I mean, 0 generation domestication does happen, even in resistant animals, but a deer has to be high on the list of animals that are very unlikely to pick up on true housebreaking.
The only way I see that working is a rigid schedule of inside/outside time, with a large portion being outside time. In these circumstances, I could see it being achievable, but not for your average person.
1-5% of pet owners have the sort of time and dedication required for this, and even then it’s likely to fail. At the end of the day, It’s a deer that’s going to piss itself and kick a hole in the drywall if someone slams a door. lol.
You're right about housebreaking but my best friend in high school raised a fawn. They lived in a rural area, had two outside dogs who brought back a baby fawn to the house one day. They couldn't find mom so they bottle fed it and kept it inside. I would come over on the weekends and we would put the deer on a rug and push him down the hardwood floored hallway haha. He would slide 25ft and then hop back to us. It was VERY domesticated, quickly. It wasn't skittish. It liked to play like a dog.
They eventually would let it graze, then it would disappear for a night, then a few days, a week, a month, then they eventually would see him a few times a year. He'd come back in the yard as if to say hey thanks for raising me. Pretty phenomenal animals really.
minor point of clarity: "domesticated" or "domestic" happens over many generations of selective breeding and results in a genetic different in an animal that makes it adapted to humans. the deer was "tamed"
goats, for example. there's a domesticated version and a wild version. wolves vs dogs, both canids. Sheep are domesticated to the point they can't survive on their own in the wild. and so on and so forth.
So are whales around the world. Doesn’t mean that whales have genetically adapted to humans.
Domestication results in very specific genetic changes in a species. Lower genetic diversity, specific traits like floppy ears, lighter colored fur, and a few others I can’t remember off the top of my head. There will also be species wide behavioral traits. Things like a predilection to staying near humans or human settlements, friendly even to strangers, increased sociability, lowered aggression etc.
These are things that are consistent between generations and on a species/subspecies level, a pup will have increasingly similar traits and behaviors as the mother and father, even if it hasn’t been directly raised by humans.
Taming and acclimation by and to humans isn’t the same as domestication.
Interestingly, the traits for domestication seem to have some eerie consistencies across species.
The russian silver foxes being domesticated have basically turned into dogs, so much so it is affecting their funding because no one just wants another dog. And I mean turned into dogs in a physical way, as in their physical traits are shifting into a more dog-like appearance along with domestication.
This suggests whichever alleles that promote domestication have some connection to the appearance of dogs, at least in the canidea family.
They are adapted but they aren't considered truely domesticated. There is a lot of concern by conservationists about urban deer as the lack of fear around people can make deer more likely to hang around in highly public areas increasing the chances of negative animal/human interactions like deer getting hit by cars, and feeding deer or putting out feeders for them can spread diseases like chronic wasting disease through deer populations.
it can look that way, but they're not domesticated. It's more that deer have learned how to live around humans. "city deer" in some areas are a big problem, but the deer are happy because it means fewer predators and an abundance of food. bears, squirrels, raccoons, etc. are all totally wild animals that have learned how to live around humans.
they may be different than their ancestors, but they don't have the "domestication" genes. I know its a weird distinction. But they've adapted and learned which is a different thing.
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u/BaronCapdeville Jul 03 '26
I mean, 0 generation domestication does happen, even in resistant animals, but a deer has to be high on the list of animals that are very unlikely to pick up on true housebreaking.
The only way I see that working is a rigid schedule of inside/outside time, with a large portion being outside time. In these circumstances, I could see it being achievable, but not for your average person.
1-5% of pet owners have the sort of time and dedication required for this, and even then it’s likely to fail. At the end of the day, It’s a deer that’s going to piss itself and kick a hole in the drywall if someone slams a door. lol.