As per the title. I'm working on a research paper, and having read parts of Diamond's breakdown of domesticatability, I'm frankly left unsatisfied by the lack of explanations. I can't find a single article referencing the capybara or tapir, and only a few for the peccary. I've read a few that say the Aztecs tamed and kept peccary for their meat, but why weren't they truly domesticated?
I'd ask the same of Bison, but have come to the conclusion through readings that they were simply easier to hunt than going to the effort of domesticating and hoping for positive returns, given their numbers and ease of running off a cliff. By comparison, game in South America seems relatively sparse, ergo why the quechua domesticated the cavy of all things. Capybara seem like the perfect animal for Muisca or other tribes in the region to farm for meat, and the Tapir could well be a cattle alternative with some selective breeding for size and meat, so what could have reasonably prevented such a thing? Was game so plentiful for tribes in South America as well that they didn't have a need to develop more advanced husbandry?
First of all, it's important to keep in mind that the process of domestication is a very fluid, still not entirely understood process that occurred in a few different ways and for different reasons. Not all animals are suitable for domestication. The suitability of an animal depends on several factors (the last three being particularly important):
So let's take a look at my favourite animal, the horse, to illustrate these factors. Horses are pretty sweet, and human history would be very different if they hadn't been domesticated.
Horse herds are hierarchical - you've got the lead mare and lead stallion and the rest fall into a sort of pecking order beneath them.
Horses are relatively good-natured and pleasant creatures, making them malleable to what you want. Ever wondered why zebras haven't been domesticated, despite being an equine? They're assholes. (There are other reasons, but the general assholery is a big one)
Gestation lasts about a year, and the foal is on his hooves within minutes of being born, and running within hours (compared to the 18-22 month period for elephants). Plus a horse is sexually mature in little over a year, meaning you can very quickly double the number of animals (again, compare that to elephants who don't really become adults until they're 17).
Horses are also fairly adaptable and easy to feed - they can thrive in just about any environment (bar jungles) and will uncover their own food and water (i.e. breaking through ice to get water or scraping away snow to get grass - even cows and sheep can have difficulty with this).
Horses are relatively less likely to panic than other prey animals. Although certainly they can be quite nervous or easily frightened, (I got dumped on my ass once because my horse spooked at a chair and teleported himself across the arena. Without me.) they're curious enough to investigate strange things. Compared to an animal like a gazelle, horses are basically bombproof.
And finally, horses will breed very easily in captivity. Think of how hard it's been to get the pandas off the endangered list. Or how cheetahs are such anxious creatures that it's incredibly difficult to get them to breed in captivity.
Now, I mentioned the elephant a few times, but I'm sure you're thinking, "wait, aren't they domesticated?". No. Elephants are tame. There's an important distinction to make here. Domestication includes a process of selective breeding to morph the animal into something more manageable and suitable for human purposes. It's why sheep have their fluffy coats (humans basically bred the natural inner coat to be on the outside), why cows are smaller than their aurochs ancestors, or why dogs are smaller than wolves (interestingly enough, horses didn't really change, morphologically speaking, after being domesticated, which makes it really hard to pinpoint when the domestication happened). Only certain animal species can be domesticated. Any individual animal can, theoretically, be tamed. Taming an animal is essentially just conditioning them to accept human interaction and care, but the process basically has to be started over with each baby. Taming an animal also means that the animal is still wild, and can "return" to that wild state at any moment.
Looking at elephants as an example, although they've been quite useful in human history for a variety of reasons, they've never been truly domesticated. Their gestation and development periods are too long for humans to really be able to enact a regime of selective breeding, unless you can be sure that your descendants are going to keep up the work down the line. They're also known to have outbursts of temper, bulls especially, so they're never completely docile.
So with all that in mind, let's look at the animals you listed, and why they haven't been domesticated. First, the capybara.
Capybaras are surprisingly difficult to manage, in terms of breeding, mostly because the females have a tendency to just straight up kill their young. Between that and the fact that immature capybaras are really not tolerated by the adults means that in order to maintain a population you'd have to be very strict on fencing and separation, and be willing to regularly go out and grab wild capys to supplement your captive ones. Even after all that, the potential products you could get from them (milk, fur, meat, etc) is not enough to justify the amount of time and effort that would go into farming them. It's much easier to just hunt wild capys.
Next, the tapir. Keeping in mind that there is a species of tapir from southeastern Asia (the classic oreo-looking fella from Malaysia), we're going to focus on the "New World" tapirs. Firstly, the tapir is not a very prolific animal. They have long gestation periods for individual offspring and it can take over a year for the offspring to become independent. Additionally, tapirs tend to be solitary animals, meaning they're not inclined to form bonds with humans (an important facet of domestication - basically convincing the animal that you're part of the pack/herd). They're also big fruit eaters, and ideally you don't want to compete for food with your animals. With horses, sheep/goats, and cows, they'll be happy on grass, which most humans don't tend to eat. (The situation is a little different for dogs and cats, but their route to domestication was different than the herbivores.)
Finally, let's look at the peccary. Like the capybara, they have a nasty habit of infanticide. Which again means that maintaining a suitable population requires close supervision and strict management, for relatively low yield. Despite this, there is evidence that herds of peccaries were kept for food and for ritual purposes. The peccaries may have eventually been domesticated (a process that can take quite a long time), had the Spanish not invaded and brought along already domesticated animals. There's not much point in continuing to develop an animal when you have access to the finished product.
Overall, not many animals in the Americas were suitable for domestication. Of those that were, they were likely in the process of domestication when Europe invaded and threw a wrench into everything. Hopefully this answers your question!
Sources: (edited to fix formatting)
Kelekna, P., 2009. The Horse in Human History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rushton, J., Viscarra, R., Viscarra, C., Basset, F., Baptista, R., Huallata, C. and Brown, D., 2004. Captive breeding of wild species - a sceptical view of the prospects. ODI Wildlife Policy Briefing, 9, pp.1-4.
Smole, W. and Donkin, R., 1986. The Peccary: With Observations on the Introduction of Pigs to the New World. Geographical Review, 76(3), p.329.
Zeder, M., 2012. The domestication of animals. Journal of Anthropological Research, 68(2), pp.161-190.
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!