Animals In The New Earth

[kafka]

The Prophecy of Isaiah
{65:17} For behold, I create the new heavens and the new earth. And the former things will not be in memory and will not enter into the heart.
. . .
{65:25} The wolf and the lamb will pasture together. The lion and the ox will eat hay. And dust will be the food of the serpent. They will not harm, and they will not kill, on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

There will be animals on the New Earth and from this verse of Isaiah one comes to the conclusion that they will all be tame, since they will not hunt eachother and they will not harm and not kill. So they will be in one sense similar to the species now on earth and in another sense different since most animals are now wild wolves and lions represent the wild in the above verse. This new article from National Geographic may give some glimpse on what God may do to the animals, so as to change them on the New Earth:

Animal Domestication
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/taming-wild-animals/ratliff-text

A summary of the article is as follows. A Soviet experiment has been conducted over the past half-century or so. The scientists took wild foxes. Studied and observed them. They choose a very small number of the foxes which seemed to be more tame than the others and then breeded these. After several generations the breed tame foxes slowly began to take on different temperaments, physical traits, eventually to the point where they become domesticated like dogs:

"It started more than a half century ago, when Trut was still a graduate student. Led by a biologist named Dmitry Belyaev, researchers at the nearby Institute of Cytology and Genetics gathered up 130 foxes from fur farms. They then began breeding them with the goal of re-creating the evolution of wolves into dogs, a transformation that began more than 15,000 years ago."

"Belyaev suspected that as the foxes became domesticated, they too might begin to show aspects of a domestication phenotype. He was right again: Selecting which foxes to breed based solely on how well they got along with humans seemed to alter their physical appearance along with their dispositions. After only nine generations, the researchers recorded fox kits born with floppier ears. Piebald patterns appeared on their coats. By this time the foxes were already whining and wagging their tails in response to a human presence, behaviors never seen in wild foxes.

Driving those changes, Belyaev postulated, was a collection of genes that conferred a propensity to tameness—a genotype that the foxes perhaps shared with any species that could be domesticated."

I also saw a video on this experiment a couple a months ago on PBS. The foxes look different, behave different, are affectionate toward people, and so on. They even look a bit what one would imagine as some animal out of a fantasy fiction, because the color of their coats changed lighter, some have a star pattern around their faces, and generally softer and more pleasant features. In addition the tame foxes are more intellegent.

So at this point the scientists are trying to isolate the exact cause of the transformation in the genes, DNA, or some think it is a chemical released from their brains. But the point in reference to the New Heaven and New Earth is that I think God may simply take some of the species which is exist today and when He creates anew will modify their genes, whether He turn on some switches, or change a DNA sequence, or whatnot and these animals will be in one sense the same species but also different in that they are tame, more beautiful, domesticated! And maybe God will create some new species.

It is a great article worth reading. I also thought of Adam and Eve in Paradise. The animals were clearly domesticated there, since they were obedient to Adam when he named them. Perhaps the tames ones are still there and will be transfered to the New Earth at the consummation. And when Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, they had to deal with mostly wild animals. As far as the dogs, perhaps the Spirit guided their transformation from wolf to dog, because He knew Adam and Eve would be cast out. Or perhaps Adam or one of his descendents had the wisdom to begin cross-breeding the more tame wolves and so transforming them to dogs.

Anway my summary is flawed because I am not a scientist, so read the article and come to your own conclusions. The magazine itself has some interesting charts too. O.k. I'll be quiet now.

[cmotherofpirl]

Interesting.
Domesticated means an animal generally accepts our presence enough not to try to kill us, and we can handle them somewhat safely. Even if animals were somehow tamed enough not to kill us, they would still have to be wild enough to hunt others for supper, unless God decides we will be changed to herbivores and simply eat plants.

[kafka]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' timestamp='1298092429' post='2213770']
Even if animals were somehow tamed enough not to kill us, they would still have to be wild enough to hunt others for supper, unless God decides we will be changed to herbivores and simply eat plants.
[/quote]
yes! which seems to be expressed in the Isaiah verse, a wolf pasturing, a lion eating hay.

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

Dominus Pax,
buddhist have tame tigers at some temples,and my cousin has tame frogs that he hand reared from tadpole to frgod that eat straight out of his hand The actual training of all animals may be possible,but also There may also be a hidden spiritual meaning to this verse in that the sankes may be thieves the lions humans whom dominate others like say a bully reminds me of a verse a friend read today from the o.t that sacrifices would comence again with bulls being sacrificed as pleasing to god(unsure of the exact verse) this may also be spiritual in that men whom are raging bulls will be tamed and come to the alter of god and offer up the sacrife but also that they are sacrificed in letting go of all worldy attachments etc.
GOD BLESS
God is Good God is Love.
Oh P.S. i just thought of another example of tamed beasts,i saw a photo once of an african comedian walking his pet hyenna down a dirt road.

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

sorry not disagreeing or agreeing with your post,is quite possible,the expanse of exotic pets i assume is still increasing but very dangerous maybe in that unless it comes from a line like those foxes that has been hand reared over numerous gens there could be maybe 50 percent that can be aggresive, THOUGHHHH steve irwin may disagree

[kafka]

I agree that there is a spiritual/indirect level of meaning to the Isaiah verse, but in the direct level of meaning I think it is literally asserting a prediction of what the animals will be like on the New Earth.

When I used the word tame, I was referring to a speculative modification of the animals so that their natures are inherently tame (or domesticated) without having to be trained. And based on the article this seems possible with the results of breeding the less aggressive foxes. There could be a gene, or a swith in the DNA, found in many animals, which simply has to be modified or activated so that most animals would transform into non-aggressive, affectionate, behavior, with modified physical traits and so on while basically remaining the same species. A domesticated form, like the dog is from the wolf. This could come about as a result of breeding, but when God creates anew perhaps he will create the animals of the New Earth with the modification. So in one sense they are the same but in another sense they are different.

But then the verse seems to assert a transformation from carnivorous to herbavorous for the wolves and lions. I dont know how that could be effected from a scientific point of view, so maybe that will be miraculous.

[Laudate_Dominum]

Nice article. I like Diamond's take on animal domestication in [i]Guns, Germs, and Steel[/i]. Dawkins uses Belyaev's foxes as an example of pleiotropy in [i]The Greatest Show on Earth[/i]. They're both quick and non-technical reads in if you're interested. Also, there was a bit of research that came out recently some place... Current Anthropology? Anyway, the relevant aspect was that prehistoric homo sapiens may have kept domesticated fox at one point. I could try to find that paper if you're interested.



Edit for clappy smiley.

Edited February 21, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[Laudate_Dominum]

I found it open access published here:

[url="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0015815"]A Unique Human-Fox Burial from a Pre-Natufian Cemetery in the Levant (Jordan)[/url]

Here's the physorg blurb for anyone not quite interested enough to read the paper.

[url="http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-fox-prehistoric-friend.html"]Was the fox prehistoric man's best friend?[/url]

[Laudate_Dominum]

P.S. In light of genre alone I'm extremely wary of even slightly literal interpretations of Genesis 1 and 2; other than what is strictly required to be believed according to magisterial decree. Although, I have an obscure book from the late '60s which daringly argues against all literalism of Gen 1-2 (even taking Pius XII to task), towards which I find myself unnervingly sympathetic.

Edited February 21, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[Innocent]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1298308218' post='2214419']
P.S. In light of genre alone I'm extremely wary of even slightly literal interpretations of Genesis 1 and 2; other than what is strictly required to be believed according to magisterial decree. Although, I have an obscure book from the late '60s which daringly argues against all literalism of Gen 1-2 (even taking Pius XII to task), towards which I find myself unnervingly sympathetic.
[/quote]


Could you let us know the title of that book, please?

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Innocent' timestamp='1298353423' post='2214568']
Could you let us know the title of that book, please?
[/quote]
I would be doing everyone a disservice; it is a lame book. Very much in the spirit of the age (late '60s), but more than this, the author is scandalous. Twenty years after writing the little original sin book I mentioned above he had left the priesthood and written a bitter diatribe against the papacy. I don't want to promote the guy. I'll PM you if you really want but I don't recommend the book, I was just reading it the other day and was disturbed to find myself sympathizing with some of the critical appraisal. lol.

edit: typo fix

Edited February 22, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='kafka' timestamp='1298088788' post='2213756']
"Belyaev suspected that as the foxes became domesticated, they too might begin to show aspects of a domestication phenotype. He was right again: Selecting which foxes to breed based solely on how well they got along with humans seemed to alter their physical appearance along with their dispositions. After only nine generations, the researchers recorded fox kits born with floppier ears. Piebald patterns appeared on their coats. By this time the foxes were already whining and wagging their tails in response to a human presence, behaviors never seen in wild foxes.
[/quote]
Btw, this is called pedomorphosis and is common with domesticated species. The selective pressures of domestication favor juvenile behavioral traits (e.g., docility) and there is a tendency to retain juvenile physical traits as well. In Wade's book [i]Before the Dawn[/i] he talks about how the morphology of modern homo sapiens suggests pedomorphosis as we've become increasingly more "domesticated." This is seen as beginning tens of thousands of years before the development of agriculture and sedentary living btw.