"And when the wolves come knocking at our doors with things like HR 669, can we really say that professional breeders are aiding conservation?"



Interesting that you should choose a wolf analogy. Wild wolves are endangered in fact until recently they were basically extirpated from the lower 48 states here in the USA.

It would be interesting if earlier civilizations had a similar attitude to yours and not bothered to domesticate wolves we might not have man's best friend.

Horses also come to mind in this scenario. There is debate as to whether or not prezwalski's horses are a full species or a subspecies of Equis ferrus (the modern horse.) either way the actual horse we have today does not exist in the wild with the exception of feral populations(ie no true wild ancestors anymore.) this can be said of several other domestic animals that serve useful purposes, if they did not exist in domestic forms they would be extinct. I kind of like having lots of these animals around myself I think it is much preferrable to be able to look at an actual animal and be able to touch it and experience what it is really like rather than wonder what they were like as we do with dinosaurs or wolly mammoths .

We are coming to a time in this world where if we do not decide whether or not to keep animals in captivity they are going to be gone. It is beyond worrying about their habitat, like it or not habitat is going away. 2 excellent examples of this mammal wise are tigers and orangutans, there are many others as well and space will not allow me to get into places like Madagascar in this post where currently only about 10% of their original rainforests still exist. bottom line is if I had a choice of seeing an actual live t-rex that was a color morph or not seeing one at all I would definitely opt for the former choice.

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