Jared Diamond, Domesticated Animals and Arranged Marriages

Jared Diamond's fascinating book Guns, Germs and Steel has a chapter called Zebras and Unhappy Marriages. He argues that though, it would seem, a lot of mammals qualify for getting domesticated, very few ended up being that way at least with the weight exceeding 100 pounds. The reason, he argues, is that for any animal to be domesticated at least six factors need to be hold true:

a) Diet: It would not make much sense to domesticate a carnivore species because a human would rather consumer 10,000 pounds of a herbivore than to feed it to an animal and get 1000 pounds of this carnivore.
b) Growth Rate: Slow growth rates would defeat the basic purpose of domestication( which is breed and get dairy or meat products fast)...so this rules out elephants and chimps.
c) Problem of Captive Breeding: Some animals don't like to have sex in the glare of their human master or other companions in the stable.
d) Nasty Disposition: Animals like Zebras hurt more zookeepers every year than lions!!
e) Tendency to Panic: Deers tend to panic at the slightest change in their surroundings
f) Social Structure

So, generally speaking, for an animal to be domesticated, it has to be a herbivore, needs to grow fast, should not mind mating at any time( or place!!), should be benign towards humans and needs to be comfortable with humans. It also needs to be comfortable being part of a hierarchy and should be ready to accept a human as the head of that structure.


Domesticating is a sort of marriage between a human and an animal. Arranged marriages presents an interesting variant of this domestication phenomenon( I am solely trying to draw some parallels here and in no way suggesting that those who are looking to get married through arranged marriage are engaging in any sort of domestication exercise!!). While normal marriage between two human beings might require matching of a variety of factors like physical attraction, similarity in thought and intellectual capacity, same religion/caste/class, in-laws compatibility, do you like( or hate) George Bush and whether you prefer eating a boiled egg from the sharp or the rounded side.Arranged marriage introduces a further constraint. You, or your parents or whoever is responsible for getting you married if you have failed to find a partner for yourself, now are trying to make these things happen rather than letting them happen naturally( which seems to be the case in love marriage).

The variety of factors discussed above to make a marriage work along with the fact that it is arranged should obviously restrict the number of possible matches. In case of large mammals, humans have been able to find only 14 matches( 5 main ones being Sheep, Goat, Cow, Pigs , Horses and 9 minor ones) to date...imagine, just 14 matches that have stood the test of time. What are the chances of finding an ideal match in an arranged marriage with more than 6 factors that have to go right?