We all love Raja, Jasmine's tiger from the movie “Aladdin”. It’s hilarious to see how he protects her from her ugly suitor, lives in luxury and has a beautiful friendship with the princess... Just a perfect symbiosis.
Symbiosis? What it’s that? It’s like an ‘arrangement’ between two different groups or species, to the advantage of both parties... It’s a win-win situation. Raja provided the princess with protection, and the princess provided him with food and shelter.
But... Aren’t they more like friends in the movie? The answer to this is yes, and there’s a good explanation for that, because in the movie, we don’t actually see a symbiotic relationship. In the case of some animals (like cats and dogs) and over the last centuries, this symbiosis was replaced by something else: domestication.
First, we have to know the definition of this word. Domestication is the process of breeding reorganization of wild animals and plants into domestic and cultivated forms according to the interests of people. So, a domestic animal is an animal that lives in close association with people, and because of this ‘reorganization’, it’s generally unlikely to survive in the wild, these creatures depend on us (this is not to be confused with taming, be careful! Taming is a conditioned behavioral modification of an individual, not a permanent genetic modification of a bred lineage).
After learning about this the question was, how Jasmine went from having a fierce and dangerous tiger to a friendly and charismatic companion? Well, let’s just say that what we do know is how to differentiate a domesticated animal from its wild counterpart, but we don’t know much about the exact process of it.
Domestication happens through selective breeding (also called artificial selection because of human intervention). Individuals that have desirable traits are selected to reproduce, and these desirable traits are then passed along to the future generations. This results in modifications, mostly concerning morphoanatomy and behavior. The last ones are the first to appear, being one of the most remarkable behavioral changes, shared by all domesticates, their tolerance of proximity to people. Changes concerning the morphology are all caused by a feature known as neoteny - the retention of juvenile traits like soft fur, floppy ears, and bigger heads relative to their body size.
We cannot verify that, I don’t even think on going near a tiger, suit yourself if you want to... So, what do you think? Was Raja a domesticated animal or a tamed animal?
Photograph by @TheCats