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Covington Ban - Please Help!
Here are some points that you can include in your letters:
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Domesticated as is used to decribe animals, by definition, means "tame."
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Guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, and rats have long histories of domestication.
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Guinea pigs are one of the oldest known domesticated animals - they were kept by South American Indians possibly as long ago as 1000 BC.
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Rabbits were raised in captivity by the Romans. They were brought to England by the Normans (invaded England 1066) and kept for hundreds of years
in semi-wild enclosures called warrens. By the late 1700's, the oldest varieties were making an appearance as domesticated animals (English Lops,
Angoras, and the predecessor to the English Spot).
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Mice were first bred and tamed by the Chinese. A pamphlet from Japan, dated 1787, is said to depict varieties such as albino, black, piebald and
pink-eyed dilute, as well as "waltzing" mice. The UK's National Mouse Club was formed in 1895.
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Rats were first kept in captivity by owners of sporting dogs and public houses in Victorian times to provide entertainment in "rat pits". There are
records of rats being kept and bred in captivity and sold as pets in the period from 1840 to 1860. By 1906, the Wistar laboratory strain was being
established and rat shows were already being held.
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Hamsters, which are all descended from one wild female hamster and her litter of 12, were caught in Syria in 1930. The first color mutation was
found in 1947.
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Gerbils, descendants of wild gerbils caught in Mongolia in 1935, became widely bred in the 1950's and achieved popularity in the 1960's and 1970's.
Obviously those aren't all of the "facts." (If you can think of something that should be added, please use the Contact link to the left to let me
know!) But they are some ideas to help get you started.
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