Talk:Human uses of mammals

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Redundant?[edit]

Mammals in culture: a Maasai herdsman grazing his cattle inside the Ngorongoro crater

When it comes to animal groups, a cultural section or article seems appropriate only when their are cultural motifs and tropes that apply to the group as a whole. For example, bats are associated with the night and horror in Western culture regardless of species. Sharks are stereotyped as vicious man-eaters. Ect, Ect. So what are some cultural tropes about mammals in general? Have there been tribes that worship "the mammal"? I just don't see any justification for this as an article or a section in the mammal article. LittleJerry (talk) 16:17, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gosh, both title and question seem a little abrupt. Let me reply both in words and imagery. I think you may be confusing "popular culture" with its tropes and motifs, and the far wider realm of culture in the sense of learnt behaviour that is passed on from one generation to another other than by genetic means. It has been well said that culture is what you share without realising you know it. To take a simple example in this context, a Maasai child used to grow up (and perhaps still does) with a wide knowledge of wild and domestic mammals, principally cattle and the predators (lions, hyenas) that threaten them, but also of the other mammals (wildebeest, antelopes, ...) that share the grazing. By the age of maturity, that child is imbued with the people's culture, knowing "almost instinctively" what to do in a range of situations involving mammals (cattle running off, a lame animal, a lion in the vicinity, how to milk a cow, how to take blood, ...) that people in other cultures do not. Other cultures involve other assemblages of mammals with quite different cultural associations and forms of knowledge (horse-riding, how to plough a field, ...). Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:06, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@LittleJerry: I have added text and references on the domestication of mammals which I hope are suitably wide-ranging. While I do not believe that (popular) cultural tropes are germane to the discussion, distinctive characteristics of domesticated mammals certainly exist, and both Diamond and Driscoll list many of these (see the article). I hope these go some way towards allaying your concerns; the importance of mammals in human culture can only be described as enormous.

If it's the word "culture" that is the stumbling-block, we can go for a title like Mammals and man, which I'd be perfectly happy with. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:23, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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