Member-only story
Why Are Our Pets Our Pets?
A food-for-thought experiment
Imagine a world just like our own in every way except one: twenty thousand years ago, humankind domesticated wild boars.
Over the course of several thousand years, these boars grew to respond and even love humans. They learned to read our faces and obey certain commands. The boars would dance around ancient campfires with their pack, snorting to make the children laugh, but always willing to fight for their human companions in a predator threatened them. The boars learned to sit, to stay, and to fetch.
As time passed, these pigs began to drop their teeth and grew smaller in size. Their appearance became cuddlier and their fur became slick and glossy. Any groups of nomadic humans wouldn’t be complete with a couple of pigs around to protect them. Fathers passed down piglets as presents for their children to joyfully rear, and mothers would mourn the deaths of the family pig when it reached old age.
The pigs were intelligent, more intelligent than the humans in their toddler years. They could sniff out unripe berries and respond to dozens of commands. They could fetch game or stand guard or dig holes. Anything their master asked.
