Re: wild, feral, ??, tame, domesticated

On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 10:33:10 -0400, Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
wrote:

>On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, John Cowan wrote:
>
>> "Feral" refers to a wild animal (whether shy or not) whose ancestors
>> were domesticated: pigeons in the U.S. are all feral, even though many
>> of them have become acclimatized (which I think is the word wanted).
>
>I thought it referred to wild introduced species; in Australia, you can
>talk of feral plants (unlike weeds, these can be trees). We also have
>feral camels in the Northern Territory :)
The typical pigeon most people think of (Columba livia, confusingly called
the "rock dove" in bird guides) was introduced, but there are native
band-tailed pigeons (Columba fasciata) in the southwest and Pacific coast.

It does seem like it would be a useful thing to distinguish between (on the
one hand) species introduced accidentally or intentionally, (and on the
other hand) wild or domestic introduced species. And a word specifically
for introduced species that got out of control and turned into pests/weeds
(whether introduced deliberately or accidentally). At least that would be a
good start; the Zireen cultures generally tend to be closer to nature than
21st century urbanized human cultures, so they'll need a lot more of these,
but I don't even know much about the animals and plants on their world to
begin with.

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