Tame animal
A
tame animal is an animal which tolerates the presence of humans.
Tameness is a degree to which an animal accepts humans. An animal may be naturally tame, as., e.g., in the case of island tameness, or became tame as a result of deliberate
taming, a process during which an initial tendency to avoid humans diminished to a varying degree. The
tameability of an animal is the level of difficulty of taming an animal. Tameability may vary among individual animals, breeds, or species. Taming should not be confused with domestication. For example feral animals are domestic, but not tamed. Similarly, taming is not the same as animal training, although in some contexts these terms may be used interchangeably. Note that above definition of "taming" coincides with the use of "habituation" in the field of wildlife biology, as in discussions of how habituation makes bears and other large animals more dangerous <e.g., Herrero et al. 2005, Smith et al. 2005, Geist 2011a,b, Stringham 2010, 2011, Rogers & Mansfield 2011>. By contrast, taming implies that the animal tolerates not merely human proximity, but at minimum human touching <e.g., Geist 2011a,b>.