All domesticated animals have come from wild animals. Man was once a wild animal himself—before he had invented houses, and farms, and clothes, and vehicles, and art, and science, and before he had acquired the enterprise to domesticate other animals.

In many cases it is possible to put our finger on the particular wild species from which each domesticated variety has come. In other cases this is impossible. This may be due to the fact that the changes in the domesticated race have been so great that it is no longer possible to identify the ancestral species; or it may be because the wild part of the species has been exterminated since domestication began and the species exists now only in the captive state. This last is true of the camels. There are no wild camels. All the camels there are in the world are associated with men.

“Wild” is an adjective which is applied to those races of beings which are not associated with man. Wild animals are sometimes thought of as being in an unnatural state. This is not true. It is the surroundings of the domesticated animals and of man that are artificial.

Animals are domesticated for various purposes—the sheep for its hair, the horse for its strength and speed, the cow for her muscles and milk, the pig for its “bacon,” fowls for their eggs and feathers, the dog for hunting and companionship, the bee for its sweets, the canary for its song, and the goldfish for its grace and beauty.

Most domesticated animals have been greatly changed, both in body and mind, during the period of their domestication. These changes have been made in order to fit the animals more perfectly to human needs. And these changes are destined to continue to go on through the ages to come. The mammoth apple and potato have come from wild ancestors so small and tasteless that our luxurious palates would today regard them with disdain. We wouldn’t likely eat the wild potato in the condition it was in when the Indians began to cultivate it. We have too many other things that are better. But the Indians ate it because their sources of nourishment at that time were very few.

The great changes in domesticated animals (and plants) have been brought about by Selection, that is, by the long and incessant choosing of the more suitable for breeding purposes. Farmers select the best corn and the largest potatoes to be used for planting. And in the same way they select for breeding purposes the sheep with the longest and finest wool, and the best-laying hens. The domestic chicken is a bird; and in the wild state it lays a nest full of eggs in the spring and hatches them, and then lays no more till the next spring, like other birds. But by selecting for breeding purposes those hens that had a tendency to lay more eggs man has developed breeds that now lay eggs the year around.

In the same way cows have been developed to give milk for a year or two after the birth of a calf, although naturally, in the wild cows, milk is produced for only a short time after the calf is born and serves as food for the calf until it is able to get its own food. By repeated emphasis of any peculiarity, either of mind or body, it can be developed in time to an extent almost without limit. It has been by this simple method of selection that “green roses” have in these later times been produced, and the spineless cactus, and seedless grapes, apples, oranges, bananas, and pineapples. This process is called Artificial Selection, because it is carried on by man.

Science teaches us that it has been through a similar process of selection carried on by nature and extending through millions of years that all of the different species of animals and plants existing on the earth have originated. The first animals were the least evolved, and from these, through Natural Selection, operating throughout immeasurable periods of time, have arisen all the more evolved animals, including man.