Deevey’s Hare and Haruspex revisited: Why domestication dooms civilisation?

Abstract Sixty years of work on four species of hares shows that wild populations are held by behavioural mechanisms well below the carrying capacity of their habitat. In contrast, feral populations of domesticated rabbits, and apparently all other domesticated species, expand to the food limit and starve. Some humans became domesticated (civilized) about 11,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture, lost the ‘savage’ characteristics that hold populations in check, and already are well over ecological carrying capacity. Continued growth is technologically possible at the expense of a natural environment, but renders humanity increasingly vulnerable to sudden extinction.