The next domesticate may have a job, not a name
A fox is an appealing answer. A zebra looks like a horse with better stationery. But the video’s strongest candidate for a new wave of domestication is a black soldier fly: an animal whose larvae can turn suitable organic leftovers into material used in animal feed.
That is a reason to watch an ongoing process, rather than a prediction that one species will win a worldwide race. These flies are already farmed and selectively bred. The useful question is what makes a population increasingly suited to life under human management.
Training one animal and changing a lineage are different things
A trained animal has learned something. A domesticated population has a history stretching across generations. Confusing those scales makes almost any impressive zoo demonstration look like the beginning of a new domestic species.
In their review of domestication, Carlos Driscoll and colleagues distinguish an individual’s learned behavior from inherited changes in a breeding lineage. They also point out that captive breeding alone does not establish domestication. Producing offspring behind a fence is part of the practical problem; it is not the entire answer.
Definitions differ. Melinda Zeder’s review places a sustained relationship involving care and reproduction at the center, and distinguishes domestication from management. Changing an animal’s surroundings is not enough if the relationship does not continue across generations and alter the pressures shaping the population.
This also explains why “friendly” is an unreliable shortcut. A calm encounter tells us about an individual in particular circumstances. It does not reveal which traits its descendants will inherit. Our article on why wild animals fear humans explores another part of that distinction: learning about people within a lifetime.
Selection needs a breeding population
Imagine that some animals tolerate routine handling better than others. If that difference is partly inherited, and the more tolerant animals produce more of the next generation, the population can shift. Repeating the process matters more than persuading one unusually cooperative animal to accept a treat.
People need not begin with a complete breeding plan. Driscoll and colleagues describe a proposed pathway for cats in which human settlements offered rodents and other opportunities, favoring wildcats able to use that environment. That is a reconstruction of a historical process, not a record of someone deciding to invent a house cat.
For a deliberate program, the practical questions follow: can the animals reproduce under the conditions people provide, and can breeders measure the traits they want? A short generation interval creates more opportunities to select parents and assess offspring. It does not guarantee that the chosen trait will respond, or that improving it will improve everything else.
Foxes show what selection can change
The Siberian silver-fox experiment gives this idea a concrete example. Dmitry Belyaev, Lyudmila Trut, and their colleagues selected foxes for their responses to people. Across generations, the selected population developed more contact-seeking behavior.
The starting point matters. Trut and colleagues report that the founders came from farm-bred populations with decades of captive history. The experiment did not begin by collecting untouched wild foxes and turning them into dogs in a few rounds.
Its useful lesson is that behavior can respond to sustained selection. It does not follow that every resulting animal is easy to house, that every wild species would respond in the same way, or that companionship is the only purpose domestication can serve. Those are separate questions from whether a measured behavior changes.
A zebra can cooperate without becoming a horse
The Smithsonian’s account of Moyo, a Grevy’s zebra, describes keepers using positive reinforcement to teach him to touch a target and stand on a scale. That cooperation made his care easier. Keepers nevertheless worked from outside the enclosure because a startled or aggressive response could seriously injure someone.
This is good evidence for training. It is not evidence that a zebra breeding population acquired inherited horse-like manageability. Nor does it prove zebras are impossible to domesticate. The narrower point is enough: an individual’s successful lesson cannot settle a question about generations of descendants.
Farming an octopus raises another test
Technical possibility is only part of deciding which animals to bring into a production system. In a 2022 veterinary review, Ashley Powell describes octopus aquaculture challenges involving carnivorous diets, environmental needs, crowding, injuries, and cannibalism. The review also emphasizes the difficulty of providing suitable care across species with different life histories.
Those concerns prevent a simple leap from “this animal can grow in captivity” to “this is a suitable farming system.” Survival, reproduction, and acceptable welfare need different evidence. A system can solve a production problem while leaving serious questions about the animal’s experience unresolved.
The review is a discussion of husbandry and welfare challenges, not proof that every species responds identically to every proposed farm design. Its observations also should not be treated as a current inventory of regulations. Here the relevant point is biological and ethical: the conditions people can provide must be examined alongside the output they want.
Why the black soldier fly fits the video’s argument
The appeal of black soldier fly larvae is a practical role rather than an affectionate temperament. The industrial breeding study discussed in the video describes larvae converting low-grade organic material into products including protein and fat. Breeding and rearing already take place under managed conditions, so selection can operate within an existing production cycle.
In the 2022 study by Elena Facchini and colleagues, a line selected for larval body weight was evaluated after 10, 13, and 16 generations. In the final two automated production rounds, larvae averaged 39 percent heavier than the base population. That result belongs to the tested lines and conditions; it is not a promise for every farm.
The qualification is especially useful: the study did not find a significant improvement in feed or protein conversion ratios. Heavier larvae and better conversion efficiency are different outcomes. The reported generation interval of five to six weeks helps explain the pace of a breeding program, but housing, feed, and other conditions still matter.
“Next” hides several different questions
The fly example separates four tests: reproduction under human management, inherited change, usefulness of the selected trait, and acceptable husbandry. Passing one test does not pass the others. In particular, heavier larvae do not establish feed safety or an environmental advantage over another production system; those claims need evidence about the process, not just the animals’ weight.
There may never be one satisfying announcement that humans have domesticated their next animal. Different lineages can change at the same time, and researchers do not share a single finishing line. Black soldier flies are a useful example because the breeding is already happening. They make the question less about which animal looks ready to join the household, and more about which relationship humans are actually building.
