Re: Local wildlife

John Cowan wrote:

>> That leaves only four domesticated animals, the dog
>> ("ikei"), cat ("miua"), American turkey ("kauen"), and a species of pack
>> animal called the "kapa".  The kapa is a domesticated descendant of the
>>Andean
>> guanaco (and is thus a cousin of the llama), which, in their Timeline, was
>> introduced to North America several centuries earlier by traders from
>> Central and South America.
>
>It's your conworld, but I would expect in that case to see domesticated
>deer or wapiti.
Although they are easily tamed when young, deer are not domesticable
(except reindeer) - or at least, that's what I remember reading.  Perhaps
they don't breed well in captivity, or something like that.  Or perhaps it's
that deer, unlike sheep and cows, don't herd, and are thus difficult to
raise in large numbers for food.  (Solitary animals, and especially highly
territorial ones, make bad livestock!)  I'm not sure what the reason is.  But
anyhow, if deer were domesticable, then you'd expect that at some point in
history, some civilisation somewhere would have successfully domesticated
them.  But it's never happened.

Matt.