Abe Gibson
Florida State University
Domesticated animals have played an integral role in human civilization for several thousand years, and, from an evolutionary perspective, their partnership with humanity has proved a boon. Distributed around the globe in cosmopolitan fashion, they now vastly outnumber their closest wild brethren. Fittingly, scholars have generated an impressive historiography on both the process and products of animal domestication. And yet, despite this interest, few historians have considered the closely related process known as feralization. Often regarded as “domestication in reverse,” feralization occurs any time a domesticated animal takes leave of humanity’s immediate dominion and establishes residency in the wild. The feral label generally applies to both the initial stray and all of its progeny thereafter. Thus defined by some previous, ill-fated consociation with humanity, feral animals are distinct from both domestic creatures and wild ones.
This paper will compare the respective histories of feral pigs and feral horses in the southeastern United States. Doing so places the paper squarely within the burgeoning field of “evolutionary history.” Studying the feralization process allows one to compare a population’s fortunes both when it was subject to direct anthropogenic selection and when it was not. What qualifies as evolutionary success is not always intuitive. Furthermore, while comparing their histories can teach us about the animals themselves, of course, it can also shed light on the people with whom they disengaged. After all, these creatures cannot be fully understood without reference to the anthropogenic factors (culture, science, economics, and ethics) that have influenced their genetic composition and distribution over the years. This provides scholars with a unique opportunity to link the past with the present, to connect history with biology.
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