humans aren’t very good at that.

Some one needs to lay off the crack.

The ancestral genotype is present in most domesticated animals. For some like pigs, rabbits, goats and horses it only takes a generation or two to go feral and revert to a wild phenotype.

We may have co-evolved certainly.
But we have done a poor job of co-existing.

Creatures such as ungulates have lived in the same manner for as long as they have been around, only adapting to the
changes humans make.
We on the other hand, keep evolving, which generally means keep destroying thru the need to develop our habitat
further and further and will continue to do so, until the only habitat left are areas that very few ungulates can inhabit.

It we that have to change how we cohabitate with other creatures.
Otherwise we will continue to just conform the land that benefits us, and only if possible, give a little back in some altered
form for the other creatures to exist.

We are the big reason, the only reason that all the other creatures are declining.
So no, I don't think we have "co-evolved" in any manner that has offered balance to both sides of the fence.

Why would there need to be balance? who values balance? Nature or man? Anthropomorphic projection?
What animals get to thrive? Ones we value. Even those we have rendered completely useless ( lap dogs).