What would be domesticated by an underwater society?

Let's say you have an underwater society living off the American Atlantic coast. Their technology level is roughly equivalent to medieval times. Do you think they'd domesticate any animals?

Sharks

Whales and/or seals located in those waters.

What do you define as "domesticated" by the way?

Edited by Trainbarrel on Dec 24th 2023 at 3:57:25 PM

And how deep are they?

There are a number of traits that make an animal more domesticable. Aside from the obvious ("being useful for something the prospective owner isn't very good at"), domesticable species are likely to have similar social structures and body language to their owner (to make it likelier to establish trust with the wild population) and have compatible dietary needs (like being able to share different parts of the same meal or at least not needing to eat something hard to obtain). It also helps if they have a relatively short reproductive cycle, so a single person can perform selective breeding over multiple generations. (This is one of the big reasons elephants have never been domesticated - their social behaviour is extremely human-friendly, but they live and gestate for so long it's been easier to just tame individual elephants over and over for centuries.)

You didn't specify, so I'm going to assume merfolk who are basically underwater humans, for simplicity. (This is going to be amateurish speculation, I'm not a marine biologist.)

• The most obvious candidates, to me, are seals. Anything humans have learned to breed in captivity despite not being aquatic seems like a good place to start.
• Dugongs and sirenians, maybe, being large docile herbivores?
• Sea otters, the cats of the coast.
• I know even less about fish species, but anything that will graze passively on whatever drifts by, appreciates edibles being pushed in their direction, and forms schools or at least doesn't mind sharing space.
• Maybe some of the smaller dolphins. It takes a special kind of visionary to try domesticating a predator who's bigger than you (hence the unlikeliness of bear cavalry), and you also run into problems with migratory species - unless you migrate with them, of course, since a lot of sea life does, in multiple directions. (I'd rule out sea turtles for a similar reason - not only do they travel and live inconveniently long, but trying to control the breeding of a species that lays eggs on land specifically where creatures like you can't follow them is not likely to see much success.)

Predators are not an efficient source of protean, so it is rare to attempt to domesticate them, except as hunting companions. Dolphins could fill that role.

That might change underwater, though. I think most marine life loosely the same size as humans are omnivores leaning carnivorous, just because the food web starts so small.

Dolphins definitely hunt. They even do it cooperatively.

I think that what Noaqiyeum might be suggesting is not that dolphins are a poor choice of hunting companion, but rather that in the sea it would be hard to find a large, domesticable herbivore.

As a result, a sentient species looking for a large food-animal to domesticate might end up with a predatory species simply for lack of choice.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jan 5th 2024 at 9:36:53 PM

Oh, I see. But I think in the ocean the equation changes. Fish farms make more sense than feeding off mammals. Dolphins hunt entire schools at a time, and that's the scale that makes the most sense.

I may have missed it, but I don't think that anyone has suggested feeding on mammals, specifically.

As you suggested, dolphins might be domesticated as hunting companions.

Noaqiyeum mentioned a few other mammals, but based on a quick look doesn't seem to have specified for what purpose. (Sea otters as pets? Especially given the "cats of the coast" bit.)

As to fish-farms, I think that in terms of food-efficiency they make good sense: larger predatory fish would have to be fed on something smaller anyway, so why not just eat the smaller things? (Are there large herbivorous fish? Those might work.)

The problem that I see is that of controlling the ability of the fish to exit the farm, given the three-dimensional nature of an aquatic environment. Perhaps they might be bred to tolerate sea-caves, which could be selected for limited entrances...?

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jan 6th 2024 at 6:53:15 PM

As plankton pretty much serve as the bottom of the food chain, I think the "carnivorous — herbivorous" distinction breaks down. What we're looking for is a cost efficient source of protein that isn't migratory or aggressive. Manatees are about all I can think of, but their environmental requirements are somewhat strict.

Fish farms it is, then. Fish, and their predators, will hang around if you feed them. That requires an industrial scale fish food that is less nutritious for humans than the fish. Our own waste, maybe? If you really need to restrict their movement, a net stretched across the mouth of a narrow bay should so it.

As to herbivory, there are sea-weeds and the like that I imagine some fish or other grazes.

But yes, with plankton available, a lot of creatures will be essentially carnivores.

As to feeding a fish-farm, what about algae? That, after all, can quite famously grow rampant. Set up a separate algae farm and use that to feed some fish or other that feeds on it.

Now, humans can, I suspect, eat some algae—but might well choose to sacrifice some for the sake of getting delicious fish-meat.

What about crayfish? Crabs?

Crab-farms?

They would at least be somewhat manageable, deal with some organic waste such as corpses of other food-sources and the like.

They age and grow roughly at the same pace as fish as well.

Yes, that's what I meant. I noticed almost all the ideas that were coming to my mind would be in a dog kind of role as either hunting animals or pets, and tried to push against that a bit; sirenians seemed like a decent fit for livestock but that might just be because they're literally called "sea cows" and I did a bit of research trying to identify large fish that feed directly on kelp forests, which would solve the problem of keeping the herds contained by providing a habitat incentive to stay, but couldn't name any particular species. Some kinds of grouper or bass, maybe? Herding larger schools of smaller fish might be more likely, which would look quite different from (most) terrestrial livestock - more like shepherding rabbits or gerbils.

Crustaceans are also a good idea.

(I'm going back and forth on whether I think dolphins would be domesticable. On the one hand, I tend to think of merfolk as anthropomorphic dolphins anyway; on the other hand, they might be too intelligent and unmanageable, and unwilling to stick around without an immediate reason to. Again, it feels less like turning wolves into dogs and more like trying to tame a bear or a tiger.)

Maybe because of the three-dimensional environment a better analogue would be domesticated birds... which are mostly flightless, or have their wings clipped to prevent them flying away. But there might be analogues to not only falconry (hunting animals) but also carrier pigeons - though underwater the relevant skills might be less the ability to travel long distances to a specific destination with a letter attached, and more like being able to recite a message in a voice that carries even farther underwater, like using a whale as a kind of short-wave parrot.

"Again, it feels less like turning wolves into dogs and more like trying to tame a bear or a tiger."

Naw, dolphins are highly social animals, the Navy seems to have no problem getting them to stay with their handlers in the open ocean, and they're territorial anyway, meaning they don't like traveling too far from the home ground.

That means that the merfolk could have their dog equivalents with dolphins, I wonder about squids and octopi

Ah, good points. I was thinking about academic research facilities and forgot about military-trained dolphins.

Exactly what they can domesticate will also depend on the where the society lives and their own physical characteristics. Kelp, seaweed, and seagrass can only grow in coast lines and shallow seas which means those are the only places that they could have grazing livestock. In open oceans, the base of the food web is plankton, which means that any theoretical livestock would have to be filter-feeders. This presents a problem as most of these animals tend to be rather large and slow breeding. As such, I'd see any open ocean cultures as nomadic hunters, though I could see them domesticating dolphins or some pelagic shark as hunting companions.

As for the people themselves. One limiting factor for humans is that some animals are more physically dangerous to us such as large cats or bears, which makes domesticating them much more risky and not worth the danger. However, is these merpople were more physically powerful, then domesticating larger predators would be less hazardous as they could more readily defend themselves and keep the animals in line when they haven't been fully tamed yet.

You do make a good point about the habitats available to kelp, seaweed, etc.

I will say that I could see a species starting off in or around shallow areas, and then as it develops and becomes a little more advanced, expanding out into the deeper reaches.

Specifically, this might be facilitated by the invention of submerged garden-rafts, essentially allowing them to "take the shallows with them" for the purposes of plant-production.

(Sort of like inverse irrigation: instead of taking the water to the dry land, they're taking the land to the deep water.)

If you want some inspiration, here's some examples of animals domesticated by merfolk by NazRigar.