Feral

Related Topics:
Feral :: Feral_Children

A feral animal or plant is one that has escaped from domestication and returned, partly or wholly, to its wild state. Rarely will the environment have evolved to accommodate the feral organism into its established ecology. Therefore, feral animals and plants often cause disruption or extinction to some indigenous species. Feral animals reduce the pristine quality of wilderness.

Applicability

Animals

A feral animal is one that has reverted from the domesticated state to a stable condition more or less resembling the wild. Without artificially provided food and shelter, the feral animal must learn through wildness how to take greater notice of its natural surroundings.

Plants

Domesticated plants that revert to wild are usually referred to as escaped, introduced, or naturalized. However, the adaptive and ecological variables seen in plants that go wild closely resemble those of animals.

Variables

Susceptibility

Certain familiar animals go feral easily and successfully, while others are much less inclined to wander and usually fail promptly outside domestication.

Degree

Some species will detach readily from humans and pursue their own devices, but do not stray far or spread readily. Others depart and are gone, seeking out new territory or range to exploit and displaying active invasiveness.

Persistence

Whether they leave readily and venture far, the ultimate criterion for success is longevity. Persistence depends on their ability to establish themselves and reproduce reliably in the new environment.

Tenure of Domestication

Neither the duration nor the intensity with which a species has been domesticated offers a useful correlation with its feral potential.

Examples of Feral Animals

The goat is one of the oldest domesticated creatures, yet readily goes feral and does reasonably well on its own.

The dromedary camel, which has been domesticated for well over 3,000 years, will also readily go feral. A substantial population of feral dromedaries, descended from pack animals that escaped in the 19th and early 20th centuries, thrives in the Australian interior today.

Also in Australia, the introduction of rabbits for sport led to an explosive growth in population, and rabbits are now a major pest in Australia.

The cat returns readily to a feral state if it has not been socialized properly in its young life. See:-Feral cats. It will usually fear humans, and people sometimes unknowingly own one and think it merely "unfriendly." These cats, especially if left to proliferate, are frequently considered to be "pests" in populated neighborhoods, and may be blamed for decimating the bird population and digging up people's yards. They are desirable to keep rodent and snake populations down in agriculture. Such cats are often referred to as "barn" cats. A local population of feral cats living in an area and using a common food source such as food scavenged from dumpsters or supplementary feeding by humans is called a feral cat colony. Kittens learn to be feral from their mothers or through bad experiences. Kittens under six months of age can be socialized (see socialization), while cats older than six months are very hard to socialize. Animal shelters may foster the kittens to be socialized but sometimes kill them outright. The feral adults are often killed or euthanized due to the difficulty of socializing them to the point of adoptability. More recently, the "Trap-Neuter-Return" method has been used in many locations as a means of humanely managing the feral cat population.

Sheep are close contemporaries and cohorts of goats in the story of domestication, yet they have little initiative and even less competence.

Cattle have a medium-long history under human domination, and do well enough on open range for months or even years with little or no supervision. Their ancestors the Aurochs were indomitable, on par with Cape Buffalo, and even feedlot cattle display traces of this past. Although they had plentiful opportunity in North America, they failed to established any long term independence. Perhaps they were too valuable not to be rounded up and recovered, or maybe in kind with grizzlies, their vestigal Bos primigenius confidence did not serve well against humans.

The horse became a legendary and spectacular feral invader of the American continent. Indications are that it escaped, spread, and thrived from the earliest introductions, and did so repeatedly. It has a medium-long history of domestication. It is known there as a mustang.

The pig was free-ranged with other animals by pioneers and settlers. Across the Southern tier and Mid-western regions of North America there are multiple highly tenacious populations descendant from escapees, mixed in places with released wild European swine. They have been hunted, shot on sight, tracked with dogs, trapped and even poisoned. Likewise in Europe, the French harvest about 10,000 swine per year as wild game (also possibly mixed wild-feral), and recently a large city park within urban Paris was disrupted and closed for months while wildlife officials struggled to evict, shoot or trap a boar that had claimed the refuge for his own.

Pigeons were formerly kept for their meat.

Dogs can revert to wildness, becoming predators little less effective than the Big Cats of like size. In Antarctica, dogs abandoned at the end of explorations survived by preying upon penguins. Feral dogs often lack the fear of humans that wild wolves show; their cunning, power, size, strength, and agility make them destructive of livestock and dangerous to humans. Feral dogs also played a key role in the extinction of the lion in Europe.

Colonies of honeybees have been occasionally known to expand beyond domesticated apiaries.

Harmful effects and interests of the feralization

Ecological harmful effects : The populations resulting from feralization which colonize a medium can have a significant impact on the ecosystem : by predation (plants or animals) or by competition on the indigenous species. They constitute a significant share of the invasive species, and thus join this problem.
Genetic pollution : When animals of domestic origin hybrid themselves with the savage animals. One quotes the cases of the duck mallard, wild boar, the rock dove, the wild cock (Gallus gallus) but also carp and more recently salmon. One notes even the case of the dingo, itself resulting from ancient marronnage, which hybrid with dogs of European origin. Contrary this problem never seems not to be noticed for rabbit. Does this phenomenon definitively compromise the purity of a wild species? In the case of the duck mallard, for example, the phenomenon is old : it is considered that there is no more representative of the species which does not have any domestic ancestor. This species is however not put in danger by this contamination.
Economic harmful effects: It is typically about the competition which these feral animals exert on the pastures of livestock, and degradations that they can cause with the fences, at the water points, even on the ground and the vegetation by overgrazing. It is the case of the horses in bovine cattle-rearing areas in the United States, and of the goats in ovine cattle-rearing area in Australia. One also notes the embarrassment which with the stockbreeder the presence of congeneric savages of his animals can cause ; their presence and their cries excite the domestic animals and push them to escape, then they are pulled by the wild group rather than to remain in the surroundings : guinea fowls in Africa, horses. Sometimes lastly, one reproaches these population their role of reserve of transmissible infections to the domestic animals.
Economic interest : The feral animals can be driven out or captured and thus constitute a significant resource. It was the case of the mustangs captured and dispatched in great number in Europe for goes up armies, to the First World War included. It is still the case nowadays in feral goats and dromedaries in Australia, captured and exported for their meat, or also like alive animals for the seconds. It should be noted that the animals could at certain times being deliberately slackened on islands to constitute a resource at the end of a few years.
Scientific interest : The populations of feral animals are very rich subjects of studies as regards dynamics of the populations, and especially of ecology and behavior (ethology) in a wild state of species known mainly in a domestic state. Their observation can be rich lesson for the stockbreeders or holders of their domestic congeners.
Patrimonial interest : The feral populations preserved or developed characteristics which one always does not find in their congeneric servants. They thus form races (rustic) constitutive of the domestic biodiversity. These races thus deserve often to be preserved, that it is in the medium where they are installed or with the state domesticates after recaptures. The feral species aimed by programmes of eradication in Australia or Zealand News are the subject of inventory of their patrimonial interest for their safeguard if necessary. (Sheep, asses, horses...) The American mustangs were protected since 1971 from massive demolition under emblèmes from the history from the American West.
Zootechnical interest: These races constitute a genetic resource for the breeding, particularly for the extensive raising, being particularly well adapted to their medium.

Conclusions

The difficulties of defining the nature of and predicting the properties of species that undergo domestication, even after the fact, are themselves intractable. It appears that doing the same for feral development includes all the baggage of domestication, plus additional complications.

Some heavily dominated and selected species remain ready, willing and able to bolt for freedom, and strive impressively to retain it, while others that are only lightly domesticated and seem like good candidates for successful flight and invasion perform weakly.

Outstanding questions about the feral state include:

What are the differences between a fully established feral population and its domestic ancestors?
Are feral populations of long standing comparable with the pre-domestication species, or with other never-domesticated animals?
Do feral specimens always offer good re-domestication prospects, i.e., do they retain the core goal traits of captivity?

External links

Note: Links that treat feral animals as a mere pest issue are the norm.

National Wild Horse and Burro Program
Feral Camels, Information from Australian Department of Agriculture regarding Australia's estimated 300,000 feral camels.
Alley Cat Allies, a feral cat advocacy organization

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